A Christmas Carol — Context Flashcards
1834 Poor Law
This was a law that essentially punished poor people for being poor by telling them look, if you are poor and you dont have any kind of employment or income, to avoid being put away in prison (because you can’t just be homeless just lounging about), you can get accommodation as long as you work for free in a workhouse. Dickens was incredibly critical of this law and of course he illudes to this when scrooge asks “are there no prisons, are there no workhouses?” And these words are echoed by the ghost of christmas present. DIckens was intensely critical of this poor law because it basically punished poor people for being poor, rather than helping them.
Victorian class and division
In the victorian era there were very deep class divisions that dickens wanted to highlight. A lot of rich upper class people were just a very tiny fragment of society at the time were unaware that people like bob cratchit’s lives were so difficult and they were unaware of children like ignorant and want. So he wanted to highlight the deep class divisions in society.
Dickens’ personal experience
Dickens actually when he’s writing about children like tiny Tim, ignorance and want he is speaking from a place of experience. He was 12 when his father went to debtor’s prison and for a few month he had to be put to work in a shoe blacking factory. So he speaks directly from experience and can really empathise with poor children and the struggles and suffering they face because he also had to work at a young age.
