The Portrayal of Older Adult Characters in Charles Dickens's Early Novels
"A CHRISTMAS CAROL" NOVELLA (1843)
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
OF EBENEZER SCROOGE:
"A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint - secret - and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gate, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice" (1)
When I initially set out on this adventure to explore how and why Charles Dickens portrayed his older adult characters the way he did, I intended to focus only on his major novels, thus consciously excluding A Christmas Carol. This was partly to consider my time and capacity, and despite it being his most famous, it never really excited me. What a mistake! The story of four ghosts and their haunting of an ageing miser and moneylender on Christmas Eve, subsequently depicted in countless adaptions and portrayals, including Donald Duck, held little attraction. While researching and writing about Dickens's first four significant novels, I realised that Ebenezer Scrooge could not be ignored. My reading of many a Dickensian scholar and writer, including the likes of the wonderful Lucinda Hawksley, a direct descendent of Charles and Catherine Dickens and, on the recommendation of my oldest daughter, the fantastic Compendium of A Christmas Carol by Stuart Pryke and Amy Staniforth (2) I could not continue to ignore the relevance of this Christmas story to my exploration of age and ageing in Dickens novels.
Dickens completed the novella (October-November 1843) in a matter of weeks while writing his serialization of Martin Chuzzlewit. As Hawksley points out, the year had been a challenging time for him, with the disappointing readership of Chuzzlewit, tensions with his publishers, and the fallout with his American readers following the publication of American Notes. " Although Dickens had written many favourable things in his travelogue, his wry jokes and outright criticism - in particular slavery- made many of his former fans turn against him," says Hawksley (3). One thing Dickens valued above all was his fan base and, subsequently, his purse.
The journalist in Dickens meant he researched and saw firsthand the dire social and political injustices and the plight of the poor and destitute of late Georgian and Victorian England. Again, Hawksley references that he "felt sickened by the enormous gulf between the wealthy and the desperate". It is worth pointing out that in "May, he went to a fundraising dinner for the Charitable Square Infrimary, a charity which cared for elderly poverty-stricken men". The audience was wealthy bankers whom Dickens, writing later in correspondence with a friend, says were "sleek, slobbering, bow-paunched, overfed apoplectic snorting cattle" (4). Don't you just love Dickens! Would a fundraising event of wealthy bankers in the City today be any different?
A Christmas Carol challenges and deals with Want, Ignorance, Injustice, and 'Education Education Education'(5). The night of the 24th/25th December was transformational for Scrooge personally, an epiphany that will be discussed in detail. It is important, however, to explore and understand Dickens's intention. Blogger and writer Chris Curtis offers insights that, though primarily for students of English, give a useful framework to contextualize Dickens's commentary on the social ills of the time. Curtis is worth quoting at length in that he rightly argues that saying Dickens 'challenged' is a word lacking nuance, "a blunt word to describe a complex situation." He writes further: " 'A Christmas Carol' was written to be sold as a book. The people who could afford it would be rich. The book was a funny place. If it insults or attacks (or overtly challenges) the rich, then not many people would buy it. Therefore, the book doesn't attack the rich in general...the book is designed to provoke emotions in the Victorian reader to feel good about themselves when they are kinder and charitable towards other people. If we look at the book, it isn't anti-rich. Scrooge, at the end of the story, doesn't stop being rich. He stays rich but shares some money, time and company with others. So, in effect, the book is flattering the rich who behave like this, but at the same time subtly guilt tripping those that don't behave like this," and here's the rub, " We often place a lot of emphasis on the redemption of Scrooge when, in fact, Scrooge represents varying parts of the readership. Of course, we boil this down to a simple soundbite like: Dickens challenges how the rich treated the poor" (6). Curtis encourages students to understand the inferences of the characters, readers, writers, and context. What we are attempting throughout this series is to understand each in the context of Dickens's older characters, here, of Scrooge as an old man, what we as readers feel towards them when here referring to Scrooge's portrayal, what Dickens wants to achieve in the book and the wider attitude to age and ageing. A warning from Curtis that needs heeding: "All inferences around Dickens's thoughts and feelings are guesswork and conjecture. The best ones are rationalized inferences...."(7). These must be based on Dickens's narratives, plots, characterizations, financial circumstances, brand and reputation, and what was happening to him at the time of his writing.
Robert Doucette ( date unknown). Cartoon of George C. Scott as Scrooge.1984 TV film of ACC (2013).Via Wikimedia
Dickens took, via Marley and the spirits, what could be viewed as a life course approach to the person of Scrooge, and in doing so, we learn a great deal about Scrooge's early childhood and young/middle-aged adult years and the influence of Marley and the older Mr Fezziwig, the employer to whom Scrooge was apprenticed. What were these influencers and influences upon him, who in 1992 would be played by actor Michael Caine surrounded by a cast of Muppets!
During this series of A Christmas Carol blogs, we will ascertain what Dickens attempted to achieve and why through this particular ageing character. In Dickens's journalistic years, he demonstrated an uncompromising commentary on the plight of the poor and destitute and the 'sickening gap between wealth and poverty. ' The wealth of Scrooge and the poverty of Bob Cratchit aided and abetted by a disabled child, have, over some 181 years, captured the imagination of readers and have, then and since, the adoration of theatregoers. Film and television reinforced the durability of his first Christmas story, which he had written in weeks. Why does it still resonate? What were and are now the intersections between age and ageing, and how was this 31-year-old Unitarian author, husband, father, and dandy preoccupied throughout his life with the state of his finances?
The book is multi-layered, as are the characters of Scrooge and his creator. Indeed, as we have discovered with our analysis of Samual Pickwick, Fagin, and even Quilp - alta egos of Dickens himself!
From my reading, I have encountered very few Dickens biographers and commentators specifically addressing Scrooge beyond his life, his overnight experience and even his transformation from a gerontological perspective. It is time. However, I have gleaned through AI that Scrooge suggests that Dickens's view of old age was one of "potential stagnation, where one's negative traits, attributes and attitudes can become more deeply ingrained. However, as the story progresses, Scrooge undergoes a transformative experience" (8) implying that Dickens believed in the potential of personal growth and redemption, regardless of age. The journey Scrooge experiences " highlights the importance of reflection, self-awareness, and the ability to change one's ways, even in old age" (9). Overall, the portrayal is Victorian fare in that it "suggests that old age can be a time of bitterness and stagnation or an opportunity for personal growth and positive change. It serves as a reminder that it is never too late to mend one's ways and find happiness and fulfilment regardless of age" (10). This AI narrative reflects a 21st-century common myth about compassionate less, bitter and stuck-in-the-mud resistance to change, but with the possibility, given appropriate interventions or life events to learn new tricks, indeed to become or revert back to the outgoing hail and hearty life and soul and generosity of one's early years. Perhaps even moved away from Capitalism to liberal philanthropy. Though Dickens bemoaned the Capitalism of the snorting herd of Bankers, he nevertheless put out his bowl, using his celebrity status to benefit homeless older men. In essence, the notion of benevolence and gifting by the wealthy ignores the structural and systemic causes of poverty. Dickens is rightly celebrated as a reformer, a champion of the underclass and a very generous fundraiser. This cannot be denied, but as with Scrooge, Dickens benefited and was rewarded for that benevolence and gifting. We remain today in that Victorian mindset.
Jacob Jewusiak, a lecturer in Victorian literature, argues that older adult men, generally in Dickens, did not take a life course approach. Older characters were disconnected from their growing older experience. Citing Martin Chuzzlewit ( whom I will focus on when dealing with Dickens's 6th novel), little plot is focused on Chuzzelwit's early and adolescent years. Chuzzelwit was all about securing benefits for his descendants. Scrooge, on the other hand, is in the "interiorised stages of one's early life."(11) Scrooge did not reach maturity through his life transitions, learning lessons, adapting and reflecting but accumulating wealth - ' hoarding without end' as Jewusiak puts it. Furthermore, Jewusiak references the Victorian Bildungsroman - 'to make good is to make money'. Scrooge thus makes good not through maturation and self-development but by becoming charitable as an uncle and employer (12). He, like Dickens, feared poverty. his later life remains the accumulation of wealth " with increasing intensity and frugality. Scrooge merely grows older as his capital grows, and as such, there is no story to tell," writes Jewusiak, concluding that " the "compression of youth, adulthood, and old age into a single body merges the horror of monstrous combination with the exuberance of success of Scrooge's reformation" (13)(14). At the end of the day, or rather night, Scrooge becomes young, a time of fun, charitableness, energy and loved by all.
Was Dickens challenging ageism as we understand it today, or simply reflecting his ambivalence to age and growing older? Remember, he was 34 years old with the notion that youth and young adulthood are good, and old is not unless the spirit of the young can be attained in later life? Jewusiak concludes that what "makes A Christmas Carol more than a mere bourgeois fantasy, where social integration is accompanied by economic independence, is Scrooge's old age. As we approach the end of life, the rules that structure socio-economic experience change....The Spirits merely remind Scrooge of what old age enables him to do: as he is liberated from the economic necessity that compelled him to abandon his engagement with Belle, the proximity of old age to the end of life multiplies possibilities available to Scrooge instead of closing them down" (15) Brilliant analysis for our purposes! Welcome back Fuzzelwit.
Interestingly, the iconic G.K. Chesterton, an early Dickens commentator and literary critic who wrote in 1906 concluded that "Scrooge looked even uglier when he was kind than when he was cruel" (16). Chesterton, as we know, was an admirer of Dickens's promotion of social issues, his ideology and his writings. Still, in reviewing all of Dickens's Christmas stories, he comments that Dickens " could not admire anything, even peace, without wanting to be warlike about it" (17). We might ask whether the portrayal of Scrooge weaponised Christmas, rescuing it from its religiosity and promoting its fun and frolic, the overeating, and the merriment of a pagan past. Readers unfamiliar with Chesterton's commentaries on Dickens's works would be in for a feast!
Gilbert K Chesterton ( 1874 - 1936)
Back in the late 1930's Edmund Wilson published an essay entitled " Dickens: The Two Scrooges", and whilst I acknowledge that our appreciation and understanding of Charles Dickens and his life and works have considerably increased since Wilson, he interestingly references the dualism of Scrooge and his creator. The importance here is to understand the childhood and young adulthood of Scrooge, who represented "a principle fundamental of Charles Dickens's world and derived from his emotional constitution."(18) Good and bad reflect Wilson was the counterbalancing values and pairs of characters, namely Bob Cratchitt and Scrooge that existed in Dickens. For example, whilst it is generally argued by Dickensian scholars that Dickens had a traumatic and emotionally precarious childhood with a keen sense of abandonment, loneliness and rejection of and by his family, especially his mother, Wilson points out that he was also lonely and alienated in society. He was trapped between two Victorian classes of "strict stratifications", one being the precariousness of the lower middle classes and that of the so-called aristocracy. His position was anomalous, and Wison writes Dickens "had grown up in an uncomfortable position between the upper and lower middle classes with a dip into the proletariat and a glimpse of the aristocracy through their trusted upper servants." which left him stranded and isolated in English society. In a sense, Wilson concludes, "There was no place for him to go and belong: he had to have people come to him"(19). The portrayal of his childhood was framed by John Forster, his first biographer and close friend, which, in turn, was framed by Dickens himself. Validation of what Dickens gave and drove him was the accumulation of wealth and public recognition and applause. Today, one can imagine him as a contestant in Big Brother or eating testicles in a jungle! For those readers wondering what I'm referring to.....I'll leave you to research these two popular and puerile TV shows!
As an amateur studying Dickens's Christmas Carol, and with the benefit of numerous sources delving into every aspect of Dickens's life and works, I have been surprised by the overwhelming lack of interpretations drawing on literary gerontological studies. The novella is a gold mine; the influence of Marley, the life course approach as represented by the spirits and the intersection with Victorian assumptions about age and ageing using Scrooge as our spirit and guide evidence why my original dismissal of the character was, in hindsight, ridiculous.
PART TWO will be based primarily on the work of Stuart Pryke and Amy Staniforth (20) et al., I look at Scrooge and the novella through the prism of unmasking Victorian Ageism and old age
REFERENCES AND SOURCES:
1. Taken from PHILIP A.J & GADD. L. The Dickens Dictionary. Bracken Books (1989), published initially by Simkin Marshall. London ( 1928)
2. PRYKE S & STANIFORD A. Ready to Teach. A Christmas Carol. A Compendium of Subject Knowledge, Resources and Pedagogy. A John Catt Publication (2022)
3. HAWKSEY L. Dickens and Christmas. Pen & Sword History (2017) p 65
4. Ibid p 67-68
5. The famous quote by Prime Minister Tony Blair
6. CURTIS C. Being Precise Around the Writers Intention Blog from 'Learning from Mistakes: an English Teachers Blog ( 18.02.24)
7 Ibid
8. AI Chat OIn ( downloaded 24.09.23
9. Ibid
10 Ibid
11. JEWUSIAK J. Ageing, Duration, and the English Novel: Growing Old from Dickens to Woolf. Cambridge University Press (2020) Ch 2 p63
12 Ibid p64
13 Ibid p65
14. Ibid p 65
15. Ibid. p 66
16. CHESTERTON G.C. Appreciation and Criticism of the Works of Charles Dickens. Moncreffe Press edition ( 2022) p 84-85
17. Ibid p 85
19. WILSON. E. Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & '40s. The Wound and the Bow: The Two Scrooges (1978) The Libary of America. (2007) p 315
20 Ibid p 308
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