Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843
Dec. 10th, 2013 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emma_in_dream*A Christmas Carol* is a difficult book to describe. It’s so mawkish, so sentimental, so over the top as to be ridiculous, and yet, somehow, it works. It reminds me of *Love, Actually* which, when you think about it is ridiculously saccharine, yet when you watch it you are caught up in it.
At least, parts of *A Christmas Carol* are mawkish and sentimental. Other parts of funny – the opening riff for instance. ‘Marley was dead to begin with’ is a great opening line, and Dickens carries on with this nonsense for another three paragraphs.
And other parts are just plain terrifying. The vision of the third ghost is terrifying, the way it does not speak but points to his tombstone. Scrooge begs to see someone who is moved by his death and he is shown a debtor who has just heard his debt has been transferred to someone else and who cries ‘Thank God!’
Also, I love the vision of plenty which the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge. The vision is both of its time (plenty is defined as fruit, not sweets) and it verges on pornography in its lingering descriptions of sensuality. In particular note the friars winking at the girls wantonly.
For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball—better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.
The Grocers’! oh, the Grocers’! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.
So, *A Christmas Carol* suffers from the usual problems of Dickens – overly wordy, revealing that he was paid by the word, sentimental, extravagant. But also the typical virtues of Dickens – fabulous vignettes summarising characters and some really striking lines. When Scrooge says that the poor should go to the poor houses and the prisons, he could be a modern bankster. The second ghost talks to him about the grasshopper on the leaf complaining about the too-muchness of his brothers on the ground, a metaphor which holds up today.
Dickens is said to have invented Christmas as a secular celebration. All the trappings we see,the tree, the cards, the presents, the feast, all took off just after he wrote. And to quote him...
'He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!'
At least, parts of *A Christmas Carol* are mawkish and sentimental. Other parts of funny – the opening riff for instance. ‘Marley was dead to begin with’ is a great opening line, and Dickens carries on with this nonsense for another three paragraphs.
And other parts are just plain terrifying. The vision of the third ghost is terrifying, the way it does not speak but points to his tombstone. Scrooge begs to see someone who is moved by his death and he is shown a debtor who has just heard his debt has been transferred to someone else and who cries ‘Thank God!’
Also, I love the vision of plenty which the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge. The vision is both of its time (plenty is defined as fruit, not sweets) and it verges on pornography in its lingering descriptions of sensuality. In particular note the friars winking at the girls wantonly.
For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball—better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.
The Grocers’! oh, the Grocers’! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.
So, *A Christmas Carol* suffers from the usual problems of Dickens – overly wordy, revealing that he was paid by the word, sentimental, extravagant. But also the typical virtues of Dickens – fabulous vignettes summarising characters and some really striking lines. When Scrooge says that the poor should go to the poor houses and the prisons, he could be a modern bankster. The second ghost talks to him about the grasshopper on the leaf complaining about the too-muchness of his brothers on the ground, a metaphor which holds up today.
Dickens is said to have invented Christmas as a secular celebration. All the trappings we see,the tree, the cards, the presents, the feast, all took off just after he wrote. And to quote him...
'He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!'
