He had an unhappy childhood.

His father was imprisoned for debt.

Charles was removed from school and sent to work in a blacking factory.

It denounces industrialisation, which had caused the gap between the rich and the poor, and between factory owners and their workers, who were forced to work long hours for low pay in dirty, noisy and dangerous factories.

The novel also criticises materialism and Bentham's Utilitarianism, which claimed that human nature was motivated by self-interest, and that it was the duty of the state, through education, to support and encourage each individual to pursue their own interests.

HARD TIMES suggests that 19th-century England was turning human beings into machines by repressing the development of their emotions and creativity.

He uses meaningful names.

STYLE

Repetitions of words , phrases, structures and massive use of adjectives , similes , metaphor , exaggerations or hyperboles and ironic remarks .

He makes use of irony and satire (no sarcasm).

The text describes the town of Coketown (an imaginary industrial town) in the mid 19th century.

He is materialistic and narrow-minded.

Education, according to him, must be abstract and rigid/strict. No space for creativity.

Human nature can be only measured and quantified through facts.

He believes that human nature can be governed and measured by reason, no space for feeling and imagination.

That’s why he marries his daughter to Mr Bounderby, a friend of his, and a very rich banker 30 years older than her.

Louisa accepted because she wishes to help her brother, who is given a job by Bounderby. Her marriage will be unhappy (no feeling) and her brother will be obliged to leave the country after robbing the bank where he works.

He is one of the first writers to talk about the lowest classes.

He is the writer who best described the social problems of the new industrialisation.

He visited the north and experienced the impact of industrialisation.

He was shocked by the working and living conditions he saw. As a consequence he wrote HARD TIMES.

USE OF SENSES:

• Machinery and tall chimneys producing interminable serpents of smoke ( metafor)

• black canal and purple river

• the water is smelling because of the presence of a substance used for colouring

• windows and machinery , they all look the same ( alienation)

• People equally like one another  who do the same actions, the same work.

The products of the industry, however, contributed to the luxury and elegance and comfort  of the lives of the rich all over the world