Social Injustice Flashcards
three big ideas:
- Ignorance and Want
- The Slums
- The Cratchits
- “Yellow, meagre, _______, _______, ___________”
ragged, scowling, wolfish”
Anthropomorphic description - highlights the way in which the children of the proletariat and the underclass are dehumanised by their conditions. But also, the way in which the rich treat them as though they are not human beings with lives to lead, and emotions, viewing them as separate to humanity, so much so that Malthusian ideas deem them unworthy of resources, and their suffering and deaths as inevitable.
This vignette is placed in the heart of the novella, underscoring its importance to Dickens whose childhood was stolen from him. Engages the readers Pathos for Tiny Tim and then immediately after shocks them with this - foreshadows that if care is not taken, innocent children like Tiny Tim will be destroyed.
- “pinched, and twisted them…
and pulled them to shreds”
The poor laws savagely punish the poor. The rich have destroyed the lives of the poor, torn them apart so that they can be dependent and vulnerable enough to be manipulated and used for their own benefit i.e. as labourers for their businesses.
Belligrent imagery highlights the true suffering of the poor.
- “Where __________ might have sat ________…
devils lurked”
Victorians believed that childhood was a blissful sacred time, and specifically Christmas, was a time for rich children to be spoilt and enjoy themselves. This clearly demonstrates social inequality as the poor children simply didn’t have a childhood to enjoy in the first place, were turned corrupt.
The bias between the classes - as though rich children deserve all the happiness, and the poor children deserve to suffer.
Through religious imagery powerfully contrasts the expected innocence of childhood with the harsh realities of poverty and societal neglect, highlighting the corruption of innocence and the potential for evil to thrive in such conditions.
- “No”
the repetition of “no” emphasises how vulnerable the poor are - not only have they been robbed of their rights such as food and education, they have been robbed of their very humanity. Demonstrates how severe life for the poor was.
- “They are ____’s”
Man’s
- they are a product of capitalist society and everyone has a responsibility over them.
- poverty is not a consequence of their actions. it was imposed upon them.
- could also refer to the way in which the rich dictate the lives of the poor and claim ownership over them in a way that deprives them of their rights and freedoms, as well as a sense of self.
ALTERNATIVE IDEAS - “This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want”
- THE RICH’s View on the Poor
- The rich view the poor as caricatures of negative attributes as this enables them to justify their poor treatment of them. They blindly excuse the fact that they turn their backs on the plight of the poor, by placing blame on the poor themselves, reasoning that they are uneducated and lazy therefore are unworthy of aid and that they are greedy. However, they do not understand the cyclical nature of poverty, they do not understand that the very system that offers them a luxurious lifestyle, punishes others at the cost of it - they are uneducated because they have to work from a young age to survive, because they cannot pay for an education. They Want because they haven’t got the necessities, they haven’t got the basic human rights to stay alive, to feed their children. - THE DANGERS OF POVERTY:
One can observe Ignorance and Want through a Marxist lens as Dickens aims to warn that if the poor continue living in the dreadful conditions that they do, if they continue to be deprived of education, if they continue to turn to crime and evil because of their deep Want, they will turn to violence, and Doom awaits. Revolution and revolts led by the working classes were gaining momentum across Europe at this stage. - THE RICH’s SINS
Although at first glance, Ignorance and Want seem like a symbol of the poor children in the Victorian era, an alternative reading could suggest that Ignorance and Want are the epithets for the rich. The rich are Ignorant of the plight of the poor, they do not understand the true consequences of their avarice, they do not understand the true implications of the Poor Laws. The Rich are greedy, they want more than they need, and they manifest power and wealth in greater masses than the system can make up for, creating stark imbalance between the lower and upper classes. Dickens is underlining the simplicity of working for a better future, simply by rubbing shoulders by others in society, learning about their ways of life, as Scrooge does through the vignettes with the Cratchits and in the Slums, relieving oneself of the ignorance, and stop wanting. Start giving. These are the two ways that society can become harmonious and just.
- “Are there no _______?”
Prisons
The spirit echoes the words of Scrooge in Stave 1. The rich blindly believed that the poor laws were sufficient refuge and resource for the poor.
Seeing Ignorance and Want in the state that they are proved to Scrooge and the audience that if the Poor Laws had been effective, children would not be in this state.
