How did A Christmas Carol come to be?
What Dickens thought was the essence of A Xmas Carol is usually left out of adaptations. When the Ghost of Xmas Current is starting to age and fade away, Scrooge notices a little something underneath the spirit’s robe. He thinks it’s an animal’s claw, but it is a skinny human hand: “Two small children wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable … clung upon the exterior of its garment … a boy and a female…. ‘Spirit, are they yours?’ Scrooge could say no extra. ‘They are Man’s,’ mentioned the Spirit, searching down upon them. ‘…This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them each, and all of their degree…’.”
This was Dickens’s major rationale for producing A Christmas Carol. He needed his visitors to realise that, if they continued to deny inadequate little ones the requirements of lifetime – these kinds of as meals, shelter, warm clothing, healthcare and an education and learning – they would develop up to turn into dangerous, violent grownups. The little one born in a workhouse who was not as fortuitous as Oliver Twist, or the impoverished child who didn’t die young like Tiny Nell, would mature up to turn into another Monthly bill Sikes, Fagin, Little Em’ly or Daniel Quilp.
Dickens and Xmas by Lucinda Hawksley is posted by Pen and Sword.
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