{"id":1742,"date":"2022-12-21T14:58:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T14:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.edgehill.ac.uk\/ehu19\/?p=1742"},"modified":"2023-11-29T15:49:45","modified_gmt":"2023-11-29T15:49:45","slug":"a-christmas-carol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.edgehill.ac.uk\/ehu19\/2022\/12\/21\/a-christmas-carol\/","title":{"rendered":"A Christmas Carol hits differently this year, as thousands of families face levels of cold and hunger that feel terribly Victorian"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Laura Eastlake, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Edge Hill University, discusses how A Christmas Carol<\/em> could be interpreted today in the current cost of living crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Dickens\u2019s heart-warming tale<\/a> of Ebenezer Scrooge and his encounter with the three ghosts of Christmas has been a staple story of the festive period since its publication in 1843. It seems to spawn a new film adaptation every year, from the magical Muppet version in 1992, to Netflix<\/a> and Apple TV<\/a> producing competing adaptations in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet amongst the feel-good, all-singing, all-dancing musical numbers, it is easy to forget that the novel itself was born from a period when social inequalities were becoming so rapidly and painfully pronounced that it became known as the \u2018Hungry Forties\u2019. As the industrial revolution gathered steam and privately-owned factories and mills expanded, millions of workers moved into urban centres which were often cramped, unsanitary, and lacking in infrastructure. Government legislation in the form of the Factory Reform Acts and the New Poor Law of the 1820s and 30s failed to curb poverty<\/a> and widening social inequality. Instead, some of the loudest calls for change came from the literary world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Christmas Carol<\/em> is a close relative of the genre of fiction called \u2018Condition of England\u2019 novels. Heavy hitters of the genre included Dickens himself, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, and Benjamin Disraeli, who criticised<\/a> the growing inequality in England as creating \u201ctwo nations\u201d that were \u201cfed by a different food.\u201d These stories gave middle and upper class readers a glimpse of the struggles of working families in industrial and urban centres. They often feature plots of starvation, illness, strikes, and child mortality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Etching<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As we head into a period of cold weather warnings<\/a> amidst a growing cost of living crisis, more people than ever in Britain will identify with the character of Bob Cratchit shivering by a fire so small \u201cthat it looked like one coal.\u201d Some may also have a new and harrowing understanding of Cratchit\u2019s pain at having a child<\/a> at home who is dying for want of food and warmth and timely medical care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Tiny Tim is the angelic child we all remember from A Christmas Carol<\/em>, there are two other child characters who rarely appear in the jolly musical adaptations. After showing Scrooge the festivities taking place in homes all around him on Christmas day, the Spirit of Christmas Present reveals two children clinging to the folds of his cloak. \u201cThis boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want\u201d he says, introducing the figures who are allegories for the often unseen hardships of child poverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scrooge is shocked at their appearance: \u201cWhere graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds.\u201d Re-reading A Christmas Carol <\/em>in 2022, as the government continues to defund libraries<\/a> as spaces of warmth and learning, and to fail low-income households, it is Ignorance and want that now haunt most in this spectral tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dickens is an author whose penchant for the sentimental and the melodramatic are easy to dismiss as frivolous when times are good. But this year scenes from A Christmas Carol <\/em>that once read as histrionic now read as outright tragedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre there no prisons? \u2026 Are there no workhouses?\u201d Ebenezer Scrooge says in the face of such claims when asked to intercede on behalf of those most in need. In 2022 it may as well be \u201care there no detention centres? Are there no foodbanks?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current government likes to wax lyrical on the glories of the nineteenth century, from Jacob Rees-Mogg\u2019s book on The Victorians<\/em> to Suella Braverman\u2019s bizarre ovation to the British Empire<\/a>. Yet in the face of growing cold and hunger this Christmas, ministers may do well to remember that they, like Scrooge, have lessons to learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laura Eastlake, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Edge Hill University, discusses how\u00a0A Christmas Carol\u00a0could be interpreted today in the current cost of living crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[41,44,11,38],"class_list":["post-1742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-a-christmas-carol","tag-charles-dickens","tag-ehu-nineteen","tag-thinkpiece"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Christmas Carol | News | EHU Nineteen<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Laura Eastlake, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, discusses how\u00a0A Christmas Carol\u00a0could be interpreted in the cost of living crisis.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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