Scrooge's heartlessness is representative of Dickens' view of Victorian society. He believed that the middle and upper classes ignored, exploited and criticised the nations poorest people. Many people in the Victorian era believed that the poor should take care of themselves, and felt that charity wasn't helping as it didn't allow/encourage people to take care of themselves.
Scrooge mistreats the poor:
Scrooge fears poverty
Ignorance and Want
Scrooge mistreats the poor:
- Bob Cratchit – he only allows him a small fire which “looked like only one coal.”
- The Charity collectors – he is heartless and selfish in his treatment to those in poverty as he states:“I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry” as well as claiming that the deaths of the poor would be a good thing as it would help to “decrease the surplus population."
Scrooge fears poverty
- In his visit to the past we see how a younger Scrooge tells Belle that “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty”, which is ironic as we later see Scrooge's blatant disregard and distaste towards poverty and the effect it has on people.
- The reader becomes increasingly sympathetic towards this family and Dickens hoped that this would encourage his readers to feel more understanding and humility towards those living in poverty.
- In Stave Three Scrooge is taken to many households that all celebrate Christmas despite their poor surroundings.
- In Stave Four Scrooge travels with the Phantom through dark and destitute streets which echo the poverty-stricken streets of Victorian England “The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery. “
- This spirit reminds Scrooge that the poor “need the most”
Ignorance and Want
- Dickens personifies ignorance and want to teach Scrooge, and the reader, a moral lesson.
- These “two children, wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable." are a message to both Scrooge and the reader. The spirit warns: “Most of all beware this boy [ignorance], for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.” and told to “Deny it!”
- The boy (ignorance) symbolise the ignorance of the middle and upper classes towards the plight and struggle of the poor.
- The girl (want) symbolises all the poverty and neediness within society.