“A Christmas Carol isn’t just a cheery, uplifting tale that we can mimic in various modern ways,” says Mayhew. “It’s a very seriously intended work of moral fiction and, perhaps because we tend to pigeonhole it as a Christmas story, we don’t read just how serious it is.”
The message that Dickens had for Victorian Britain is increasingly pertinent, even though we may use different words to describe similar problems, [Professor Robert] Mayhew believes.
“It’s interesting because we’re living right now with unprecedented levels of homelessness and individuals needing the support of food banks. We have the binary between extreme wealth on one hand and those inured to poverty on the other.” You feel the resonance of A Christmas Carol seems to get stronger every year.”
“People were terrified of overpopulation, especially among the poor, and they believed that if people brought children into the world that they couldn’t afford to keep, they were almost committing a crime. This is what Dickens hated, this attitude.” https://t.co/zrv0C8j0MC
— Karen Swallow Prior (Notorious KSP) (@KSPrior) December 28, 2021