Andrew's Wiki
Christmas Carol

1843 tale of “spiritual growth” that unfortunately only betrays its material conditions

Folks

• Ebenezer Scrooge, the irascible, joy-hating miser Malthusian capitalist who thinks that the surplus population can and should die, but who reforms in the light of the past (his own young humanity and aspirations), the present (the sadness all around him, yet the hope and courage and love!), and the future (his death, unremarked by all except those stealing from his corpse and house).

• Jacob Marley, Scrooge’s ex-business partner, whose ghost visits Scrooge to announce the coming of the three Ghosts: he has chains weighing him down which symbolize the pain and suffering he caused in his lifetime: by his own “free will” he damned himself. Because during life he didn’t “walk abroad among his fellow-men,” he now has to as a ghost.

• Bob Cratchit, Scrooge’s nephew, with a large family, who wants Scrooge to get in the fun and love no matter what

• Tiny Tim, his lame son, who is loving but will die if no intervention occurs

• Fezziwig, Scrooge’s old boss, a model of the kindly boss who gives parties and encourages

Themes

• Childhood
  • Scrooge’s childhood is one of imagination, fellowship, and hope
• Critique
  • A classic portrait of the cranky capitalist who won’t let his clerk off for Christmas Eve
• Not Really Critique
  • Dickens in the Preface says that he wants the book not to “put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me,” hoping it will be “pleasant.”
  • This critique isn’t actually supposed to convert anyone, but to tell them that their actions are already fine
• Happiness and Wealth
  • Can you only be happy if you’re wealthy?
    • Scrooge says Bob has no reason to be happy b/c he’s poor
    • Bob says “There are many things from which I have derived good, by which I have not profited”
      • Bob thus thinks that money can’t buy happiness
    • Finally, Scrooge realizes that a generous heart leads to happiness, rather than money
  • But the text hints that you need money to be happy
    • He proves Scrooge’s change by smiles and laughter, but mostly by cataloging the types of things he buys for people, esp food
    • His spending money and letting people off work is what really measures his change!
    • Also it is poverty and bad working conditions that are seen as the true sources of evil
    • The hints of abundance and luxury that are the book’s primary images prove the money kind of is the key to happiness
    • Scrooge the rich isn’t happy, either, so what’s up?
  • Money mobilized correctly creates happiness
• Good Fellowship
  • The text tries to convince you that this is the key to happiness, although you can really see it is still about material goods: the right diet and medicine saves Tim when he can buy it
• Power
  • Old Fezziwig: it’s not that he spends money, but instead “his power lies in words and looks…impossible to count them up” (36)
• Sexuality
  • Creepy scene of Blindman’s Bluff where Scrooge wishes he could grope after the luscious young ladies
• Morality: you forge the “chains” that bind you, yourself
• Food
  • Look at the splendid description, almost endless, of food: 43, 45-7, 51
  • These all come at Christmas Present: where everyone is happy, where “always with a happy end” (62), even for criminals and patients

Victorian Tropes

• Close-knit nuclear family: hearth, idealization, domesticity
• The greedy capitalist
• The self-made man
• London landscape of snow, fog, rag and bone shops, city streets
• Bureaucracy of clerks and offices
• Nice moral
• Repressed, disembodied sexuality
• Idealization of children/childhood
  • Not yet fallen
• Plot: beginning, middle, end
• Separate spheres
  • Male public, political, economic sphere
  • Female domestic sphere of sentiment
• Commodity culture

Exceptions to Tropes

• All those lists: all the five senses are indulged
• Sexuality of Blind Man’s Bluff a little too open

Style

• Huge lists of food
• Five staves: supposed to be musical harmony?