Charles Dickens´ Hard Times

Hard Times is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book is a condition-of-England novel, which aimed to highlight the social and economic pressures that some people were experiencing. Unlike other such writings at the time, the novel is unusual in that it is not set in London (as was also Dickens' usual wont), but in the fictitious Victorian industrialist Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town partially based upon 19th-century Preston.

It has received a mixed response from a diverse range of critics, such as F.R. Leavis, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Macaulay, mainly focusing on Dickens' treatment of trade unions and his post-Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between capitalistic mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era of Britain.

Dickens' reasons for writing Hard Times were monetary, educational and critical. Sales of his weekly pulp fiction periodical, Household Words, were low, and he hoped the inclusion of this novel in instalments would increase sales.

Gaskell's North and South published a year later, was another state-of-the-nation novel to first appear in Household Words.

Dickens wished to satirize 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. Dickens had visited factories in Manchester as early as 1839, and was appalled by the environment in which workers toiled. Drawing upon his own childhood experiences, Dickens resolved to "strike the heaviest blow in my power" for those who laboured in horrific conditions.

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812, in Landport, Portsmouth, in Hampshire, the second of eight children. When he was five, the family moved to Chatham, Kent. In 1822, when he was ten, the family relocated to 16 Bayham Street, Camden Town, in London.
Although his early years seem to have been an idyllic time, he thought himself then as a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy". He spent time outdoors, but also read voraciously. He talked, later in life, of his extremely poignant memories of childhood, and of his continuing photographic memory of the people and events that helped to bring his fiction to life. His family's early, moderate wealth provided the boy Dickens with some private education at William Giles' school, in Chatham. This time of prosperity came to an abrupt end, however, when his father, after having spent beyond his means in entertaining, and in retaining his social position, was imprisoned at Marshalsea debtor's prison. Shortly afterwards, the rest of his family (except for Charles, who boarded in Camden Town at the house of family friend Elizabeth Roylance), realizing no other option, joined him in residence at Marshalsea.
Just before his father's arrest, the 12-year-old Dickens had begun working ten-hour days at Warren's Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs, near the present Charing Cross railway station. He earned six shillings a week pasting labels on jars of thick shoe polish. This money paid for his lodgings with Mrs Roylance and helped support his family. Mrs. Roylance, Dickens later wrote, was "a reduced old lady, long known to our family". The mostly unregulated, strenuous—and often cruel—work conditions of the factory employees (especially children), made a deep impression on Dickens. His experiences served to influence later fiction and essays, and were the foundation of his interest in the reform of socioeconomic and labour conditions, the rigors of which he believed were unfairly borne by the poor, in pre-Industrial-Revolution England.
Oliver Twist is the first novel in the English language to centre throughout on a child protagonist and is also notable for Dickens' unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives.
An early example of the social novel, the book calls the public's attention to various contemporary social evils, including the Poor Law that states that poor people should work in workhouses, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. Dickens mocks the hypocrisies of the time by surrounding the novel's serious themes with sarcasm and dark humour.

New words

Oh Capitain! my capitain! poem

weather’d -
prize - prêmio
sought - procurava
keel - quilha
vessel - barco
grim - desagradável
daring - audacioso
bugle – trompa, corneta
trills – trilar, gorjear
ribbon’d – (ribbon – fita)
wreaths - coroas
a-crowding – (crowding – apinhar-se em)
swaying – balançando, oscilando
eager - ávido
pale - pálido
anchor´d – (anchor – âncora)
mournful – desolado, triste
tread – passo, pisada

Comparisons exercises

Well, Bud, as we agreed, here are the first exercises about comparison, from the FCE book.

Page 22

1.1 – Life in country is not busier than life in the city.
1.2 – Transport is easier for people who live in cities.
1.3 - There are more people living in the world today than ever before.
1.4 - Teachers today are less stricter than they were in the past.
1.5 - Antartica is the least populated continent in the world.
1.6 - I think windsurfing is more exciting than sailing.
1.7 - I am better st sport than my brother.
1.8 - I would rather travel by car to train.

2.1 – e
2.2 – d
2.3 – b
2.4 – c
2.5 – a

Second part of 2nd exercise (I did not figure that out very well)

alot/more/much
rather
a bit/slightly
no
as
almost/not quite
(not) realy

3.1 This is the most amazing show that I´ve ever seen.
3.2 Chloe is a lot braver than Sam.
3.3 Last year the show was a bit less expensive than this year.
3.4 I think it´s far more easy to play tennis than golf.
3.5 I´d rather sightseeing to lying on the beach.