is because she totally lacks 'fancy,' though she also appears to be unintelligent and without empathy for her children. Mr. Sleary – the owner of the circus which employs Sissy's father. He speaks with a lisp. A kind man, he helps both Sissy and young Tom when they are in trouble. Mrs. Pegler – an old woman who sometimes visits Coketown to observe the Bounderby estate. She is later revealed to be Bounderby's mother, proving his "rags-to-riches" story to be fraudulent. Jane Gradgrind – a younger sister of Tom and Louisa Gradgrind who spends a lot of time with Sissy Jupe. She is cheerful, affectionate and despite looking similar to Louisa, in personality she is opposite. Major themes Dickens wished to educate readers about the working conditions of some of the factories in the industrial towns of Manchester, and Preston, to "strike the heaviest blow in my power", and as well to confront the assumption that prosperity runs parallel to morality. This notion he systematically deconstructed through his portrayal of the moral monsters, Mr. Bounderby and James Harthouse. Dickens also believed in the importance of the imagination, and that people's lives should not be reduced to a collection of material facts and statistics. The description of the circus, which he describes as caring so "little for Plain Fact", is an example of this. Utilitarianism The Utilitarians were one of the targets of Dickens's satire. Utilitarianism was a prevalent school of thought during this period, its founders being Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, father to political theorist John Stuart Mill. Bentham's former secretary, Edwin Chadwick, helped design the Poor Law of 1834, which deliberately made workhouse life as uncomfortable as possible. In the novel, this attitude is conveyed in Bitzer's response to Gradgrind's appeal for compassion. Dickens was appalled by what he saw as a selfish philosophy, which was combined with materialist laissez-faire capitalism in the education of some children at the time, as well as in industrial practices. In Dickens's interpretation, the prevalence of utilitarian values in educational institutions promoted contempt between mill owners and workers, creating young adults whose imaginations had been neglected, due to an over-emphasis on facts at the expense of more imaginative pursuits. Dickens wished to satirise radical Utilitarians whom he described in a letter to Charles Knight as "see[ing] figures and averages, and nothing else." He also wished to campaign for reform of working conditions.