poverty

• Poverty and social injustice


  Themes in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
• Dickens depicts the huge gap between the rich and poor in Victorian England
• Scrooge


  Represents the wealthy upper classes
• At the beginning, Scrooge shows no sympathy for the poor, arguing that those who can't support themselves should be in prison, in a workhouse or dead
• Scrooge's attitude is based around the assumption that people are poor because of their own laziness
• Dickens shows the reader that this is not the case
• The Cratchits


  Poor but it's clear this is through no fault of their own
• Bob is a hardworking, honest and kind person, and his eldest son Peter also works to support the family, but they still struggle for money simply because they are badly paid
• Tiny Tim


  Represents the thousands of innocent children who lived in poverty in Victorian England
• Tiny Tim's potential death shows the reader that the lives of the poorest people are dependent on compassion from those who are more fortunate
• As Bob's employer, Scrooge is in a position to improve the lives of the Cratchits, but it's up to Scrooge to decide whether to do so or not
• Dickens shows that a relatively small amount of money for someone like Scrooge can be life-changing for someone like Bob
• Dickens shows the reader that if everyone shares some responsibility for the welfare of the poor then all of society benefits
• Ignorance and Want


  Exemplify the idea that children born into poverty and denied access to education have no chance of improving their situation and are stuck in poverty all their lives
• Dickens argues that generosity towards the poor is beneficial to all of society as it breaks this cycle of poverty
• The alternative is for those poor children to grow up into desperate adults who turn to crime to make a living
• There was a common belief among wealthier people in Victorian times that poverty was simply a result of laziness
• The Poor Law of 1834


  Removed any government support for people who struggled for money, leaving workhouses as their only option
• Workhouses provided food and shelter in exchange for hard manual labour in cruel conditions
• Those who got into debt were jailed in debtors' prisons until the money was paid
• Scrooge refers to these establishments when he refuses to donate money to the charity collector in Stave One
• Malthusianism


  Claims that poverty is caused by an excess of people and the only way to reduce poverty is to reduce the size of the population
• Dickens strongly opposed Malthusianism
• Dickens had a lot of first-hand experience of the suffering of the poor, as his own father was put in a debtors' prison when Charles was 12 and he was taken out of school and made to work
• Dickens realised that poverty was usually the result of bad luck or unfortunate circumstances rather than laziness
• Dickens' books are full of social commentary on the gap between rich and poor
• Dickens went to visit many places where poor people lived and worked and wrote about the things he witnessed, and his descriptions were often shocking to the upper classes who were ignorant of how much the poor really suffered