Martha Cratchit is a milliner, a trade notorious for its low pay and appalling working conditions. Many girls resorted to prostitution in order to make enough money to have dinner on the table.
Tiny Tim is crippled by an unspecified disease and children like him die at very young age.
Although a few times Dickens does describe the conditions directly, most of the time he does, it is done indirectly. Dickens doesn’t wish to offend anyone in the writing of the book, and a note of this is made in the preface. He says that he doesn’t want to “Put his readers out of humour with themselves”. Dickens is making the story more enjoyable by saying not to take it seriously. All he’s asking is that we should try to help each other as much as we can. As a child, Dickens had a very harsh childhood, and many of the descriptions were from his own experiences. Rich businessmen such as Scrooge, who saw the workers as profit, not people, exploited poor people in the 1800’s. Hours were often very long with very little pay. Dickens wanted to encourage the rich to help the poor and wrote the story so that you would side the poor. He is showing you what the spirit of Christmas should be like. Dickens is concerned to show how self-serving, insensitive people can be converted into charitable compassionate people through lessons.
In ‘A Christmas Carol’ when Scrooge is with the second spirit Dickens writes about the Christmas Dinner at the Cratchit’s house.
“Then up rose Mrs Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence;” (p.67).
As you can see from the above quotation they are poor but proud. They live in a tiny house. Notice how Dickens uses the words ‘brave’ (“brave in ribbons”) and ‘cheap’ (“which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence”) to show and to give a point. This relates to my question because it is an entertaining section of the book but at the same time Dickens awakens his reader’s minds to the life and suffering of the poor.
Dickens believed that the lives of the poor could not only be made tolerable by good food, fresh air and clean water. Dirt, bad smells etc. are metaphors for ignorance, want and eventually crime. Congested slums, inner city slaughterhouses and markets like Smithfield and urban burial grounds sickened him. Fat, blood, bones and grease smeared the people, corrupting them. This is a ‘Condition of England’ novel.
“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”
The plight of the poor is illustrated to us by a number of things. Bob, who is cowed, bullied in his work and is badly paid to add to his problems. Also the 2nd Chartist Petition about social unrest between employer and employee, e.g. Scrooge’s reform both as man and employer comes about as a result of greater knowledge and ignorance.
Dickens was utterly absorbed in theme of book, sharing joys and sorrows of characters. Dickens is anxious to give other children the childhood he had.
When the third spirit came he took Scrooge outside and this is what it was like:
“Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of his hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold.”
As you can see this long quotation describes all of London at that time. This shows you the corrupting power of money and nature of capitalism. This is the life of the poor families who can just about afford dinner on the table and shabby second hand clothes.
‘A Christmas Carol’ is a story of moral redemption. Scrooge made the readers ware of the conditions of the poor indirectly. He never says that there were poor people lining the street, he always describes them as vulnerable and sympathises with them. The ghosts in the story serve to make the story more palatable. As ghosts are fictitious, it helps to make the story less believable, and more enjoyable.