Miserly Ebenezer Scrooge Change In A Christmas Carol

In the novella, ‘A Christmas Carol’ by Charles Dickens, we see the change that the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, who was a ‘tight fisted hand at the grindstone’, undergoes. Although the short novel is entertaining, Dickens’ primary focus was to educate the people of the Victorian era. Scrooge represents the middle and upper classes of the society in Dickens’ time, and his change is a lesson to the Victorian era people of how important the values of family, generosity and spiritual growth are. An interpretation of ‘A Christmas Carol’ may be that Dickens wrote it purely as a source of entertainment. The novella, is definitely exciting; Scrooge is a likeable character despite his cruel ways, saying things like, ‘every idiot who goes about with
‘Merry
Christmas’, on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding.’ Charles
Dickens wanted to motivate social change, but he didn’t want to write a boring essay that he knew the majority of people wouldn’t want to read.
Instead he wrote an interesting story that is packed with symbolism and representation.
‘A Christmas Carol’ was written after the Industrial Revolution, which had boosted
Britain’s economic wealth exponentially. As a result of this, the gap between the rich and the poor widened, and 1840s Britain was filled with the oppression of the lower classes. Scrooge, like many of his socioeconomic status at the time, believed that the poor didn’t deserve to live, and instead should be thrown into prisons and workhouses. This is shown when two charity collectors ask Scrooge for a donation and he replies with, ‘Are there no prisons… and the Union workhouses… are they still in operation?’ Dickens saw the wrongful thinking of the people around him, and he wanted to make a positive change to society.
Dickens used the Cratchit family and especially Tiny Tim to represent the poor and lower class members of society. Although they did not have much, they were
‘happy, grateful, pleased with one another… and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit’s torch.’ This was unusual to Scrooge, because he
expected that money equals happiness. Growing more and more curious about Tiny Tim,
Scrooge asked the spirit, ‘tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’ to which the ghost responded that the child will die. After pleading with the ghost to tell him that Tiny Tim will be spared, the ghost hits him with his own words, ‘If he be like to die, he had better do it and decrease the surplus population.’ After seeing the very human and recognisable face of poverty, instead of numbers and statistics, Scrooge and the
Victorian era readers were exposed to the cruel, rationalist thinking that those living in poverty were there because they deserved to be.

The people of the Victorian era needed to be shown the social injustices that were going on around them, and Dickens saw this. He wanted to see a positive change in society, he wanted people to see that those living in poverty were not just a statistic, they were real people with real emotions. Dickens uses the entertaining theme of Christmas, and its own themes; happiness, giving, charity, and family to educate the Victorian people that it is important to look back at the people we have been, and become better people.