How does his feelings differ from living with parents and then with Aunts?

From the text:

Until he was four years old, James Henry Trotter had a happy life. He lived peacefully with his mother and father in a beautiful house beside the sea.

Their names were Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, and I am sorry to say that they were both really horrible people. They were selfish and lazy and cruel, and right from the beginning they started beating poor James for almost no reason at all. They never called him by his real name, but always referred to him as ‘you disgusting little beast’ or ‘you filthy nuisance’ or ‘you miserable creature’, and they certainly never gave him any toys to play with or any picture books to look at. His room was as bare as a prison cell.