context

• audience


  victorian, mainly upper class employers (those who could afford novel and read)
• industrial revolution

  • exploit workers
  • london population increase
  • gap between rich and poor
• dicken's life

  • middle class
  • worked in a factory after father sent to debtors prison
• religion

  • christianity held a strong influence
  • dickens encouraged good deeds to show faith
  • most followed a strict moral code
• malthus

  • poor laws were too charitable
  • human population was growing faster than food produced
  • poverty was a result of overpopulation
  • dicken's disagreed, scrooge is an embodiment of the malthusian ideology that pervaded society (turns into critic to reflect dickens)
• poor laws

  • reduce financial help for poor
  • unemployed were sent to workhouses (horrible conditions)
  • discouraged poor to rely on society