A Christmas Carol

• Industrial Revolution


  • Time of immense change from farming to factories
  • Known as a progressive era as Britain was seen as the principle of elegance
• Benefits of the Industrial Revolution


  • More job opportunity
  • Increased production
  • Efficiency
  • Migration
• The Industrial Revolution mainly benefited the upper classes, while the overcrowding of people searching for new beginnings and jobs, caused the dangerous and dehumanising conditions of houses and workplaces
• People were desperate for employment, so would be severely underpaid and work long hours. Child labour was legally, and children as young as 4 and 5 were forced to work in these conditions
• Dickens


  Critical of the obsessiveness of money that was a product of this revolution, he particularly hated Britain being painted as a pinnacle of excellence when they neglected the most vulnerable
• Dickens himself particularly suffered in the lower classes where his father was taken to debtors prison, and he was forced to work in a blacking factory from a young age
• Scrooge


  Personifies the capitalist greedy mindset towards money, and their willingness to let the poor be exploited
• Dickens highlights this change to capitalism has replaced compassion with misery
• Dickens


  • Empathetic towards the poor and the suffering, especially since Dickens himself grew up in poverty, he experienced the mistreatment and exploitation of the poor first hand, and was passionate about giving the poor a voice in his novella
• The book itself cost 5 shillings, which was an unreachable amount for the poor who only earned 3 to 6 in a week, which highlighted how he aimed to reach the upper classes who could afford it
• Dickens understood the abuse of authoritarian powers, and uses the fictional novella to bring a realistic view of poverty sustained at his time
• The Cratchits and Tiny Tim


  Characters constructed to carry the message of exploiting the poor, Bob was exploited as he was inferior in the workplace, while Tiny Tim was the next chain of event that caused his death
• Dickens attempts to debunk the ideologies that the poor were last through the cratchits, who worked unbelievably hard whilst trying to maintain a happy family
• Dickens highlights compassions will solve poverty, instead of punishment
• Thomas Malthus

  Influential British economist, who believed poverty was inevitably consequence to the increasing population. He believed it was unavoidable
• This Malthusian mindset is hyperbolic in Scrooge, shows how this is vilified since the beginning of the novel. His views are exaggerated and made humorous, in its irony and being almost unbelievable
• Dickens uses the novella as a political diatribe, and indicates that the scarcity of supplies in the poor is contrasted to the abundance of Christmas, that it's fully possible
• 1834 Poor Law


  Introduced to make workhouses, which in hindsight are a place of shelter and food, but it was where the poor were exploited in long hours and awful conditions, even young children like Dickens himself
• 10% of people admitted to workhouses would die
• Dickens acts as a social commentator, who condemned the dehumanising laws put in place for the poor through the use of Scrooge, a hyperbolic character, enjoying the idea of them so
• Dickens combines uses Scrooge to entertain extravagant hatred to the poor and his own family and workers, and as the audience (who were the rich) would ironically find his concepts cruel and
• Dickens implements the workhouses comment to make the audience start to question the concept. Scrooge is hyperbolic and an allegory to the ignorance of the rich, but some of his truths are actually written in everyday life
• Ignorance and want


  Used to symbolise the plight of the poor that the rich subject them to, and used young children who are ugly creatures to evoke emotion from the audience
• Victorian society


  • Extremely religious, and built upon the foundation of redemption, with the belief god gives redemption when sin is confessed
  • Salvation is a similar concept, that people are saved by their sins
  • The 7 deadly sins were the route of all evil, and we Scrooge embody the 3 sins of greed, wrath and pride
• Scrooge: '"If they would rather die" said Scrooge, "They had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."'
• Scrooge: '"Lead on spirit"'
• Scrooge: '"No, no…oh no… say he will be spared"'
• Scrooge: '"I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy"'
• Scrooge: '"I will live in the Past, the Present and the Future. The spirits of all Three shall strive within me"'
• About Scrooge: 'Semantic field of cold adjective, "frosty rime", "froze his old features" etc.'
• About Scrooge: '"Hard and sharp as flint that struck out a generous fire"'
• About Scrooge: '"a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!"'
• About Scrooge: '"Solitary as an oyster" parallel to "a solitary little child, neglected by his friends"'
• About Scrooge: '"Quite a baby", "second father to Tiny Tim"'
• Bob Cratchit: '"I'll give you Mr Scrooge, the founder of the feast!"'
• Bob Cratchit: '"My little, little child" cried Bob'
• Marley: '"I wear the chain I forged in life… I made it link by link"'
• Marley: '"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob" compared with "Mankind was business"'
• Marley: '"Comprehensive ocean of my business"'
• Marley: '"Was long, and wound about him like a tail"'