STAVE III
Stave III is so rich. From the sheer amount of food described, to the number of people and places they visit. I will always prefer reading the story to watching an adaptation because of the descriptions; they visit so many more places than any adaptation will show. They see the world in all it’s many facets; from dirty streets where people call out in laughter, to miners, the sick, sailors, and foreigners. They visit parties and watch games, and hear so many songs. There’s so much emotion. It’s not just about being a better person for those that make us comfortable, but for everyone.
I’ve always been a little frightened of Ignorance and Want. Here they are described:
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity; in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Ebeneezer Scrooge meeting Ignorance and Want from the original illustrations of A Christmas Carol.
Zounds! That’s scary. Since I first read Carol I’ve envisioned Ignorance and Want as being threatening; and I find that so many of the adaptations don’t convey how threatening, or ‘wolfish’ they are. Just my personal observation, but I imagine that I see that ‘wolfish’ aspect in so many Trump supporters. The Spirit of Christmas Present cautions against Ignorance and Want, but Ignorance especially, as he will be mankind’s Doom.
Charles Dickens was a great advocate for education. During his youth most schools were for-profit institutions and poor children did not go to school, but worked. In 1833, the British government passed The Factory Act to ensure better working conditions for children. A revolutionary law, it limited the length of the work day; for 9-13 years they could not work longer than 9 hours and for 13-18 years they could only work 12 hours a day. They were not allowed to work at night, and were required to have two hours of schooling a day. Can you imagine how bad things were that this piece of legislation was progressive?
When Dickens was nine years old his parents got him a job pasting labels on jars at a shoe blacking factory. His biographer, John Forester, included this quote from Dickens about his youth:
"How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly beyond my power to tell."
He resented his parents for allowing it to happen.
"It is wonderful to me that I could have been so easily cast away at such an age. It is wonderful to me that, even after my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion enough on me-a child of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally-to suggest that something might have been spared, as certainly it might have been, to place me at any common school. Our friends, I take it, were tired out. No one made any sign. My father and mother were quite satisfied. They could hardly have been more so if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished as a grammar school, going to Cambridge.'
His time as a ‘poor little drudge’ influenced him greatly. He’s cautioning us that we’re dooming our future generations by allowing Ignorance to grow. Dickens isn't known for his subtlety, and his description of Ignorance and Want just about hits the reader in the face, much like his description of Scrooge in Stave I; but yet again, he speaks to our time. Now isn’t the time to make education a for-profit institution. We are now inundated with a huge amount of information, but it is up to the consumer to sort through and find the nuggets of truth. Complex ballot measures are presented to the public with very little information other than that which is paid for by very powerful entities. Billions of dollars in research is spent to manipulate consumers. If we can not educate our children to recognize manipulation then we are doomed. Our children need to have a fully rounded education and I believe that includes the arts. The Spirit tells us that Ignorance and Want are the children of mankind, and that Doom is written on Ignorance’s forehead. The Spirit also tells us that we can erase Doom. That we can change; that mankind can change. That’s what makes me want to be better. It makes me want to do better for future generations.
Scrooge tries to jab The Spirit of Christmas Present with shutting down the bakeries, a communal means of baking in the Victorian age, on the seventh day. The Spirit replies with one of the best quotes of the story:
”There are some upon this earth of yours, “ returned the Spirit, ‘who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”
I just love that. Again, so timely with the religious right’s support of Trump.
A final word on Stave III. In the list of characters I’ve added Food as a character. There were no refrigerators full of food as we have today and the amount of food described is impressive even for Victorian times. The Cratchit’s dinner may have been the only dinner during the year where they were filled to the brim.
List of Characters:
Stave III
Ebeneezer Scrooge
The Ghost of Christmas Present
The Cratchit family: Robert (Bob), Mrs Cratchit, Martha (daughter), Peter (son), two unnamed children, and Tiny Tim (son)
Fred (Scrooge's nephew)
Scrooge's niece and her sisters
Topper (a friend of Fred's)
Ignorance and Want (Man's children)
Unnamed folk- miners, sailors, lighthouse keepers, sick, children, foreigners, poor, revelers
Food, lots of it.
Ebeneezer Scrooge and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. A Christmas Carol. British Museum
STAVE IV
Stave IV is the eeriest and the shortest interlude with the spirits. Dickens had a point and he went right to it. Here, Scrooge looks at the consequences of his choices.
I mentioned in the Intro that The Muppet Christmas Carol is my favorite adaptation, and I absolutely love the scene where the laundress, the charwoman, and the undertaker take Scrooges things to the beetling shop. So silly, but it really is horrible. Imagine your coworkers, those you esteemed, do nothing at your death but talk about lunch or utter a few syllables in a dismissive manner. Heartbreaking. But wait! There’s more! The charwoman, the laundress, and the undertaker’s man are so pleased at your death because they will benefit a few bucks. Justifying their actions because you treated, not just them, poorly, but everyone.
He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!
We also see a little family relieved because of his death. So incredibly sad.
Here’s a man thinking he was on top of the heap, but he was just a jerk, and everyone knew it.
List of Characters
Stave IV
Ebeneezer Scrooge
The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come
Men at the 'Change
Men of business
Old Joe, The charwoman, Mrs Dilber (The laundress), and the undertaker's man.
A family: The Father, Caroline (The Mother), children
The Cratchit family: Robert (Bob), Mrs Cratchit, Martha (daughter), Peter (son), two unnamed children
Questions:
With Ignorance and Want in mind, what do you think of Trump’s Education Secretary? Is Doom indelibly written on Ignorance’s forehead? Are we doomed?
What can we do as individuals to be better?
What were your favorite quotes of Staves III and IV?
Which Spirit resonates most with you?
Tortmaster will end our series next week with Stave V and concluding observations. Thanks for sticking with us!
