Context Flashcards
What were conditions like in cities?
- very crowded due to industrial revolution
- lots of poverty and disease
- upper class exploiting poor
What was the new poor law of 1834?
any poor people wishing to get help cant be unemployed and must be at one of the victorian workhouses, workhouses were cruel due to the belief poor people were lazy
What quote emphasises the poor conditions at the beginning?
‘Many thousands are in want of common necessities’
Which quote shows us that scrooge enjoyed the company of his family when young?
‘[Fan] stood on tiptoe to embrace him, then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness to the door’
What is the importance of fezzewig?
Fezzewig, the former employer of scrooge, proves to the reader it is possible to be a business man who’s oriented on earning and be fun, jovial and fair at the same time, as shown when he dances with his wife
What do ignorance and want represent and how are they described?
described as ‘yellow’, ‘meagre’, ‘ragged’ ‘wolfish’, ‘scowling’ they are the dangers of poverty
How are ignorance and want introduced?
‘They are Man’s and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is ignorance and the girl is want, beware them both and all their degree,but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow i that written which is doom, unless the writing be erased’
what is dickens saying about want and ignorance?
Want is to be feared but ignorance is the worst trait, want can lead to ignorance
-If people are educated and taught how to work then poverty can be avoided, ignorance = unedcuation, if the poor remain uneducated they can’t improve
What quote shows belle and scrooge’s relationship?
‘our contract is an old one, it was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until in a good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry, You are changed, when it was made you were another man
