A Christmas Carol - Wikispacesnsaenglish.wikispaces.com/file/view/A Christmas Carol.pdf...A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens C harles Dickens was born in 1812, in Port-sea, England,

A ChristmasCarol

byCharles Dickens

Charles Dickens was born in 1812, in Port-sea, England, as the second child of JohnDickens, a middle-class naval clerk. At

11, Dickens had his formal education inter-rupted; his father was too debt-ridden to afford it.At 12, Dickens went to work in a shoe-blackingwarehouse. Soon after, John Dickens's debt landedhim in Marshalsea prison. Though his father wasin prison for only three months, and Dickens re-turned to school shortly after, the experienceproved formative: Dickens, isolated and ashamedduring this time, resolved to make a success ofhimself. In quick order, he went from office boy,to parliamentary reporter, to a writer of shortstories or "sketches" under his long-lasting pseu-donym "Boz." Sketches by Boz, published whenDickens was just 24, heralded the arrival of a newtalent. This was followed by the Posthumous Papersof the Pickwick Club (1836-37), which made "Boz"and his characters famous. The novel establishedthe combination of comedy and social critique thatwould emerge in Dickens's next stories, up to andincluding A Christmas Carol.

Events in History at the Time the StoryTakes Place

The "Hungry '40s." A Christmas Carol occursduring the "Hungry Forties," a time of economicdepression, high unemployment, failed crops,starvation, and disease. During the period from1815 to 1842, the standard of living for the mid-dle classes had improved dramatically and therich had held their own, while the working

classes saw their standard of living at best holdsteady—perhaps decline. In 1842 public charties assisted 15 percent of the population, andprivate ones supported a great many more. Ac-cording to Richard D. Altick, the first decade ofQueen Victoria's reign (1837-47) was "the mostharrowing and dangerous of the entire century"(Altick, p. 89). Despair and disenfranchisement(the working classes could not vote) fueled agrowing radicalism called "chartism," its namederived from a "People's Charter" presented toParliament. Chartism led to strikes and riots in1839, 1842, and 1848, after which it weakened.On the whole, Dickens sympathized with thechartists, who advocated the following six pointsin their "People's Charter":

1. Annual meetings of Parliament2. The right to vote for all men3. Removal of property qualifications for men

running for the House of Commons4. Secret ballots

L I T E R A T U R E A N D I T S T I M E S S U P P L E M E N T 1 , P A R T 1 31

THE LJTIRAIY WQtKA ghost story sat in London d fte§ the;Christmas season of 1843; i''0*3;

.."* SYHpP^^

Four ghosts transform tteiiezer' |Q^ ;teTO-.a hard-teart d'-'Viaoriaii |psif ^siirii;/lffe_a charitable man who km^Ws t>^ t%fc^^spirit of Christmas.

A Christmas Carol

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5. Equally divided electoral districts 6. Salaries for members of Parliament

An underlying social belief in unfettered mar­ket forces prevented the government from putting any brakes on them to ease the miseries of the poor. Utilitarianism, a complex philoso­phy emphasizing the good of society rather than the individual, promoted laissez-faire economics. Ebenezer Scrooge's comment that "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's" is in tune with this philosophy (Dickens, A Christmas Carol, p. 51). Compounding the ill effects of utilitari­anism was a fear that the poor were reproducing too quickly. Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) had warned of the dangers of overpopulation in his Essay on the Principles of Population (1803). A Christmas Carol's Scrooge makes the Malthusian remark that if the poor would rather die than en­ter a state institution, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population" (A Christmas Carol, p. 51).

The New Poor Law. Paradoxically the laws that purported to help the poor increased their mis­eries. Dickens was a vigorous critic of the "New Poor Law," instituted in 1834, a law founded on utilitarian principles. His second novel, Oliver Twist (1837-39; also in Literature and Its Times), opens in a poorhouse, or "workhouse," and at­tacks the system that supports it. In A Christmas

Carol, when a gentleman soliciting charity says to Ebenezer Scrooge, "Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thou­sands are in want of common comforts," Scrooge delivers his ironic reply for managing the poor: "Are there no prisons? . . . Are they [the work­houses] still in operation? . . . The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour then?" (A Christ­mas Carol, pp. 50-51). The Poor Law Amend­ment reorganized aid for the poor by providing support for the old and handicapped in their own homes, while requiring everyone else to enter a workhouse. The workhouse meant severe priva­tion: jobs were monotonous, food scanty, and families divided. As Edgar Johnson comments on the new Poor Law, "In theory . . . [it] distin­guished between the helpless and the man or woman who could work but wouldn't. In prac­tice, however, it mingled the idler, tramp, drunk­ard, and prostitute in the same workhouse with the aged, ill, and infirm, and with the foundling children. The children suffered worst of all" (Johnson, p. 275). Poor children: "ragged schools" and child la­bor. Dickens was keenly sensitive to the plight of poor children, and his awareness was height­ened by two important events that preceded the writing of A Christmas Carol. In September 1843, Dickens visited a "ragged school," a charity school for the poorest children. While grateful that the school existed, Dickens was shocked by the "dire neglect of soul and body exhibited among these children," and convinced by the sight that "in the prodigious misery and igno­rance of the swarming masses of mankind in Eng­land, the seeds of its certain ruin are sown" (Dickens in Johnson, p. 461).

That same year the Children's Employment Commission reported on the situation of chil­dren in manufacturing and the trades. Children worked in dangerous factories and cottage in­dustries with few breaks for play, education, or even sleep. Earlier the Commission had reported that children as young as five worked up to 14 hours a day in the mines, with children from the workhouse receiving the worst jobs. Many Vic­torians were shocked. Dickens responded with fury, and described himself as "stricken down" (Dickens, The Letters, Vol. 3, p. 459). He pledged to react with the force of a "sledge hammer" (Dickens, The Letters, Vol. 3, p. 461). A Christ­mas Carol may be that hammer. In his story, Dickens depicts "Ignorance" and "Want" as two small and ragged children, hiding under the gown of Christmas Present. He also designates

I 32 L I T E R A T U R E A N D I T S T I M E S ^ S U P P L E M E N T 1 , P A R T 1

the crippled child, Tiny Tim, as an agent of re-demption. Tiny Tim, who is, as his father states,"as good as gold," thaws Scrooge's icy heart, anddraws the miser into a paternal relationship withthe boy and his family (A Christmas Carol, p. 94).

Report on Child Labor, 1843The Commission made the following commentson the state of laboring children. On the age ofchild workers: "That instances occur in whichChildren begin to work as early as three or fouryears of age; not infrequently at five, and be-tween five and six; while, in general, regularemployment commences between seven andeight; the great majority of the Children havingbegun to work before they are nine." On thehours of work: "in some few instances the regu-lar hours of work do not exceed ten, exclusiveof the time allowed for meals; sometimes theyare eleven, but more commonly twelve; and ingreat numbers of instances the employment iscontinued for fifteen, sixteen, and even eighteenhours consecutively." On the injuriousness of thework: "from the early ages at which the greatmajority commence work, from their longhours of work, and from the insufficiency oftheir food and clothing, their 'bodily health' isseriously and generally injured; they are for themost part stunted in growth, their aspect beingpale, delicate, and sickly, and they present al-together the appearance of a race which has suf-fered general physical deterioration."

(Second Report in Mitchell, pp. 43-44)

The Novel in Focus

The plot. "A Christmas Carol" opens on Christ-mas Eve, when Ebenezer Scrooge is visited bythe ghost of his dead business partner, JacobMarley. The restless ghost tells Scrooge that un-less he changes his ways, he too will be con-demned to wander the earth, tormented byhuman misery, fettered by a chain of his ownmaking. Scrooge must learn what Jacob Marleylearnt too late; that his business is not money-making, but "mankind" (A Christmas Carol,p. 62). As Marley's ghost states, "Mankind wasmy business. The common welfare was my busi-ness; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevo-lence, were, all, my business" (A Christmas Carol,p. 62). Scrooge's chance to avoid Marley's fatewill come through the visits of three ghosts.

The Ghost of Christmas Past makes Scroogerevisit the Christmases of his youth. In a school-room, young Scrooge sits forlorn during theChristmas holidays, entertained only by booksand his imagination. At a later Christmas, in thesame schoolroom, Scrooge's loneliness is inter-

rupted by the arrival of his young sister, whocomes to bring him home. The ghost promptsScrooge to remember that this adored sister, nowdead, has a living nephew (whom Scrooge hasignored). The ghost then shows Scrooge his pastemployer making merry with his family andclerks at Christmas time; this sight leads Scroogeto consider his own, mistreated, clerk. The nextmemory is of Scrooge's young fiancee, breakingher engagement to him, because he has becomemesmerized by money: "I have seen your nobleraspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you" (A Christmas Carol,p. 79). Finally the ghost shows Scrooge this samewoman, happily married and surrounded by herchildren on the very night, seven years ago, thatJacob Marley died and that Scrooge spent alonein his office.

The Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scroogevarious Christmas festivities, beginning with those

A ChristmasCarol]

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UTILITARIANISM

J

emmy fetham (1748-1832), the father of ytilterianism, fc^lieved that policy sHopIdb^ determined by a feliciftc calr

culus/' which measured lire greatest happiness for the greatestnumber of people* He and his iJi$c;iphfi,' v^m^m^ ^ h^Stuart Mill (1806-1873) rn hi$ early cfr^r> &;fiafids^off approach to the economy/ but a gyj irtg hartcl m area^s ofsocial policy* Utiirtariani ni was characterized by a reliance onrational thought, arid a corresponding disdain for the Abstractand imaginative* Though utilitarianism was a bedrock Victo-rian philosophy, it attracted notable critics, includingjofin Stxi**art Mill himself and Charles Oicken^ Dicken^s tengthi rtcritique is his noveJ Hard Times (1854), in whicfi hf attackswhat he saw as the e>cc^s rationality of utilitarianism. Aens wrote, ^My satire' is Against thc^ wh0,»~erages, and nothmg-else^he^pe»^and most-enormous vice of/Afe1;fr ptev- :; h^^long years tcrcome, will dotruths of political economy thpr4-c^M^whole life" (Dickens, Hard Tfyi^vlZ^

pie so fixated- on figtires -and' avw^g^ C^^ ifel ^^in A Christmas Carol to sepai 'l : ^^^

sense from -te nrwore general meaning,; ^ tt l ^ || >ulates the difference: ,*The« ,;m I|pip li ^might have derived :good, 1 , wl ^ l p; ^^^ ;Christmas amCHtg the, rest* lA'CMm^

33

A ChristmasI Carol

at his clerk's house. The large Cratchit family en-joy simple holiday pleasures. Dressed in their bestclothes, happy to be together, they share a scantyfeast of goose and pudding. One child, Tiny Tim,walks with a crutch and an iron frame support-ing his limbs. Scrooge asks the ghost whether TinyTim will live; the ghost says that if nothingchanges, he will not. When Scrooge asks that TinyTim be spared, the ghost repeats Scrooge's ownwords to him: "If he be like to die, he had bettedo it, and decrease the surplus population" (AChristmas Carol, p. 97). The ghost then com-ments: "It may be, that in the sight of Heaven,you are more worthless and less fit to live thanmillions like this poor man's child" (A ChristmasCarol, p. 97). The ghost whisks Scrooge past manywho are poor, yet merry. At Scrooge's nephew'shouse, Scrooge hears a companionable group dis-cussing his refusal to come for Christmas dinner.When the party amuses itself with music andgames, Scrooge becomes engrossed, even if someof the fun is at his expense. The ghost, intent onshowing Scrooge the joy the arrival of Christmascan bring to all people, takes him again on a pil-grimage: "In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in mis-ery's every refuge, where vain man in his littlebrief authority had not made fast the door, andbarred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, andtaught Scrooge his precepts" (A Christmas Carol,p. 107). Finally, the ghost reveals to Scrooge ahorrible sight. Hiding under the Spirit's robes aretwo dejected and degraded children:

"They are Man's," said the Spirit. . . . "And theycling to me, appealing from their fathers. Thisboy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware themboth, and all of their degree, but most of all be-ware this boy, for on his brow I see that writtenwhich is Doom, unless the writing be erased."

(A Christmas Carol, p. 108)

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come ges-tures rather than speaks. He shows Scrooge thereactions of people to the death of an uniden-tified man, reactions ranging from indifference,to greed, to pleasure. When Scrooge begs to beshown tenderness in relation to death, the ghosttakes him to the house of the Cratchits, whoare mourning Tiny Tim. Bob Cratchit is con-soled by the example his son set while alive: "Iknow, my dears, that when we recollect howpatient and how mild he was; although he wasa little, little child; we shall not quarrel easilyamong ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim indoing it" (A Christmas Carol, p. 123). At last,the specter brings Ebenezer Scrooge to thegrave of the unidentified man. There Scroogreads his own name, and promises to change:"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and tryto keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, thePresent, and the Future. The Spirits of all Threeshall strive within me" (A Christmas Carol,p. 126).

Christmas Day finds Scrooge a changed man,full of giddiness and good intentions. He beginshis new life by sending an anonymous gift—thelargest turkey around—to the Cratchits. Then hepromises a charitable donation to a gentleman hehad previously rebuffed. For Christmas dinner,Scrooge accepts an invitation, previously de-clined, to his nephew's house. The day afterChristmas, Scrooge starts on a new footing withhis clerk, pledging to assist him and his family.All these promises Scrooge keeps, becoming "asgood a friend, as good a master, and as good aman, as the good old city knew," and to TinyTim, who lives, a "second father" (A ChristmasCarol, p. 133).

A Christmas revival. The Ghost of ChristmasPresent, described and illustrated as dressed in agreen robe with a holly wreath on its head, ap-pears jovial and magnanimous, a source ofplenty. The spirit transforms Scrooge's room:

The walls and ceiling were so hung with livinggreen, that it looked like a perfect grove, fromevery part of which, bright gleaming berriesglistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe,and ivy reflected back the light. . . . Heaped upon the floor . . . were turkeys, geese, game, poul-try, brawn, great joints of meat, suckling-pigs,long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts,cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, lusciouspears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seethingbowls of punch.

(A Christmas Carol, p. 86)

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BOB CRATCHIT'S WAGES

Bob Cratchit earns 15 shillings a week as Scrooge's clerk.The Cratchits' Christmas dinner would take almost all of a

week's salary (Hearn, p. 1 1 8). Though Bob Cratchit's job places

him in the lower middle class, his income is below that of mostmembers of the working classes, who, according to Gertrude

Himmelfarb, would have made between 18 and 24 shillings

per week (Himmelfarb, p. 463). The Victorians referred to peo-ple like the Cratchits — industrious and happy — as the "deserv-ing poor' {Himmelfarb p. 465).

Scrooge, who is used to dining on meager fare alone, will learn that food and festivity are an in­trinsic part of the Christmas season.

For Victorian reviewers and readers, the most important section of A Christmas Carol was its treatment of Christmas Present, its depiction of their own world and times (Davis, p. 41). In this book, published specifically for the Christmas season of 1843, Dickens was not merely de­scriptive but prescriptive as well—showing peo­ple how to celebrate Christmas in traditional ways that had mostly vanished by the nineteenth century.

December 25th began as a Christian feast day in celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ at the beginning of the fourth century. Christmas evolved from a mixture of pagan holidays oc­curring around the winter solstice and the new year, including the Roman Saturnalia (a period of feasting and license that included the exchange of presents) and the Saxon Yule (a feast honor­ing the sun—hence the yule logs—burned at Christmas—in which evergreens were used for decoration). Greenery sacred to the ancient priestly Druids, such as holly and mistletoe, were incorporated into the new feast day, and given Christian meaning. Holly, for example, alive in the midst of winter with its green leaves and red berries in sets of three, became variously a sym­bol of hope, the Christ child himself, and the Holy Trinity.

Over the centuries, Christmas grew from a feast day to the twelve days of Christmas, cul­minating with the Epiphany on January 6, a day commemorating the revelation of Christ to the Magi, the wise men from the East who came to Bethlehem to pay their respects to the baby Je­sus. During this festival, plays were performed and Christmas carols sung. With the Puritan as­cendancy in England (1649-60), however, came the death of the medieval Christmas. Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans forbade the celebra­tion of Christmas, charging that it reeked of pa­ganism. Even the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 did not fully restore the old Christmas. By the nineteenth-century Victorian era, many of the ancient rites were no longer remembered or fol­lowed, though some survived in the countryside.

The Victorians, however, were intent on res­urrecting Christmas traditions, and in doing so they were aided by some of their favorite writ­ers, including the British writer Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) and the American writer Washing­ton Irving (1783-1859). Scott's Marmion (1808) and living's Sketch Book (1819-20) both con-

A Christmas Carol

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tained memorable scenes of a rural Christmas. It is Dickens's A Christmas Carol, though, which is "the most significant Christmas text of the nine­teenth century" (Marling, p. 27). The Spirit of Christmas Present, a "jolly Giant," is Father

WHAT AILS TINY TIM?

Various critics have proposed that Tiny Tim was afflicted with tuberculosis. At the time of A Christmas Carol, the

death rate from this disease had climbed to one in 100 in Eng­land. Some 50 percent of the population is said to have been affected by the disease, which was then the scourge of all Eu­rope (Callahan, p. 214). In "Tiny Tim: The Child with a Crip­pling Fatal Illness," Charles W. Callahan Jr. makes the case that Tiny Tim's symptoms were consistent with those of tuberculo­sis, which could lead to infections in the bones and joints. Pott's disease, or tuberculosis of the spine, could cause paral­ysis in the legs. Callahan also points out that Tiny Tim's death could be averted by better care—a stay at a sanitarium, for ex­ample, which would have placed the disease in remission (Callahan, p. 215).

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A ChristmasI Carol

Christmas himself, a figure heralding seculargood cheer, accompanied by his usual yule log,Christmas punch, holly, and mistletoe (A Christ-mas Carol, p. 86). The ghost reveals to Scroogthe basic components of a festive Christmas:feasting on goose and Christmas pudding,singing Christmas songs, and playing games.Scrooge's nephew articulates Dickens's philoso-phy of the season:

I have always thought of Christmas time, whenit has come round—apart from the venerationdue to its sacred name and origin, if anythingbelonging to it can be apart from that—as agood time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleas-ant time: the only time I know of, in the longcalendar of the year, when men and womenseem by one consent to open their shut-uphearts freely, and to think of people below themas if they really were fellow-passengers to thegrave, and not another race of creatures boundon other journeys.

(A Christmas Carol, p. 49)

Even the organization and title of A Christ-mas Carol reinforce an old Christmas tradition:the medieval practice of carol singing. Just tenyears before A Christmas Carol appeared,William Sandys published his Selection of Christ-mas Carols, Ancient and Modern, to preserve the

SUNDAY OBSERVANCf BILt

old songs. In writing his prose Christmas carol,Dickens called the chapters of his story "staves,"or verses. In Stave One, Scrooge frightens off ayoung caroler who sings "God bless you merrygentleman! / May nothing you dismay!" (AChristmas Carol, p. 53)—a version of the actualcarol "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen." Thechange Dickens makes is significant, however;for the invocation of God's blessing appears asa refrain in A Christmas Carol. Tiny Tim's state-ment at his family's dinner, and the last wordsof the story are "God bless us everyone!" (AChristmas Carol, p. 97).

Dickens's depiction of Christmas resonatedwith the secular life of the times, not only withan interest in the past. His version of Christmascelebrated family gatherings and community inan urban setting, which appealed to the valuesof the English middle classes. The fact that thefirst Christmas card was sent in the same yearthat A Christmas Carol was published testifies tothe growing popularity of the holiday. As EdgarJohnson writes of Dickens, "It should not beimagined that Christmas has for Dickens morethan the very smallest connection with Christiandogma or theology. For Dickens Christmas is pri-marily a human not a supernatural feast" (John-son, p. 484). This is the case even though onebrand of religious conservativism—the OxfordMovement, or the Anglo-Catholic strain withinthe Church of England—favored the return of amore ritualistic Christmas.

Dickens kept Christmas in the way that he ad-vocated. As he wrote in a letter to a friend, "Suchdinings, such dancings, such conjurings, suchblindmans-buffings [sic], such theatre-goings,such kissings-out of old years and kissings-in ofnew ones, never took place in these parts before."(Dickens, The Letters, Vol. 4, pp. 2-3). In fact,the association between Dickens and Christmasbecame so fixed in his own time that Dickenswas seen as Father Christmas himself, and it isreported that on his death, a poor working girlasked "Dickens dead? Then will Father Christ-mas die too?" (Davis, p. 53).

Sources and literary context. Dickens was in-spired to write A Christmas Carol as a responseto problems both social and personal. Parlia-mentary reports on child labor as well as his visitto the ragged school fired his social conscience.Meanwhile, the serial novel that he was in theprocess of writing, Martin Chuzzlewit, was notbringing in the amount of money Dickenswanted, and he felt dismayed with his publish-ers. Thus, Dickens undertook to publish A Christ-

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From the early moments of his writing career, Dickens wascritical of peopM misusing religion to control the lives of

others, especially the pbor. When Scrooge accuses the Ghostof Christmas Present of seeking to dose bakeshops oh Sundays,in observation of tlte Safebatfi he is revisiting an Is^ue aboutwhich Dickens had strong partisan -feelings. Between 1832 and1837, Sir Andrew AgpeW had repeatedlyattempted topass aSunday Observance fall/ which would have closed pubs, bak~erte, sho^ ar^J <|fherJpiiblic places j^ tiw febfetH, An mfciKrrated Dfctents Jpiblish l a pamphlet,, sigri with ap iidfortym/ entMed Stxftftay Under 1hfG& ffcacfe Ar it is; AsSafofea^ BHfa m^tldmake ifyAs ft might fee marfe Dtefe^ns be-li ed that Aes^ bills would hurt the working cla^e^ most ofall, depriving tfieiti of innocent enjoym^nt 6rt their only day

;free/of;J4ter,x :ftdi|y\,slipyld/ ;-Dteke ',thoygh^ a time t

Wqrkteg iw^ /to^njo? life wttWlfieii:;f i|fe^The Ghost ofChrfeJmas Pr rrt jfts 'Scrboge -to- Iace;-,Wa0ie.wtrem-; it tie^, •dn'-ttaiTian't liig " m>i gods they invoke

mas Carol in a different way: he would take onall expenses and reap most of the profits. Un-fortunately, Dickens underestimated the cost ofprinting the book in the format that he wanted,with colored pages and plates, and he made aprofit of only 230 pounds on his first 6,000copies, when he had expected to clear four timesthat amount (Johnson, p. 495).

A Christmas Carol was not Dickens's first at-tempt at a Christmas story, though it was hismost sustained. Sketches by Boz contains a briefdescriptive piece entitled "A Christmas Dinner,"which emphasizes the renewal of family ties dur-ing this holiday season. The negative portrait ofthe opening lines foreshadows the detailed por-trayal of Scrooge as misanthrope and miser:"Christmas time! That man must be a misan-thrope indeed, in whose breast something like ajovial feeling is not roused—in whose mind somepleasant associations are not awakened—by therecurrence of Christmas" (Dickens, "A ChristmasDinner," p. 220). A more significant source forA Christmas Carol is Dickens's first novel, ThePosthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. The maincharacters make a detour to Dingley Dell forChristmas, where they partake in an abundanceof dancing and feasting and game playing andunder-the-mistletoe kissing. The manor ownertells a Christmas Eve story that has often beencited as a precursor to A Christmas Carol. In "TheStory of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton," GabrielGrub, a moody and miserable grave digger whohates Christmas, is captured by goblins andforced to watch scenes of human resolve andcontentment. He learns that

Men like himself, who snarled at the mirth andcheerfulness of others, were the foulest weedson the fair surface of the earth; and setting allthe good of the world against the evil, he cameto the conclusion that it was a very decent andrespectable sort of world after all.

(Dickens, The Posthumous Papers ofthe Pickwick Club, p. 489)

Thus, Gabriel Grub is a prototype of EbenezerScrooge, and Dingley Dell the rural predecessorof the festive London Christmases in A ChristmasCarol.

Several of A Christmas Carol's characters wereprobably based on real people. Dickens's lamenephew, Harry Burnett, who would die of tu-berculosis, may have been the model for TinyTim, though the original working name for thecharacter, Little Fred, also points to Dickens'syounger brother Frederick. Scrooge's nephewwas taken by a nineteenth-century writer to be a

portrait of Dickens himself, especially in thisopening scene: "He had so heated himself withrapid walking in the fog and frost . . . that hewas all in a glow; his face was ruddy and hand-some; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smokedagain" (A Christmas Carol, p. 48; Hearn, p. 61).Dickens's biographer Peter Ackroyd sees a morediffused influence on the story:

In Scrooge's infancy . . . the familiar elementsof Dickens's own past are dispersed. The black-ing factory and Gad's Hill Place [a house thatDickens coveted and eventually owned] arewonderfully knit together in an image of a de-caying building which is made of red brick andhas a weathercock on the top of it: it is herethat Scrooge sees . . . the heroes of his boyhoodreading just as Dickens had once done. . . . TheCratchit family live in a small terraced housewhich is clearly an evocation of that house inBayham Street where the Dickens family hadmoved after their arrival in London, and theircrippled infant had first been christened notTiny Tim but "Tiny Fred"—the name of his ownbrother who was two years old at the time oftheir journey to the capital. . . . Much of its [AChristmas Carol's] power derives from theburied recollections which animate it.

(Ackroyd, p. 410)

Dickens's story became the originator of theholiday book (Hearn, p. 19). A Christmas Carolwas the first (and most successful) of five Christ-mas books published for each of the Christmasseasons from 1843 to 1847. The others are TheChimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845),The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man(1847). In them Dickens usually mingled the re-alistic with the supernatural (A Christmas Carolis subtitled "A Ghost Story of Christmas")', in fact,he is one of the writers who defined the im-mensely popular Victorian genre of the ghoststory.

Reception. Dickens wrote of himself and his suc-cess to a professor at Harvard University in a let-ter that accompanied a copy of A Christmas Carol:

Over which Christmas Carol, Charles Dickenswept, and laughed, and wept again, and excitedhimself in a most extraordinary manner, in thecomposition; and thinking whereof, he walkedabout the black streets of London, fifteen andtwenty miles, many a night when all the soberfolks had gone to bed. . . . Its success is mostprodigious. And by every post, all manner ofstrangers write all manner of letters to himabout their homes and hearths, and how thissame Carol is read aloud there, and kept on avery little shelf by itself. Indeed it is the great-

A ChristmasCarol \

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est success as I am told, that this Ruffian andRascal has ever achieved.

(Dickens, The Letters, vol. 4, p. 2)

Indeed, Dickens was right. A Christmas Carolbecame his greatest success; as Edgar Johnsonstates, it was "the most widely known and bestbeloved of all his stories" (Johnson, p. 483). Re-viewers almost unanimously praised it for thegood it would do. Thackeray famously wrote thatA Christmas Carol is a "national benefit and toevery man and woman who reads it a personalkindness"; apparently Dickens's cantankerouscontemporary, Thomas Carlyle, was so moved bythe spirit of the story that he was "seized with aperfect convulsion of hospitality" (Thackery inDickens; Jane Carlyle in Dickens, A ChristmasCarol, pp. 36, 35).

A CHRISTMAS CARG1/S ILLUSTRATTIONS

audiences. These oral performances allowed himto reach the large illiterate population, and he al-ways insisted that there be cheap seats, so thatthe poor could attend. Dickens's listeners de-scribed the experience as "sacramental"; it was"like hearing the very sound of the Christmasbells" (Davis, pp. 57-58).

A Christmas Carol appeared in other (mostlypirated) versions almost immediately followingits publication, and has continued to appear invarious forms up to this day. As Paul Davis states,A Christmas Carol "has been adapted, revised,condensed, retold, reoriginated and modernizedmore than any other work of English literature"(Davis, p. 4). Dickens's little Christmas story hasappeared as a play, a silent film, a musical, a pi-ano suite, black-and-white as well as color mo-tion pictures, animated films, radio dramas, aballet, and an opera. It is a tale that has been re-told many times, with many artists following inthe path of A Christmas Carols original illustra-tor, John Leech.

Furthermore, the English language hasclaimed "Scrooge" as a synonym for miser, andin Scrooge as well as Tiny Tim, Bob Crachit, andthe Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Fu-ture, A Christmas Carol has left its mark on thepopular imagination.

—Danielle Price

For More Information

Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens. New York: HarperCollins,1990.

Altick, Richard D. Victorian People and Ideas. NewYork: Norton, 1973.

Callahan, Charles W. Jr. "Tiny Tim: The Child witha Crippling Fatal Illness." The Dickensian 89, no.431 (winter 1993): 214-17.

Davis, Paul. The Lives and Times ofEbenezer Scrooge.New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990.

Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. The ChristmasBooks. Vol. 1. Ed. Michael Slater. Har-mondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1971.

. "A Christmas Dinner." In Sketches By Boz.London: Oxford University Press, 1957.

. Hard Times. Norton Critical Edition. Eds.

A Christmas Carol became, above all his works,the story most closely connected with Dickenshimself because of the starring role it played inhis public readings. In fact, A Christmas Carol wasthe first public reading he gave, in 1853. It wasalso the centerpiece of the readings he gave justbefore his death in 1870. Dickens adapted hisown work, eventually trimming it to an hour anda half; he took on all the roles and captivated his

L I T E R A T U R E A N D I T S T I M E S

George Ford and Sylvere Monod. New York:Norton, 1966.

-. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 3. Eds.Madeline House, Graham Storey, and KathleenTillotson. London: Oxford University Press,1974.

-. The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 4. Ed.Kathleen Tillotson. London: Oxford UniversityPress, 1977.

. The Posthumous Papers of The Pickwick Club.

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y^harles Dickens chose John Leech (1817-64) to illustrate A

sfellF: y^mng and very talented ID 1841, Leech began an im-mens successful career as a caricaturist for Punch magazine.Dtcfert$ requested four hand-colored plates (to be set off fromthe text) and fdur vignettes (m-text pictures) for A ChristmasCar&/;The scenes that Leech illustrated most likely were cho~sew by Dickens himsell The colored plates included "Mr,Periwig's Ball Parley's Ghost/' "Scrooge's Third Visitor"(the Cihost of Christmas Present), and "The Last of the Spirits/Th^ vignettes included "The Phantoms" (the spirits attemptingbut faffing to allay suffering), 'The End of the First Spirit"(Scrooge extinguishing the light of the Ghost of Christmas Past),Ignorance and Want/' and 'The Christmas Bpwf (a reformed

Scrooge sharing punch with Bob Cratchit). As Michael PatrickHearn points out, Leech did not illustrate what almost every il-lustrator since has: Bob Cratchit with Tiny Tim on his shoul-der (Hearn, p. 19}*

Christmas Carol In doing so he picked a ma

38

Ed. Robert L. Patten. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Johnson, Edgar. Charles Dickens: His Tragedy andPenguin, 1986. Triumph. Vols. 1 and 2. Boston: Little, Brown

Hearn, Michael Patrick, ed. The Annotated Christmas 1952Carol, by Charles Dickens. New York: Clarkson Marling, Karal Ann. Merry Christmas! CelebratingN. Potter, 1976. America's Greatest Holiday. Cambridge, Mass.:

Himmelfarb, Gertrude. The Idea of Poverty: England Harvard University Press, 2000.in the Early Industrial Age. New York: Alfred A. Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. West-Knopf, 1984. port, Conn.: Greenwood, 1996.

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A Cbristmas Carol