Christmas is a very special time. It is a time of happy thoughts and great gifts to one another and to help the poor and in need. In England it was a different story. In the 18 centry was very hard time for familes to give presents to one another. Living conditions were really bad and the sanitation wasn’t any better. Despite these bad and difficult times Charles Dickens wrote a wonderful story call A Christmas Carole. He was one of the first people to “monde” a Christmas celebration. Charles did accurately portraed the people of England and showed how difficult it was in the winter months.
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Charles Dickson was born in 1812 at Portsmouth, Hampshire, England. His family wasn’t the richest but also not the poorest. There were seven children in his family. One point of his time he was coveted and his family had to leave their house. If that was bad well read this, his father was in and out in his life. His father was a very inspirational guy. He would spend his money, causing his family lots of time to get into debt. At nine his entire family moved to London. At twelve his father was arrested for debts.
All the miss unforation road blocks did not stop him to going to school. He went to the college of University of Hard Knocks. His first job was a lawyer but he hated it. He wanted to write books. His first works of literature was called fist book he wrote was Sketches by Boz. He soon was really popular in England. A Christmas carol was one of his popular novels. Because of the hart warming feelings and how cheap it was to get it. He died in 1872.
England was not a good place to living in the 1800’s. Families had lots of children. Most of them could not support the entire family. Some families couldn’t afford to send their children to school. There were laws passed to help the children and the poor. One of the laws was “Poor law 1834” (Dickens 127). That was to help give the poor at that time some clothes and money. That help some but it wasn’t a enough.
The clothing during the 1800’s was poor. You could tell if the parents were rice by how many times a weak the children to change their clothing. Most of the town people washed their clothes together. That part was written in the Christmas carol. “The town people washed their clothes in a cropper” (Dickens 127). Most families could not afford to send their children to get a private education.
It was a very diffluent time to fine good paying jobs work. Jobs did not pay well enough to support a family. In some family parents had to work during Christmas to support their familes. That was shown in the book. Like Scrooge told Hatchet to work the next day after Christmas Eve. Most people had to walk to their jobs because they couldn’t afford to get a horse drawn carriage. The jobs did not provide health care. The families really had to save up their money if the child got sick.
People homes were a mess to. They were all lined up together. They were really close to one another. The poor and the rich lived to next to one another. This was shown in the book. “The homes of the upper and middle class exist in close proximity to areas of unbelievable poverty and filth. Rich and poor alike are thrown together in the crowded city streets” (Perdues). All of the chimneys were tighter making soot come down everywhere. “The city’s thousands of chimney pots are belching coal smoke, resulting in soot which seems to settle everywhere.” (Perdue). This caused a lot of health related problems. All of the horse drawn carrages made a lot of excrement and caused the wheels to get stuck in it.
As you can imagne that the air was bad then the disease was far worse to. All of the sewage and clear water came toghter. People were getting very sick from drinking this water and caused mothers to have babies health problems. “Until the second half of the 19th century London residents were still drinking water from the very same portions of the Thames that the open sewers were discharging into.” (Perdues). One of the doctors back then proved that the people who were drinking water got sickened from that drinking water. Parliaments finally changed were they get the water from. People also were touching their shoes that the horse manure on them and would get sick from that too, due to the lack of sinks and soap.
Charles Dickson made the Christmas celebration a modern way. He was probably the first person to modernize it. His Christmas celebrations of the Carol adapted the twelve-day manorial Yule feast to a one-day party” (Swanson). That too is shown at the end of the book. He also made to where you could have parties in your own home and have your family and friends to celebrated with you. Not with the entire towns people. He came up with some of his ideas from his memories he had when he was a child.
Charles got his idea for the story when his wife was expecting in the fall of 1843. Hi newspaper club at the time wasn’t making much money. He really needed cash to help pay the baby bills. “The seeds for the story that became A Christmas Carol were planted in Dickens’ mind during a trip to Manchester to deliver a speech in support the Athenaeum, which provided adult education for the manufacturing workers there.” (Perdue). While on his trip he began to write it all out. Once Dickens was finished writing the book he sold it for five shilling so that everyone one could afford it. The book came out before the weak of Christmas in 1843. He made lots of money on it. He also spent a grate deal of money to fight off the people that claim that they made the book and copy right issues.
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The setting for the Christmas Carol was in the winter in England in London. It was a very busy and difficult place to live like it was in the 18 century. It was about two days before Christmas. All of the houses were lined up next to each other. The transportation at that time was by horses. All of the chimmneys were giving out soot. This description of the setting of the story sounded a lot like how the people lived back in London.
The characters in the book were Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the whole Cratchet family. Tiny Tim was the popular character. He has a disease that makes him use crutches to walk form place to place. “Dr. Lewis studied the symptoms of Tim’s disease in the original manuscript of the 1843 classic. The disease, distal renal tubular acidosis type I, (Perdue). That was one possibility that Tim could have had that disease. The Spirit of Present showed Scrooge that he needs to help pay the health bills so that Tiny Tim could possibly live. The Spirit of the Christmas Yet to Come showed Scrooge that he did not help and Tiny Tim died.
One of the other popularly characters in a Christmas Carole was Scrooge. “The miserly owner of a London counting-house, a nineteenth century term for an accountant’s office (Phillips). He was probably the richest person in London. Although he was rich he was all alone. He has this big house but no one was living with him at the time. He was rude and to give money to other people All the town people didn’t like him at all. Scrooge had an accounting partner named Jacob Marley but he was dead. He appeared before Scrooge. The book suggests that Marley went to hell. “I am here to night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.” (Dickens 29) Three spirits, Past, Present and Christmas yet to come, came to visit him to change his future. Scrooge had to learn that it is never to late to change how one feels and acts. In the end he does and now he loves Christmas.
Charles came up with most of these characters from London in the time period. Tiny Tim was a sick kid and the parents could not afford to take him to the doctors. Scrooge was an example of rich person not helping the poor. No one is sure where Charles came up with Scrooge some experts think”Jeremy Wood owner of the Gloucester Old Bank and possibly Britain’s first millionaire, become a nationally known figure for his miserly ways, and may have inspired Dickens in creating the character of Scrooge” (Wayne )
Charles was trying to get people attention on what was England was going through. The book showed how hard it was to live in England and especially during the winter months. It showed how hard it was to work. The disease that was described, happened because of the lack of proper plumbing. “With A Christmas Carol, Dickens hopes to illustrate how self-serving, insensitive people can be converted into charitable, caring, and socially conscious members of society through the intercession of moralizing quasi-religious lessons.” (Phillips).
Of all the movies made of this story, the movies that portray the setting as old London do so with great detail as to how the people lived. It showed how difficult but yet how fun it was to celebrate the Holidays. It showed how the town people got around. Charles did portray how life really was in the 18 century and shows how difficult it was to live in the winter months. He changed how Christmas dinner was celebrated from twelve night event into on single night. Soon after the success of his book, London soon began to change.
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