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What I'm finding amusing and horrifying, on this rereading, is the way the contrasting sociopolitical views play in a modern context.
Look at Scrooge's hateful rhetoric towards the poor, his I-pay-my-taxes rant about the Poor Law and the workhouse system. Scrooge is a stand-in for Establishment values of Dickens's day, of course. But a look at a few right-wing websites (and I've been reading some lately, for my sins) shows that Scrooge's attitude falls almost-squarely within the American conservative mainstream in 2005.
But the alternative Dickens presents—the we-fortunate-few handout/Christian-benevolence scheme advocated by the two merry gentlemen—seems hopelessly outdated. It's naive, patronizing, and unsustainable, and utterly fails to address the underlying socioeconomic issues of chronic poverty. At best, it's a Band-Aid on a sucking wound, and in 2005 we're able to recognize this.
In other words: since Dickens's day, progressive politics on poverty have really, well, progressed, while conservative attitudes have barely budged since at least the 1860s.
Anyway: Lady: Yeah, it's remarkable how Dickens makes Scrooge so hateful in one sense, but has us rooting for his redemption—never lets us forget that there is in everyone something worth saving. The constant references to cold and winter about Scrooge—the idea that there must have once been a springtime in his life, that there must have once been fire in his soul, crushed and damped by time and circumstance and the larger societal pressures. Hisis thefinal triumph of the story—not just that the saintly Tiny Tim was spared, but that Scrooge was saved.
Dickens introduces him using the word "sinner," and (as his Victorian audience) surely knew) we are sinners all. The bond of kinship is there from the start. And if such a one as Ebenezer Scrooge can be saved, then there is hope for all of us. |
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