Genre

Hard Times

by Charles Dickens

Hard Times: Genre 1 key example

Genre
Explanation and Analysis:

Hard Times is written in the realist style, a movement to which Dickens contributed a great deal (most of his novels after David Copperfield are considered realist). Literary realism began in the mid-nineteenth century in France and consisted of literature which focused on the lives of working, provincial, or middle class people, portrayed with as little romance or bias as possible. There are some sentimental and fantastic elements to Dickens’s style, but his unflinching criticism of working conditions in factory towns, as well as the book’s unhappy conclusion (with Louisa and Tom emotionally damaged beyond repair by their father) are characteristic of Realist fiction.