Mr Bounderby
This is an extract from “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens .
The novelist uses a dialogue between the protagonist of the chapter,Mr Bounderby,who tells to Mrs. Grundy  the story of his life.
He Dickens uses the narrative tecnique of the grotesque and pathos.
1)The description of the protagonist and his conditions are exaggerated and full of additional details, far away from reality:his age is exaggerated, he looks very ugly and he perfectly corresponds to the exaggerated stereotype of the capitalist and of the self-made man.
. This goes to prove that Mr Bounderby was a caricature through which the novelist condemned the conditions of poverty which characterized the Victorian Age.
2)Deckens used pathos to create interest in the protagonist's conditions, indeed he is a pathetic victim. The feeling of pity is increased by the fact that he was just a child .
 There are many expressions that give the idea of an arrogant man: the simile “inflated like a balloon”, the ironical phrase “a man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man” (who is also a hide critique to the myth of the middle class who is composed by self-made men), the ironical expression “the Bully of humility” and the analogy “constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness”.
The same name “Bounderby” recalls the word “bounder”, therefore it gives the idea of an immoral person.
It is interesting to notice that the influence of the Puritanism is clear in the text: it promoted the hard work to reich salvation.
By the language analysis the intelligent reader can notice from the tones with which Mr. Bounderby turns to the lady,that he believed she was inferior to him, just because she was a woman.