Context

Question 1

Dickens (4)

Answer 1

• philanthropist christian who believed everyone deserves equal opportunities and rights, advocating change and help for lower classes
• first hand experience of poverty in a Blacking Factory and father sent to debtors prison
• wrote a report about workhouses criticising them
• strong advocate for ragged schools and helped set up free schools, try and tackle root cause of poverty

Question 2

Industrial revolution

Answer 2

• written in the 1800s during the industrial period
• factories: pollution and coal mining
• economic boom but exacerbated inequalities in society as working class were less relied on for work and many exploited

Question 3

Victorian society

Answer 3

• child labour: exploitation children working as young as 3
• poor law: workhouses with appalling conditions where poverty was seen as a choice (Dickens wrote a report so others recognise inhumane conditions poor are put through to inspire change to stop class inequality)
• ragged schools: education can eradicate the cycle of poverty
• Queen Victoria has 9 children so their family was perceived to be model
• Highly religious society

Question 4

Religion and Christmas

Answer 4

• novella credited with helping popularise and spread traditions and festivities as Dickens encapsulates the zeitgeist of Victorian Christmas
• Dickens a christian who spread his ideas through authorial voice [can also see intrusive narrator throughout novella]

Question 5

Novel

Answer 5

• novella
• a political diatribe - Dickens criticising ignorance of poor struggles
• incorporates gothic elements of ghosts (Marley and 3 spirits)