HARD TIMES by C. Dickens – COKETOWN

In this quote, the narrator focuses on the description of Coketown, a typical industrial city from the Victorian Age. In this city, everything is built in red brick, inexpensive, blackened by soot and dirt of factories; they characterize the town, defined as 'a town of machinery and tall chimneys'.

This town is crossed by a canal, become black for slurry of houses and factories, and a river that is 'ill-smelling dye', surrounded by large factories.

Wide avenues and narrow streets like one another cross the city. In addition, people all the same (Dickens explain the alienation of the Industrial Revolution) inhabit it.

The churches, built by 18 religious congregations in the city, are all the same, built from red brick. The only church different from the others is the 'New Church', 'a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the door, terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs'.

All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black and white.

In the city there are also a jail infirmary (and an infirmary with a jail), the 'M'Choackumchild School', a hospital, a cemetery and a market.