Helen's Class Summary Essay

Helen's Class Summary Essay

Even though the class had already been informed of Dr. Foss’ tenacity in the face of all kinds of weather (as well as his home’s proximity to campus), it was nonetheless shocking to find the school open just in time for a healthy dose of Victorian Literature. The Latin music from the classroom next door was turned on and silenced with the shutting of our door; Foss opened our class on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol with a “dead as a doornail” joke that fell upon sullen ears despite his cheeriness. Thankfully the class was able to rouse itself for some biographical information, which prepared us for our small and large group discussions about whether A Christmas Carol can more correctly be described as an allegory of social responsibility or one of individual transformation. The subsequent full-class discussion focused upon the viability of readings of the text as personal or sociopolitical critique—though we never came to a conclusion—and the functions of money, faith, and disability within the story.

In order to augment our discussion, Dr. Foss gave the class some useful biographical information about Dickens. Page 1373 of The Longman Anthology describes Dickens’s life story as a “rags to riches fairy tale.” His lower-middle class family could not hang onto their place in society and Dickens was sent to labor in a warehouse, an experience that would color Dickens’ perception of poverty and disadvantaged children for the rest of his life. Later, his father was sent to debtor’s prison. This only intensified his awareness of the poverty gap and stratification of society.

The society that Dickens describes in A Christmas Carol is one that allows cruel and miserly members of the populace—like Ebenezer Scrooge—to succeed instead of morally upstanding and hardworking people like Bob Cratchit. In the beginning of the story Scrooge is not held accountable for his penny-pinching, and he rejects opportunities to affect social change. When the two gentlemen come around to collect donations for the poor, Scrooge refuses as rudely as he knows how (1380); until Scrooge meets Tiny Tim and the rest of the pitiable Cratchit clan, he does not care about even his highest-ranking employee’s wellbeing (1404). Our small group realized that despite his reticence to reach out to others, Scrooge does not actually benefit positively from all of the money he accrues. Scrooge’s real change occurs at the end of the story after the visit from the third ghost (1421): his transformation is a vehicle that creates larger social waves. His revelation does not really improve Scrooge’s quality of life in terms of his social status, but the action of giving does uplift the Cratchits economically.

There was also some discussion of how representative A Christmas Carol is of the Victorian era as an age of faith and an age of doubt. Scrooge, our symbol of the wealthy, educated upper crust of society, was compared in our small group to Doubting Thomas in the Bible. Whereas Thomas did not believe Jesus was resurrected until he had felt Jesus’ wounds, Scrooge refuses to believe Marley’s ghost is visiting him until Marley scares him half to death (1385). The Cratchits, on the other hand, are as poor as Scrooge is rich, and are as devout as he is faithless. It was brought up in large group that the existence of ghosts, especially Marley and the ghost of Christmas future, implies an existing afterlife of judgment. Scrooge and Marley, then, are the only characters in the story that do not adhere to Christian morality; Marley is punished, and Scrooge, through the visits of the four ghosts, is reformed to the point where he “knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge” (1425). In this sense, Scrooge’s nearly unspoken conversion to Christianity could be cited in favor of the reading of this story as a personal transformation.

At the end of class, our discussion turned toward the representation of disability within A Christmas Carol. Dr. Foss brought up Paul Longmore’s article about telethons and their representation of the disabled as perpetual children who are helpless and brave like Tiny Tim. Dickens’ portrayal of Tim as an object of charity justifies the existence of the telethons. There was some debate as to whether or not Dickens was using Tiny Tim’s disability as a tool for Scrooge’s revelation, that perhaps Tim was nothing more than a kind of “sentimental entertainment.” At the end of class, Meg brought up the idea that Dickens’ characterization of Tim is no more one-dimensional than any of the other characters: ultimately, the story is an allegory and each person in A Christmas Carol is filling a specific role. At the same time, Tiny Tim’s disability and, ultimately, death (1418) is one of the main reasons why Scrooge chooses to intervene with the fate of the Cratchit family. Disability is the source from which many of their family’s problems stem.

There are certainly elements of both personal and sociopolitical commentary in A Christmas Carol: the class never really came to a conclusion about which reading is more convincing. Money, faith, and disability are all a part of Scrooge’s transformation, as money allows him to affect change; his faith is what is changed; and disability is one of the reasons that the change occurred. Scrooge’s alterations to his behavior affect him as well as the community at large, and there is a strong moral argument for the benefits of both personal and social transformation.