Poverty In ACC Flashcards
Living conditions
• Population in cities grew from 1 million to 6 million in London
• Many people moved from the country to the city to look for work
• Children suffered the most and were exploited by wealthy factories and made to work long hours in appalling conditions - ‘many thousands are in want of common necessaries’ - emblem of ‘Want
• Most people ended up living in the slums or cheap, overcrowded houses - ‘reeked with crime, with filth, and misery’ - (overcrowding led to hunger, disease and crime) this quote uses a semantic field of poverty
Social Responsibility
• Tiny Tim is the most obvious connection between poverty and death - Scrooge saves him, here we see an embodiment of social responsibility and how the rich can make a difference
• Ghost of Christmas Present warns that ignorance will lead to ‘Doom’ - this is both the doom of Scrooge and society overall for not taking responsibility
Poverty in ACC - Rich vs Poor
• Cratchits are poor but appreciate what they have - don’t need money as they are emotionally rich
• Fred emphasises how Scrooge’s ‘wealth is of no use to him’ because he lacks emotional richness and cannot use this wealth beneficially
Poverty in ACC - Marley
• Marley sets out a clear warning in Stave 1 - ‘mankind was my buisness. The common welfare was my buisness; charity, mercy forbearance and benevolence were all my buisness’ - Dickens is reinforcing social responsibility and the power upper classes have to make a difference.
• ‘the dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business’ - this metaphor reiterates how insignificant money is and how little value it holds.
Poverty in ACC - The Cratchits
• Mrs Cratchit wears ribbons in her desperation to look respectable - ‘brave in ribbons’
• suffering so greatly that Tiny Tim ‘will die’
• ‘nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family’ - persistently grateful despite having little
Dicken’s Intent
• Upset with how society treated the poorer classes/ignorance and misanthropy towards them
• He has his own experience of poverty from living in a workhouse
• Scrooge shows his uncaring attitude towards the poor through the lengthy tirade he gave to charity men - demonstrates his ignorance and neglect towards the poverty stricken members of society.
• Scrooge is symbolic of the wealthy and aristocratic members of society, who are ignorant to the poor’s misfortunes - goes as far as possible to convey the extent of Scrooge’s misanthropy
• Creates an extensive allegory which delivers his message to the public.
• Dickens uses Scrooge to call for a moral change in the wealthy
Scrooge
• He believes his taxes pay for work houses, and therefore cannot donate to charity.
• His harsh views lead him to exploit people such as Bob Cratchit.
• Belle explains that Scrooge lives in fear of poverty, ‘you fear the world so much’ - much like Dickens himself - he is captivated by ‘gain’, hoping to escape the ‘sordid reproach’ of poverty - Scrooge himself says ‘there is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty’
• see the instigation of fear which creates an obsession with hoarding wealth and furthers the cycle of poverty
• Believes the poor should be punished for being poor - ‘decrease the surplus population’ - dehumanised and not seen with equity
Unfair Treatment of the Poor
• Dickens criticises the government in Stave 1 by suggesting some of the phantoms might be ‘guilty governments’ - he could be criticising the treatment of the poor and the Poor Law
• Chains are significant as they are a result of uncaring mistreatment towards the poor
• The Ghost of Present criticises the ‘bigotry and selfishness’ of those who supported Sabbortarianism - Dickens is yet again attacking the restrictions placed on the poor (Sunday was spent going to church - meant that poor classes were denied enjoyment on their day off
19th Century Conditions
• People described as ‘half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly’
• Poverty is emphasised in Joe’s shop - ‘foul and narrow’ ‘like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell and dirt’
The Poor Law - 1834
• Designed to reduce the cost of looking after the poor as it stopped money going to them - only in extreme circumstances did they get money
• Passed by parliament in 1834
• If the poor wanted help, they were sent to workhouses
• Such terrible conditions that only those in desperate need would go
• Families were split up
• Given clothes and food in exchange for several hours of labour
Stave 1
‘ dismal little cell’
‘tried to warm himself at the candle’
‘the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller’
Bob Cratchit is working with a very little fire and in a cell - Scrooge treats him neglectfully.
• This reveals to the reader the extent of WC conditions, as Dickens intent is to depict their destitute lifestyles to upper classes, an active blow to society’s ignorance , revealing the truth about the Malthusian theory and how it prevents society from thriving when wealth is extremely distributed
• Dickens is portraying the abuse of the lower classes, by representing harsh conditions with ‘little’ reward - people were so desperate for work they were exploited by employers
Stave 1 - Fred
‘What right have you to be merry? You’re poor enough!’
‘ A merry Christmas, Uncle!’
Fred, feeling festive and merry, invites Scrooge to have Christmas dinner with him but Scrooge believe he can’t be happy because he is poor.
• Dickens is criticising the beliefs prevalent in upper classes which indicate WC have no ‘right to be merry’ because they are poor, and the attitudes towards the poor are dehumanising and restrictive of basic humanity.
Stave 1 - Charity Men
Scrooge rejects the charity men who are depicting the vision of poverty in the Victorian Era.
• Dickens is highlighting how the rich are refusing to give - Scrooge is an emblem of the government, and Dickens is criticising how they are allowing the poor to suffer.
• ‘want is keenly felt, and abundance rejoices’
Juxtapose each other - exposing extreme division of class and the extent of inequality.
• ‘thousands are in what of common necessaries’ - Dickens is revealing the extent of poverty to shock the reader and create a call for immediate action.
• ‘the ominous word, “liberality”’ - conveys how the Malthusian Theory instigates and reinforces a fear of philanthropy to the lower classes - Scrooge symbolises this and is depicted in a cruel way in order to demonise this theory and dismantle it’s significance.
