#a dickens december

[susiephone]

shoutout to charles dickens because "this guy is such a douchebag that bad weather has no effect on him, because no matter how much the wind or rain would ruin an average person's day, this guy can ruin it worse" is an objectively hilarious character trait

[em-gray]

very excited to be participating in tumblr book club again

[princesssarisa]

I'm reading along with A Dickens December, though I haven't managed to post about it so far.

I'll just make one comment for now:

An underrated detail from the original book of A Christmas Carol is the fact that Bob Cratchit is only called "the clerk" in the first chapter. His name isn't revealed until much later, when the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to his house to see his family.

This wouldn't work in a screen or stage adaptation. The audience usually needs to know the names of the major characters, unless there's an important plot reason for hiding a name.

But in the book it's subtle genius, because it's how Scrooge sees him. Like a typical selfish rich person, Scrooge doesn't give much thought to Bob's humanity at first; he's just the clerk, who works for Scrooge and whom Scrooge has to pay more than he wants to. His wife and children are even less; in Scrooge's eyes, they're just financial burdens on Bob. But the ghosts force him to see Bob and his family as human beings, who have thoughts and feelings, who love each other, and who will suffer unless Scrooge changes his ways. How appropriate that at this point, the narrator shifts from calling Bob just "the clerk" to calling him "Bob Cratchit."

@ariel-seagull-wings, @cliozaur

[agardenandlibrary]

[pristina-nomine]

It’s finally time to repost these tweets

[mekana47]

A Dickens December is going well.

[cliozaur]

[gingerhastoomanyobsessions]

I SURE HOPE THE DRACULA DAILIES ARE ALL SIGNED UP FOR DICKENS DECEMBER

For all who celebrate Christmas, like Charles Dickens, or love it when ghosts psychologically torment capitalists into giving away their money!

The original book is a short read, easy to condense into a one month substack, and includes 100% canon things like

Scrooge cutting to the chase and telling someone to go to hell

A threat to swallow a toothpick

Past, who is described as the size of a small child, physically manhandling Scrooge around like he’s a wet cat

Present having Spooky Scary Children

Yet to Come being heavily implied to be able to talk to people in their brains/to have psychic powers

Roasting

so much roasting

get his ass

pudding!

I know we all know the story, but there are probably at least a few surprises that have slipped by you if you haven’t read the original. Even if you have, book clubs are fun. Consider partaking in the ghostly attack therapy session for the worst man in the world. It’ll be fun

[torturedpoetemotions]

I think it's a very important part of the message, that Scrooge is old. That he has lived the majority of his life very poorly, and done real harm to many. That he is never given a guarantee of any redemption, or of anything at all save that he might enrich the lives of others while he still has the chance...but it is still worth it to him to change nonetheless.

[faejilly]

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.

- A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

[susiephone]

Charles Dickens trying to emphasize that Marley was, in fact, dead as a doornail like:

[warrioreowynofrohan]

I want to discuss the scene between Scrooge and Belle a little, because there’s so much in it.

“This is the even-handed dealing of the world!” [Scrooge] said. “There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing which it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!”

Scrooge’s observation isn’t wrong; it’s been made by others over the years (Pink Floyd’s “Money” says much the same thing). Belle doesn’t dispute its accuracy - she says, we needn’t and shouldn’t let the world’s (double) standards govern ours. (Be not comformed to the pattern of the world.)

It’s also clear that it is not prosperity itself that she objects to (“we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry”), it’s that Scrooge is using what she finds unethical methods to become rich (“I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you”). Likely methods that are ruthless and uncaring rather than ones that are dishonest; there is no indication anywhere in the book that Scrooge is a cheat. Dicken’s point is that even ‘honest’ business carried out without regard to the welfare of anyone else, and without using any of the gains from it to help people, is wrong.

We also get here an indication of the reasons driving Scrooge’s miserliness: “all your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond [the world’s] sordid reproach”. To me, this indicates that he was treated contemptuously by better-off people once he left Fezziwig’s employ, and wanted to be rich in order to have their respect, in order to have dignity. This connects in with the rest of the story in two ways - firstly, the ‘present’ Scrooge now treats people beneath him with contempt, the same thing he resented when he was poor; and secondly, as the spirit of Christmas Yet To Come shows him, his attitudes and pursuits have not bought him respect and dignity - decidedly the reverse.

It’s also interesting that the younger Scrooge doesn’t deny any of Belle’s statements about how his mindset has changed, characterizing it as growing wiser and becoming a man rather than a boy. He insists this does not affect his feelings towards her, but she is wise enough to see that it cannot be irrelevant to their relationship - they now have fundamentally different values, principles, and goals in life, and cannot be happy together. She’s wise enough not to fall prey to the delusion that she could ‘change him’ when he does not want to change.

She’s clearly, even from this, a very brave person - she is poor, respectable ways for young women to earn a living are limited, and she is walking away from a financially stable match with someone she once loved because the person he is becoming is inconsistent with her values, and she is convinced neither of them could make the other happy. She’s willing to walk away from security rather than have an unhappy marriage.

[princesssarisa]

I'm always faintly annoyed when adaptations of A Christmas Carol imply that Marley's Ghost comes from hell, and/or that Scrooge will go to hell when he dies unless he redeems himself. Not that I don't enjoy Scrooge (1970) in and of itself, or the black comedy of its hell scene, or the cartoony horror of Scrooge McDuck almost plunging into fire and brimstone in Mickey's Christmas Carol. But that's not what Dickens wrote.

In the book, Marley's Ghost claims to have been wandering the earth since his death. Dickens never implies that the stereotypical Christian hell even exists. Instead, in the world of A Christmas Carol, hell is apparently on earth. The souls of the wicked are forced to wander the earth in chains and watch the suffering of the living, which they ignored or caused in life and have no more power to alleviate.

This vision of afterlife punishment suits Dickens' message of social criticism and championing of the poor and downtrodden much better than the traditional Christian hell ever could.

[a-christmas-carol-from-hr]

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but, feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was Past, and this Ghost's province was the Future.

also this bit has destroyed me up every time I read it.

Scrooge being confused as to why these cruel comments might relate to him, since he's not dead. And Marley died in the past.

Scrooge heard this kind of talk about Marley post-mortem.

[tybaltsjuliet]

i see you going "let's make ebenezer scrooge the next tumblr sexyman" and i raise you szabó p. szilveszter as jacob marley in the budapesti operettszínház production

absurdly lean and tall goth? check. kinky chains? check. potential for a highly questionable fandom-led redemption and, dare i say, woobification? motherfucking check.

and he sings, too!

[fandom-frenzy]

Apparently tumblr is reading A Christmas Carol now and I desperately need all of you to know that starkid did an adaptation in the style of '80s workout videos.