A Christmas Carol

Characters

Belle ends her engagement to Scrooge: "Another idol has displaced me", and when he asks which idol she answers "A golden one."

Context

In 1840 the Children's Employment Commission was set up (Northumberland Archives says by Parliament, on the initiative of Lord Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury) to investigate the working conditions of children under 18: its first report covered mines, its second other industries, its third factories.

Key quotations: Scrooge

Scrooge to the Ghost of Christmas Past (Stave II): "There was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him something: that's all."

Key quotations: The ghosts, the Cratchits and society

The Ghost of Christmas Present to Scrooge (Stave III): "Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is."

Language and form

Cold imagery runs through Stave I: "The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait", and the weather is "cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal".

Plot and structure

In Stave V Scrooge wakes on Christmas morning ("It's Christmas Day!"), buys the prize Turkey for the Cratchits, tells Bob "I'll raise your salary", and becomes "a second father" to "Tiny Tim, who did NOT die".

Themes

The British Library says Dickens believed 'How a society treats its children' is 'the true test of that society's moral worth'.

Characters

Bob Cratchit, Scrooge's clerk, earns very little: the narrator says "he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name", and the British Library describes him as earning 15 shillings for a six-day week.

Context

Charles Dickens's father, John Dickens, was imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtors' prison in February 1824 for failing to repay a baker. Charles, then aged 12, worked at Warren's Blacking Factory, fixing labels to jars of boot polish for around ten hours a day.

Key quotations: Scrooge

Scrooge on Christmas morning (Stave V): "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy."