Childhood Flashcards
(20 cards)
Points in essay:
- Ignorance and Want - the way in which the poor children are deprived of education and basic means to survive.
- Scrooge’s childhood - the lack of a childhood and the ongoing impact - pattern of attachment.
- Tiny Tim/ Belinda and Peter
Tiny Tim: caricature of goodness
Tiny Tim acts as a symbol of the idealised child, a caricature of sorts that is wholly good - can be questioned whether he is a realistic character, or rather a symbol. However, this idealisation is deliberate. Dickens crafts Tim not just as a realistic child, but as a powerful emblem of Christian charity and the devastating human cost of poverty. In a society where many children like Tim died young due to poor living conditions, Dickens heightens Tim’s goodness to provoke sympathy and guilt in his middle-class readers.
“as good as ____”
gold
Before, we are informed that Scrooge displaced Belle with an idol, “a golden one”. Through alluding to this idea of “gold”, Dickens is highlighting how important children are and their worth in face of materialism - employers and capitalists sacrifice the wellbeing of the poor children, for their own financial benefit. Through engaging the reader’s pathos and presenting Tim truly “as good as gold”, he is demonstrating how beautiful and innocent the children that they are impacting are (they being the business classes and the bourgeois in his audience).
“Tiny Tim upon his ________ (…) he bore a little crutch”
shoulder
The Cratchits are doing everything they can to support Tim, but it isn’t enough. Society needs to change so that children like Tiny Tim do not suffer.
“Bob’s ________ ________ conferred upon his _______ in honour of the day”
A seemingly simple item is a big deal for Peter and he’s so proud of it even though it is borrowed - the little happiness and joy the Cratchits have it is on borrowed time - whereas Christmas for the rich children was about gifts and being spoiled, The Cratchits can only give their children their own shirt - demonstrates the stark contrast and inequality -
The way in which the clothes are passed on is metaphorical for the cycle of poverty. the children of the poor are trapped from the beginning of their lives - there are no opportunities for social mobility - reminds the rich that the poor are not at fault for their position - society and the system maintains poverty, prevents children who were born into it from escaping.
“God Bless Us, and Everyone!”
Dickens links Tiny Tim to Christian values and moral redemption in order to highlight the beauty and innocence of childhood in contrast to the apathy of society - the fact that Tiny Tim says Everyone shows how socially conscious he is, a sense of maturity showing, as he welcomes all members of society and views people as equal - perhaps highlighting that this is the only natural way to see the world - one must welcome everyone in society in order to form a strong community, and if a tiny child can understand this, so can society.
Tiny Tim’s mantra: This frames the story with a message of redemption and hope, linking Scrooge’s transformation to Tiny Tim’s enduring goodness.
Dickens allows Tiny Tim the final word — giving moral authority to the character society might otherwise overlook
“he was a second father”
Dickens’ own father went to prison, when Dickens was at a very small age, so he grew without a paternal figure. Whilst Tiny Tim’s father loves him and supports him, this is not enough, since Tiny Tim, if Scrooge hadn’t become a second father and presumably helped the Cratchits, would have died.
Perhaps this is metaphorical for the way in which society should treat those less fortunate like they would a child, assume paternal care over them, provide them with support, just as a father would if their child is in need. Only then, can society be equal.
this paternal figure suggests that Dickens wants the upper classes to provide for the lower classes in the same way that a parent provides for their child, since the child cannot protect or fend for itself. The same thinking applies. It is not only through charity, which is unique to Christmas time that matters - it’s being able to uphold charitable attitudes all year round. This is anti-Malthusian i.e whereas Malthusian beliefs taught that there were not enough resources for the lower classes to survive alongside the upper classes, Dickens is emphasising that if the upper classes were more generous, less parsimonious, and supported the poor with their excess wealth, everybody would have an equal distribution of resources
“They were a boy and a girl” vs. “yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling wolfish”
Reminds us first that these are real children, like those of the audience, like Tiny Tim - they are a boy and a girl. Yet the anthropomorphic imagery, the asyndetic list, emphasises how dehumanised they are - how ill and wounded and weak - raises the simple question of, if these children are so like yours, simply a boy and a girl, what have they done to deserve this fate?
The image of Ignorance and Want, ellucidates an image of malnutritionment, sickeness, reminding us of Tiny Tim, of the fate that awaits him if he is not helped.
The rich do not recognise the severity of the consequences of their actions.
These adjectives strip away any romantic or sentimental image of childhood — Dickens uses brutal realism here - shocks the reader from their inertia.
“Where devils might have sat _________, devils ____, and glared out menacing”
enthroned/lurked
In 1840s London, Dickens saw firsthand the results of child neglect — child labour, workhouses, no education.
He supported ragged schools for poor children and used his writing to push for reform.
Victorian society often blamed the poor for their condition — Dickens challenges that by showing these children as products of social failure.
The Victorians also believed that childhood be a time of bliss and happiness - it is very shocking through this description how that was dramatically in contrast to the reality that poor children had to face - their poverty has warped their innocence, has corrupted them, as we see in the slums, they are surrounded by filth and crime and misery. They are completely stripped of any childlike attributes
“Ignorance” and “Want” - education
before writing his sledgehammer of a novella, Dickens had wanted to write a pamphlet about the importance of education and his time at ragged schools - through the character of Ignorance, Dickens warns of the dangers of not educating the poor - not only do they continue to be trapped by their circumstances, unable to gain social mobility and freedom, this results in a continuation and a spread in poverty, as well as a starker divide between the classes, ultimately leading to conflicts and revolutions, as was happening across Europe at the time.
“Doom”
“They are Man’s”
same concept as “second father” - society and social evils are responsible for the suffering of these children - they became these caricatures, completely broken and destroyed, due to society, not by nature - therefore, it is only necessary for society as a whole to assert responsibility over them, and work to save them.
Significance of the vignette when Scrooge was a child:
this demonstrates the significance of childhood experiences and how they continue to haunt us in the future - quite literally since Scrooge is haunted by the Ghost of Christmas Past.
Once again Scrooge’s environment as a child reflects his inner thoughts - transferred epiphet - and it is due to the fact that he grew up in such an environment that he turned out the way he is.
“solitary child” vs. “solitary as an oyster”
“solitary” acts as a leitmotif that links Scrooge isolated childhood and his present, misanthropic self - the metaphor of an oyster, conjuring the image of a closed, hard exterior and a pearl within could suggest that the pear inside he is trying to protect is in fact the solitary child, left vulnerable emotionally by being abandoned and neglected by society. by actively removing himself from society as an adult, Scrooge avoids the risk of being abandoned again.
Freudian analysis of Scrooge’s childhood
This interpretation aligns with Freud’s theory of repression, where painful early experiences are buried but continue to influence behaviour unconsciously. Scrooge’s emotional detachment can be seen as a defence mechanism
“Darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it”
Scrooge leaves himself and his past in the dark since it costs him less emotionally. It is only when the Ghost of Christmas Past sheds light on his past that his redemption is catalysed thus, Dickens is highlighting the importance of learning from and understanding past experiences rather than ignoring them and remaining stagnant since it avoids emotional vulnerability.
Scrooge’s childhood - semantic field of decay and destruction
employment of transferred epithet - by being neglected and presumably abused by his father, Scrooge was broken and decaying as a child… this exemplifies the importance of caring for children and surrounding them with nurture to avoid building adults in the future who do not understand concepts of love and family, and who become misanthropic.
“long, bare, melancholy room” is an example of…
transferred epithet
“feeble fire”
Dickens employs the motif of fire to symbolise community and the warmth of human connection - Scrooge’s sense of community as a child is feeble, weak, leading to a lack of understanding of the importance of community and kindness - if Scrooge never had a community, which Dickens teaches through the Cratchits and Fezziwigs is the key to happiness, then Scrooge’s callous nature is not entirely his fault - he is a product of a neglectful childhood.
“lines of plain deal forms and desks”
From an early age Scrooge is taught about life through a series of facts and rigid social ideas - “lines”.
THESIS
In his novella, ‘A Christmas Carol, Dickens features heavily ideas about childhood. Through the character of Tiny Tim and Peter and Belinda, he explores the generational cycle of poverty and the way in which the children of the poor were trapped by their circumstances unable to gain social mobility due to their lack of education. This concept is amplified through the emblematic Ignorance and Want, symbolic of the suffering of poor children and the detrimental consequences of depriving the poor of education and the resources to survive. While Scrooge embodies the business classes who are responsible for the plight of the poor, Dickens employs the vignette of Scrooge’s own childhood, to highlight the impact of a childhood spent neglected and the way in which childhood shapes the future of members of society, as he questions the Victorian approach to childhood, and the contrasting realities facing the children of the rich and the poor.
