Corrections or additions?
This article by David McDonough was published in U.S. 1 Newspaper
on December 8, 1999. All rights reserved.
`Christmas Carol:’ Reform, Not Revolution
One hundred sixty-three years ago this Christmas Eve,
Jacob Marley breathed his last, and 157 years ago his partner,
Ebenezer
Scrooge, first humbugged his way into legendary status as literature’s
most famous metamorphosis. Charles Dickens was then, and continues
to be, England’s most popular novelist, and "A Christmas
Carol"
is his most popular work.
It is virtually impossible to live in the English-speaking world and
not come into contact with the story. For those who have never read
the book, there are at least four film versions (the 1951 British
version starring Alistair Sim is my favorite), and endless television
adaptations, the latest featuring Patrick Stewart and currently
running
on TNT. Scrooge has ended up in the hands of Bill Murray, the Muppets,
and Mr. Magoo. Here in Princeton, McCarter Theater is presenting its
20th annual staging of the family favorite. This year’s production,
adapted from Dickens by David Thompson and directed by Michael Unger,
has a cast of 34, led by Stephen Temperley as Ebenezer Scrooge. Now
in previews, the show opens Saturday, December 11, and plays through
December 24.
Everyone in the Western world seems to know Ebenezer Scrooge well.
Or do we? What was Dickens trying to tell us in "A Christmas
Carol"?
And are we getting the message?
Top Of Page
Barry Qualls
"Dickens conceived all of his fiction as social reform
novels,"
explains Barry Qualls, English professor and dean of humanities at
Rutgers, who specializes in Victorian fiction. "The great moment
in this story is the appearance of those two children, Ignorance and
Want. This is where you see social comment, spelling out the issues,
and the potential for revolution if these issues aren’t attended
to."
Dickens, brought up in poverty, sent out to work at
a young age, largely self-educated, was passionate about his causes.
In 1843, when he wrote "A Christmas Carol," he was 31, and
facing a crossroads in his life. He had been a something of a
phenomenon
as a young writer; one of the first celebrity authors. Beginning in
1836, when he was only 24, he had achieved immense fame with the
monthly
publication of installments of "The Pickwick Papers," and
his stock rose with each succeeding novel, all serialized: "Oliver
Twist" (1837), Nicholas Nickleby (1837-38), and "The Old
Curiosity
Shop" (1840-41). But his 1842 travel book, "American
Notes,"
and a novel set partly in the United States, "Martin
Chuzzlewit,"
both contained unflattering portrayals of America. And the nation
was not amused. Sales lagged, and Dickens set about trying to
rehabilitate
his reputation.
He had become preoccupied with the child labor issue. An 1842 report
on the appalling conditions under which children were forced to work
in mines and factories, and his visits to the wretched institutions
set up to educate the poor, originally inspired him to write a
pamphlet
on child labor. Instead, he conceived a Christmas story in which he
would warn against those two evils, Ignorance and Want.
It’s inconceivable that any pamphlet could have had an effect
comparable
to "A Christmas Carol."
Top Of Page
Michael Unger
Michael Unger, directing the McCarter production for a second year,
sees the value of subtlety. "It’s more powerful if you can move
people through a story," he says. "If you can succeed in
teaching
the lesson without anyone knowing that they have been taught, people
can see something of themselves in the journey of others."
The story of Scrooge is, then, not just the story of one man’s
redemption.
Scrooge is a stand-in for all the evils of capitalism, but he also
stands for Dickens’ belief that the system needs changing, not
destroying.
After all, Scrooge is no monster, he is merely selfishness
personified.
He pays his clerk 15 shillings a week, which was the going rate at
the time. He also has a sense of humor. "If I could work my will,
every idiot who goes about with `Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should
be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly
through
his heart," he intones, indulging his strong, wry sense of irony.
Scrooge is just dying to be a nice guy; and in Dickens’ world,
capitalism
has a heart — it just takes Christmas and three ghosts to find
it.
It is no accident that Dickens set his story at Christmas. By the
seventh century, the ancient pagan holiday had become a Feast of the
Nativity, but Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans succeeded in stamping
it out in the 1600s. In Dickens’ time, two centuries later, Christmas
was observed, but not on a grand scale. The very laborers he wrote
for and about did not generally even get the day off. Dickens changed
that; many historians give him credit for bringing Christmas back
as a major festivity, with his descriptions of the hustle and bustle,
the genial faces, the roaring fires, the roasting turkeys and geese
upon the spit, the mince pies and the puddings "singing" in
the copper. Dickens’ Christmas bears a strong resemblance to the
pre-Christian
holiday on which it is based. It is notable that while ghosts abound
in the story, there are few biblical references.
"Dickens was accused by critics of `Cockney religion,’ lower class
sentimentality," says Barry Qualls. "In his eyes, religion
is manifested by human contact."
After all, what is Scrooge’s greatest sin? He has turned his back
on his fellow man. What is his greatest fear? To die alone and
unmourned.
If there is a central image in "A Christmas Carol," it is
that of the importance of family and family life. British historian
William Lecky wrote in 1869, "The family is the center and the
archetype of the state, and the happiness and goodness of society
are always in a very great degree dependent upon the purity of
domestic
life."
"You’ll never find a better summation of how Dickens constructs
a novel than that," observes Barry Qualls.
Family images abound in "A Christmas Carol:" The Ghost of
Christmas Past shows Scrooge his young self, left alone at school
over the Yuletide holidays, his misery alleviated only by the
appearance
of his sister, come to take him home; the slightly older Scrooge
enjoying
a holiday dance as a part of the extended family at Fezziwig’s; the
invisible Scrooge observing the daughter of his old sweetheart and
reflecting that "(she) might have called him father;" the
warmth of the Cratchit home; and finally, the reformed Scrooge calling
at his nephew’s house and asking humbly to be admitted, reminiscent
of Robert Frost’s famous line: "Home is the place where, when
you have to go there, they have to take you in."
McCarter Theater’s production takes the family motif a step further
by framing the Victorian story within a modern one. "There’s a
very nice theme in this production of handing down a legacy,"
explains Michael Unger. "It starts out with a father reading the
book to his daughter, the way his father had read to him, and goes
into Mrs. Cratchit teaching Belinda to make the pudding the way her
mother taught her. The feeling you get from this piece is that,
although
you may not have a lot, if you have love of a family and people you
care about, you can survive."
So did Dickens get his message across, and was it
effective?
As a writer, Dickens had a habit of leaving loose ends untied.
Scrooge,
as best we can tell, is some sort of moneylender. After he reforms,
does he give up usury? Does he go out of business? Then what does
he live on, and how does he do good works? Is he living on his
ill-gotten
gains, or does he just become a good money-lender, handing out sums
left and right and never hounding anyone for payment, in which case,
he probably doesn’t make much of living, so there goes Bob Cratchit’s
raise.
"That’s the problem with all those Dickens novels," admits
Barry Qualls, "after the astonishingly prescient analysis of
English
society, they come down to `God Bless Us, Everyone,’ and that
wonderful
home and family. Still, Dickens was remarkably influential about
attitudes
towards social problems. England is one of the few European countries
in the 19th century that did not have a revolution, and there are
reasons for that. He popularized a mindset of social responsibility,
and lawful civil disobedience. The sense that everything emanates
from the home, and that to violate the social order is to violate
home. Dickens wants the status quo, but he wants it reformed."
Reforming the status quo is debatable from all sides of the political
spectrum, from those who want to preserve it, to those who would
destroy
it. Some would say Dickens went too far, others, not far enough. But
in our yearly holiday celebrations, our ability to set aside our
troubles
and quarrels for at least one day, our annual acknowledgment of our
fellow beings, Dickens’ influence is still felt, at the dawn of the
21st century.
— David McDonough
Place, 609-258-2787. Opening day for the show that continues through
December 24. $26 to $35. Saturday, December 11, 1 and 5:30 p.m.
Corrections or additions?
This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com
— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
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