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Ep. 20. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (with Holly Furneaux)
134 Plays1 month ago
In this festive holiday special, I talk with Prof. Holly Furneaux about Charles Dickens' classic 1843 novella A Christmas Carol.
Professor Holly Furneaux teaches and researches Victorian literature and culture at Cardiff University. Her work focuses on the cultural history of war, gender, the history of sexuality, and the history of emotions. Following her first book Queer Dickens (2009) she has continued her fascination with Dickens. She was adviser on the BBC series Dickensian and an organiser of the annual Dickens Day for over a decade. Holly's latest book is Enemy Intimacies and Strange Meetings in Writings of Conflict (2025), which develops her interests in war and emotion, explored in Military Men of Feeling (2016). She is now working on a cultural history of international adoption in the Victorian period.
Episode references:
- Dickens, Household Words
- Preface to Bleak House
- Michael Slater, Charles Dickens
- Paul Davis, 'Retelling A Christmas Carol: Text and Culture-Text'
- Charles Dickens, 'Somebody's Luggage'
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Produced, hosted, and edited by Chris Lloyd.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Books Up Close
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Books Up Close, the podcast. I'm Chris Lloyd. This is the close reading show for writers, readers and language nerds. In today's festive Christmas special, I talk to Professor Holly Furnow about Charles Dickens' 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol.
00:00:17
Speaker
Holly teaches and researches Victorian literature and culture at Cardiff University.
Introduction to Holly Furnow and Her Expertise
00:00:21
Speaker
Her work focuses on the cultural history of war, gender, the history of sexuality and the history of emotions. Following her first book, Queer Dickens, she has continued her fascination with him. She was advisor on the BBC series Dickensian and an organizer of the annual Dickens Day for over a decade.
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome Holly, thank you so much for joining me this morning.
Why A Christmas Carol?
00:00:41
Speaker
yeah Thanks for having me. This is going to be enjoyable. Deep dive into Dickens. Yeah, I was like, we need to do a Christmas episode of the podcast. We just did a Halloween episode and we talked about Dracula. That was really fun.
00:00:53
Speaker
So I was like, we've got to do a Christmas episode. And I was like, well, we have to therefore talk about A Christmas Carol. And I was like, who do I know? Who is the Dickens person I know? And it was you. Yours was the name that came into my head. So I'm excited to dig into this book, which...
00:01:07
Speaker
I guess a lot of people will know in some format whether they've read it or whether they've seen adaptations. So it's kind of interesting to go back to the text and see see what comes up. Yeah, everyone will have their
The Power of Close Reading
00:01:19
Speaker
favorite adaptation, think. Usually adapted, isn't it? um Muppets Christmas Carol is always our Christmas ritual. yeah So it is interesting to go back to the text because those recreations are so vivid that you're thinking of those. um And looking at this very opening of A Christmas Carol, its it's a bit that we don't really see adapted that much. Yeah.
00:01:43
Speaker
And I think the Muppets one is probably the one that they lift the most direct text from, right? Because they actually have like the narration. So I was like, oh, that line is in the book, actually. Yes. which is yeah Which is always enjoyable to watch. and More of gravy than of the grave. Yeah.
00:02:00
Speaker
Fantastic line. Before we get into that, I want to know generally, how do you feel about close reading? Obviously, you teach literature for a living. So I imagine this is your bread and butter. But how do you feel about it as a practice?
00:02:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a kind of gift to the reader to feel like you're in a collaboration with the author. Because obviously, each of us brings our own things to a close reading, none of us is a blank slate. So I open up the A Christmas Carol and the things I bring to it will be different to the things you or each of us brings. So we're reading with all our set of preconceptions. So then we're in a kind of collaboration, correspondence, dialogue with the author. So I think of it as a kind of conversation between me and Dickens when I'm reading this. But I also think close reading can be a very powerful tool for reassessment that it allows us to go back and unpick things that we've always believed because certain narratives about certain authors, particularly Dickens, he's them got a particular cultural status that means a whole set of ideas attached to him. But if you go back and close read the materials, you've got an opportunity to unpick that and form your own view and then support it with evidence.
Analyzing A Christmas Carol's Opening
00:03:18
Speaker
And as literary scholars, or for all readers, it is our power tool, isn't it, that we can then say, actually, I've got a different opinion of this, because I've gone back and read this closely. And here's my evidence for why I think we should read this differently, to how perhaps we were taught to read Dickens at school, or how culture tells us to expect what we're told to expect about Dickens.
00:03:45
Speaker
So I think close reading is essential really for us to be able to form our own view and take confidence that our reading is legitimate. We've we've got grounds for why we read it in this way.
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah, the evidence is interesting. And there's a few bits of this opening to A Christmas Carol that, in terms of narrative voice, that I want us to talk about, and I think you might have more to say on that, that, again, might not be the idea we have in our head of what a Dickens novel is, or the kind of the tone and the voice of this opening is really kind of striking in a number of ways. So I'm really excited to get into it.
00:04:22
Speaker
Okay, I'm going to read the opening for a change. Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker and the chief mourner.
00:04:37
Speaker
Scrooge signed it and Scrooge's name was good upon change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind, i don't mean to say that I know of my own knowledge what there is particularly dead about a doornail.
00:04:52
Speaker
I might have been inclined myself to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country's done for.
00:05:06
Speaker
You will therefore permit me to repeat emphatically that Mali was as dead as
Narrative Style and Reader Engagement
00:05:11
Speaker
a doornail. Scrooge knew he was dead. Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?
00:05:17
Speaker
Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner.
00:05:31
Speaker
And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain. The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from.
00:05:45
Speaker
There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman, rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot,
00:06:09
Speaker
say St. Paul's churchyard, for instance, literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
00:06:16
Speaker
That opening line is great, though, right? Like this is a starting of a text like Marley was dead, colon, to begin with. And it is so evocative in so many ways.
00:06:27
Speaker
Marley was dead. And we're like, well, we don't know who Marley is, but whatever, we're going with it to begin with. And I always feel like that to begin with is like double, right? It's like, here's the start of the story,
Scrooge and Marley's Relationship
00:06:38
Speaker
right? I'm telling you this is the beginning, but also he's not gonna be dead for very for very long. Like he's setting up like, to begin with, Molly was dead. Let's let's get the ground of groundwork done.
00:06:48
Speaker
But he's already in kind of foreshadowing mode. He's already like telegraphing the entire novel in like one sentence. Yeah, yeah. And then moving through the whole passage, this insistence that the reader has to go with the narrator. yeah There is no doubt whatever about that sentence too. And then this cup constant like reiterating old Marley was as dead as a doornail, another great yeah image that's coming right at the end of that first paragraph. So like a sense that the reader has to be cajoled, persuaded to go along with this gambit that the narrator explicitly tells us a number of times, this isn't going to work unless you accept what I'm telling you. It's quite an interesting thing about kind of setting up a contract between the author and the reader that we're asking, i suppose, the reader to place their faith and trust in this narrator in order to set us up for those things that are going to stretch our belief, especially if we come to this thinking, oh, we're going to have a realist author. Like, how is that going to work that we've got a character who is only dead to begin with?
00:08:04
Speaker
And yeah, Dickens taking that plunge into the Gothic that He really needs us to be willing to go with him. Yeah, which is so funny because, you know, yeah i think we're used to the gothic, you know, it's all kind of mood, it's atmosphere, it's kind of the build-up. Whereas here he's like, no, no, I just need to tell you, like, this is what this is and you just need to be okay with it. So just get on board, people. um It's kind of funny. It's like quite wry as an opening that I don't think everyone reads Dickens as funny always.
00:08:33
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of kind of silly humour here, isn't there? Like... the Coming up in the second paragraph, I don't mean to say that I know of my own knowledge what there is particularly dead about doornail. might have inclined myself to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. Like what a great comic phrasing. Coffin nail is the deadest piece of ironmongery.
00:09:00
Speaker
It's quite silly, isn't it? It's slightly sort of slapstick humour. And very much sort of Dickens pulling showing the kind of clunking of the strip, the puppeteer, what we'd now maybe describe as metafiction, where the author explicitly... uncovers their craft and says, oh, look, and they're even like, oh, I've chosen this simile because that's the one we all agree on. The wisdom is of our ancestors is in the simile. um
00:09:33
Speaker
My hand shall not disturb it. So like a quite a crafty version, crafty and crafted, like, oh, look, I'm the author with the quill.
00:09:45
Speaker
I'm going to lead you through these things rather than that version of an omniscient narrator, which is where we
Reader's Contract and Imagination
00:09:52
Speaker
see the narrator kind of stepping as far out of the frame as they can and pretending that this is all gospel truth. This is a narrator who really wants to tell us about how they're working us Yeah, exactly. Like, I think that the first paragraph, you don't really get any kind of I voice.
00:10:10
Speaker
We can come back to that first paragraph. But then in the second, he says, mind I don't mean to say that I know of my knowledge. You're like, what do you mean i Like, I think, again, we're used to like the Victorian novel or the kind of realist novel as third person, right? It's omniscient, like we're taught always like third person omniscient, right? And Dickens often plays with that. Sometimes there'll just be like an I will interrupt and you're like, wait, who is this i Like, I thought the narrator was completely absent, right? And then you're like, yeah is it just Dickens himself talking to us? Is he putting on like a literary persona?
00:10:38
Speaker
Dickens as narrator, as well as the narrator, right? you've got all these kind of interesting layers that I think, I think that mind exclamation mark, it's like suddenly he's talking to you, reader, directly. he He's having a one-to-one with you. And that kind of, it's very voice, voicey, like mind.
00:10:55
Speaker
I don't mean to say. It's totally quite unexpected to me. Yeah, and it is interesting, isn't it, that exhortation of the reader, that that choice, mind. So pay attention. yeah But also in its other meaning, use your mind. The thing that is going to be the whole power of A Christmas Carol that Dickens is also going to set up in this opening is...
00:11:23
Speaker
imaginative work um are imaginative powers of projection so it's quite interesting that it's that word mind exclamation mark like pay attention but also kind of get your mind in gear for the kind of mental gymnastics that are going to need to follow because this is another version of the victorian realist project isn't it that if we can empathize sufficiently with those we read about our behavior towards them will change or if if we're say the middle class reader as many were especially for Christmas carol as the it was so lavishly bound and things it became quite expensive to buy so the middle class reader that is then being attuned to the experiences of the very poor the cratchets and then the figures of ignorance and once standing in for that these figures that we need to mind pay attention to so I i really like the way that it's that word that Dickens uses to call us in yeah call us in is a great phrase because you know this Molly was dead to begin with there is no doubt whatever about that
00:12:33
Speaker
You have to trust in me, right? You have to trust in me as author, as narrator. The register his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker and the chief mourner, right? This listing, just to be like, like, everyone agrees he was dead. i don't want you to think about this social world and ask questions. You have to get on board. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon change for everything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.
00:12:56
Speaker
And some great alliteration there dead as a doornail. and Satisfying, isn't it? Really satisfying. But like the yeah paragraph kind of just goes on and on and you're like, okay, he's dead. We get it. But like, he's like, no, no, I really need you to get this. And I think there's something like extending for quite a few paragraphs about the deadness. that I don't know in some of Dickens' other work, you know, like he's he's often accused of like melodrama and like the kind of like the really over the broad strokes of things, right? And this is really broad strokes, but at the same time, you're like, oh, well this is actually quite dark and quite bleak, right? It's like the the beginning of this Christmas story, it's called A Christmas Carol. We're beginning with death. We're beginning with foreboding. We're beginning with the gothic. And i think there's a really interesting tension there that he's like setting up.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, and when you said about that alliteration, dead as a doornail, And then the soundings of a you get what there is particularly dead about a doornail as if that's a kind of pleasure on the tongue or in the ear as well as on the page. Thinking about these as texts that were being read aloud. We know that Dickens was read in mechanics institutes and that in families you'd have the copies of Dickens. being circulated so they'd be being read in the servants' halls as well as by the grand family. um So that kind of audio quality of Dickens, but also the theatricality of this that um Dickens famously considered being an actor and that you get a kind of oration here. It's ah almost like a verbal delivery, isn't it? which Christmas Carol did go on to be a text that Dickens delivered in his public readings. It was like famously one of his favourites to deliver verbally. and you think i'm Hearing you read that out loud and this kind of slow build, like insistence, setting this scene quite gradual to get across this key piece of information that you almost think that's the type of pace you'd need to if you're hearing it, not just reading it, so that you don't miss this key thing.
00:15:09
Speaker
Yeah, and that you saying that made me think of, you know, the kind of epic poetry tradition, right, where people are reading aloud and the reason that in the Odyssey and all these things that you've got these repetitions of like phrases of like imagery of symbolism, right? Like they always go back to the, you know, the wine dark sea or whatever, that to hear something to say it out loud, you need those little oral hooks, right? So I think even the kind of coming back to the deadness, the alliteration, the kind of the pacing, as you're saying,
00:15:37
Speaker
is helpful both for those people reading it aloud, but also those hearing it. right You can imagine a family sitting around and like reading this together and like the kids being drawn in to the scary bits, but also the adults kind of laughing at the you know the irony in between the lines. So there is definitely something sound-wise that's like quite fascinating. The wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it.
00:16:01
Speaker
All the country's done for. Like, again, there's lots of like sibilance in there and then the unhallowed hands. But all the country's done for, which then is like funny again. Right. He he goes, swerves back and forth between like let me tell you about the simile, whether it works or not.
00:16:15
Speaker
But if it doesn't work, like, you know, we're all goners. It's kind of funny. Right. i The adults are kind of laughing at that. The kids like, what is he talking about? Get back to the ghost, you know, get back to the the dead man. Yeah, the layers. Unhallowed Hands is really interesting, isn't it, given the way that Christmas Carol is interpreted as a kind of secular parable, although Dickens certainly talked about it as something that would inspire transformation in a Christian age, but in some ways that the whole need for a Christmas Carol exposes the failings in Christian charity of the period. So for the author or the narrator figure, this this mysterious I voice, to say, my unhallowed hands, that feels really strange, doesn't it, that we've got an author who's declaring
Dickens' Writing Process
00:17:11
Speaker
themselves as somehow
00:17:13
Speaker
some way unholy to deal with the material. Yeah. And, you know, even that like that he's part of a larger social world, right? Like all the country's done for, like, if I mess with this simile, like a literary tradition might fall apart or, you know, what we understand to be like genre might fall apart. and I think there's something quite fun about that, that he's playing in that realm. Cause you know, he's already famous by this point, right? When it comes out, he's all of a twist has been out. Like there's quite a few, but like he's, he's a known writer at this point. So there's a sense of him,
00:17:42
Speaker
I don't know, playing with his role as author and what like the literary tradition looks like or the landscape looks like at this point anyway. Yeah, definitely. He's at an interesting point in his career, because as you say, he's quite well known. And he's written some absolutely huge Victorian blockbusters by this point with the early ones, Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and he's just um finishing off Martin Chuzzlewit as he's writing this. So he's um sort of into his a more established phase as an author but at the same time Dickens is nervous that his popularity could decline any minute like he's worried about going up like a rocket and coming down like a stick and that somehow all of this accolade could disperse and with it his income that he's also worried that he's like reliant on writing for his money and in part Christmas Carol as well as being like this incredible social relational project is also a commercial venture that Dickens is hoping to like bump up his income from so this idea about yeah the country's done for
00:18:56
Speaker
This kind of talking about the um authority of the author here feels quite personal, I think, given that Dickens is at this point in his career where he still feels quite insecure. Despite the fact that he's very well known and an acclaimed author by now. Yeah, that's really interesting. Because even that next line, you will therefore permit me to repeat emphatically that Marley was dead as a daughter. Like, you will permit me.
00:19:24
Speaker
Like, again, this, you know, he's like, you and me, Rita, we're in this together now. Like, I've got you. Yeah, absolutely. In that next paragraph, Scrooge knew he was dead. Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years.
00:19:39
Speaker
so already we're like, wait, he kind of jumps ahead a little bit being like, how could it
Cultural Impact of A Christmas Carol
00:19:43
Speaker
be otherwise? Like, we don't know who Scrooge is, dear narrator. But like, there's already like an assumption that we're like in the world. But then he says they were partners for I don't know how many years, which obviously is like a turn of phrase, right? But for a narrator, we don't usually expect that. you know, it's a very talky phrase, right? Something you might say between friends, like, oh, I don't know how long been working there. But it's like, well, why don't you know, narrator? Shouldn't you know that?
00:20:06
Speaker
Yeah, that is really fun of the phrase, isn't it? For being like, some things cannot be confirmed by this iVoice. We're not on absolutely solid ground here. because we've got a narrator who's going to tell us, well, the pieces of this information are dark to me as well. um Maybe that's part of the contract with the reader, that there's things that we'll discover together and the narrator taking on that position of partial ignorance that mirrors that of the reader. But yeah, I think that's a ah great bit to pick out. Such an odd bit that you just skip over usually, unless you were doing this kind of detailed reading. But there that really is glaring. I don't know read how many years. Yeah.
00:20:52
Speaker
And then as it goes on, partners goes past quickly, doesn't it? But then you have this reiteration of Scrooge as the sole sort of connection to Marley that there isn't anybody else to take on any of these roles of executor administrator. It's all a very legal language here, as assign, residuary legatee. And then it goes to soul friend and soul mourner that um that language of partnership, which just flickers into view is then replaced by Scrooge being the only. So it doesn't feel,
00:21:34
Speaker
I guess there we're not sure, like, is Scrooge now as bereft, like left alone? Or is this telling us more about Marley? But then when we go on to learn that actually they're not really friends, he's not really mourned, it's even harsher because this is telling us about a total breakdown in social connections. So, yeah, I think that's important that the word partner gets replaced repeatedly by the word soul.
00:22:05
Speaker
Yeah, and that sentence really amps that up, right? His sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole as assign, just all joined by commas, right? He's just like, I'm just going to list them, list them, list them, list them. And the more you repeat soul, the more that aloneness is foregrounded. But like, you say soul enough, and then you hear like, the other kind of soul, right? Yeah, you're hearing the homonym there. You know? are without soul. Yeah. Yeah.
00:22:34
Speaker
Lacking of heart and soul. Yeah, and soul mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully caught up by the sad event. You're like, okay. He's really kind of like, he's like yanking us around here. Like he's giving us lots of backstory, if you like. He's giving us exposition, but he's doing it so quickly in a way, right? He's like setting out a whole like tableau of these two men and what they meant to each other.
00:22:58
Speaker
All the while we have to be like, oh wait, he just told us one of them is dead. And now he's telling us the other one doesn't actually hear that he's dead. you're Like, how is it a Christmas story, Dickens? Like, where are we going here? Where you taking us? Yeah.
00:23:08
Speaker
And then, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain. That undoubted bargain. Like you hear in Undoubted, the narrator is suddenly offering maybe like a moral or at least like an ethical spin on that, right? Like up until now, he's been telling us something about both characters.
00:23:31
Speaker
and And we're reading between the lines, but they're like an undoubted bargain feels, it feels spiky. because we'll then go on to understand the kind of business that Scrooge is conducting, which
Themes of Social Responsibility
00:23:45
Speaker
feels perhaps even harsher than another kind of occupation on the day of your soul friend's funeral, that perhaps if he were a doctor or somebody who assists others, going to work on that day would feel less jarring. But in fact, he's probably calling in bad debts or putting people like the Cratchits into further difficulty by refusing to give them extensions on their loans.
00:24:13
Speaker
So this, this kind of money work that he's doing on that day that you might want to call sacred and not work on given the importance of Marley in his life. But he disregards those human connections in favor of like, just get on with business. conduct something that if for Scrooge, it's an undoubted bargain, it's going to be harmful to the person.
00:24:41
Speaker
um he's conducting that business with. Yeah. Yeah. Like a real, a real little stab here that we like for those readers, I guess, you know, Dickens like, okay, we're still maybe in that social realm of like, what does, what does interconnection mean? Who owes what to whom, you know, like this is, yeah ah this is an ongoing theme for him, right? These social interconnections. And then the last paragraph that we've got here, the mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. It's like, It's just so funny how he keeps emphasizing this.
00:25:13
Speaker
This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story I'm going to relate. Nothing wonderful can come of it. Which as you said earlier is like about imagination, right? It's about leaning into narrative, leaning into story, but also like nothing wonderful can come of the story. Like he wants something to happen. He wants impact to to use that word that we talked about earlier. There's something quite interesting about that.
00:25:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think when I read this section, that that sentence, this must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story I'm going to relate, is the whole hook of this first section, really, that he's preparing us as readers for our own transformative journey, that all of this groundwork and reiteration has been to bring us to the point where we might be willing to go into a realm of wonderment that could be able to work on ourselves as we'll see it work on Scrooge, that this term wonder and its kind of social political valence, what wonder can do. This is so much like Dickens' manifesto for the power of literature, isn't it? That um readers haven't encountered him yet. as the editor of his own journal, but he'll go on in 1850 when he sets up his journal, Household Words, to talk about how the purpose of literature is to bring people together. And in then the preface to Bleak House famously, the romantic side of familiar things that we won't all just be kind of grinding away and the minutiae of our daily work and its dullness, but we'll begin to see kind of the wonder all around us all the time. And that will somehow transform us internally, but also in our relationships. So Here we get the word wonder and other times Dickens uses the word fancy, romance or familiar. This is getting close to those kind of later mission statements that he makes about what literature does. Yeah. And even like the story I'm going to relate, he's like, he's full in narrator mode, right? Like, I'm going to tell you the story, but it's almost like this opening is like, we're not in the story yet. Like ah I'm about to tell you this thing, but like, I have to lay this groundwork first. Like it is ideological groundwork, but it's also like narrative groundwork. There are some things you have to get on board with, otherwise none of this is going to work.
00:27:46
Speaker
I can't actually work my magic on you if you don't come with me. Yeah. And um the magic is... Lots of things, isn't it? It is a joyful story to read that we're going to get gripped by. It's, although not immediately for Dickens, going to be quite a money spinner. it's that the The wonder is also something that can be commercialized. But I think to take Dickens at his word here, I do really believe that he also thinks something really powerful, transformative is going to happen. And ah you drew us...
00:28:22
Speaker
back to him talking about the story. Like um I really liked this moment in it about the power of storytelling, what a story could do in the world. And yeah, it feels like such a good message. for Christmas all times of year, but like a message that we might want and need right now as well, that if we can tell better stories to one another, we might actually improve the way we live. Yeah, again, one of the reasons why close reading is important, right? Like, we're so used to just absorbing story on a daily level, whether it's, you know, on social media or on the news or whatever, without pausing to be like, wait, what, why was the passive voice used there?
Revisiting A Christmas Carol
00:29:07
Speaker
Like, what is happening when that bit of language is used or that kind of word? You know, what what does that metaphor actually do for us when we're not interrogating it And I think he's saying, you've got to pay attention to these words. Like these, these words are important. Like, I know I use this simile and maybe it's not the best simile, but like, we'll go with it because it's the one everyone knows. Like, you know, he's calling our attention to being active in in reading, right? That it isn't just a passive state, which which we might expect, right? Just like picking up the realist book and just sinking into it. But actually he's like, you need to do something too.
00:29:38
Speaker
Yeah, mind. Yeah, yeah. And it's funny that then he says, like, if we were not perfectly convinced that hamlets Hamlet's father died before the play began, there'd be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night in an easterly wind upon his own ramparts than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot, say St. Paul's churchyard, for instance, literally to astonish his son's weak mind. so you're like, A, he's like, this is really the long digression of this kind of intertextual reference to Hamlet.
00:30:08
Speaker
But also, i don't know, that say St. Paul's Churchyard, for instance, I think he's like, he's like, let's get back to London. Let's lets let's drag you back to like the milieu that you're used to with me almost is what it feels like. But again, treating the play being like, even these canonical works, the what the works you might know, like they do require you to do something as a listener, as a viewer, as a reader. And i think he's placing himself in like a much bigger tradition of genre in a way, like in in the broadest sense, like like genre is the contract with the reader that you know, these are the conventions, this is the boundary, if you like, that we're going to work in and you have to be in it. Otherwise it's just a man walking along his ramparts and it therefore has no magic, has no meaning.
00:30:48
Speaker
Yeah. And it's um no accident there that the references to a play, that this is also going to be a kind of spectacle And although maybe now we think of Shakespeare as perhaps less culturally accessible or sort of high culture for Victorian theatre goers, like them that would be a much more accessible.
00:31:13
Speaker
reference point than another novelist. He doesn't cite Bill Whitton or Thackeray or Walter Scott, one of his favorites. He could definitely give them a Scott reference here, but instead he goes for the theater, which people will likely know. And Hamlet, who will be ah a recognizable figure, this this doesn't feel like an intertextuality that's there to um demonstrate the author's great learning. Although sometimes I think Dickens invokes Shakespeare to to show, yeah, look, I know why.
00:31:46
Speaker
my rhe material. And also, let's think about me in a kind of lineage with Shakespeare. Let's place me in that company. But here, I think he's going for it because he expects his readers to be able to use that reference to visualize it, and then to kind of have a smile at thinking of themselves as like a middle aged gentleman who goes for a stroll. And that's a little bit like Hamlet's father yeah stalking about it. Yeah. It's a really nice sort of come with me again, rather than here's the clever thing you're not going to get. A hundred percent. And it just, I think even just having this conversation, this isn't the thing that I think of when I think of a Christmas car, right? Like this setup is not the thing that immediately comes to mind. It's all the rest of it. And actually that we've, we've had a a whole page of him like digressing, turning around,
00:32:41
Speaker
setting up like doing all this uh like scene setting but i think it's so funny just as you say i said at the beginning to like go back to the text and be like where does it actually begin what is it where is our grounding you know and i always say this to students like the first page of a book will tell you everything you need to know about the entire thing right? Like if you read closely enough that first page, it will telegraph everything you need to know.
00:33:02
Speaker
And here he's giving us lots about style and form and genre and narrative and author reader about social relations, about like the tone, like he's he's doing so much. And what seems I can imagine some readers being like, Oh my God, this is boring. When is, when do we get to know some stuff about the
Exploring Lesser-Known Dickens
00:33:19
Speaker
characters? Right. It's it's a really fun and strange start to a ah book that I think people think they know.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. That we're not really getting any insight. You would think you'd want a strong character hook to to take you into the story that you'd be wanting to get to know Scrooge a bit quicker than this. And in fact, this is it's quite deferred, isn't it? we We have to wait for quite a while before we hear anything more than Marley was dead. Yeah.
00:33:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's a surprising opening, but then our conversation around what Dickens wants the work to do then does make this very understandable as the the contract he needs to set up with the reader.
00:34:05
Speaker
Yeah, which is an interesting way maybe into this question. But usually on this show, when I'm talking to the author of the text we're looking at, I kind of ask them about their own yeah writing practice and, and how they came to that particular text. Do we know much about how Dickens was writing? Like, did he have a I'm sure he was quite talkative about this, but i'm I'm not actually sure. Like, do we know much about how he wrote, like what his, what his setup was?
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah, well, for Christmas Carol in particular, he talks about emotional writing. He talks about laughing and crying by turns as he writes this. So that he, I guess there he's also modelling what he hopes the reader will do, that will have these strong reactions to the material.
00:34:48
Speaker
And he also is doing a thing that becomes very much a Dickens writing hallmark, that he talks about tramping the streets of London often at night, thinking out the characters and ah laughing and weeping aloud as he walks the streets and formulates this story. So yeah, he does give quite an extraordinary sort of tale about how he's writing this, but he's also pretty busy. He's squeezing this in alongside the commitment he's got to be producing the parts of Martin Chuzzlewit, which is still going along.
00:35:28
Speaker
And um I should credit Michael Slater's amazing Dickens biography here, because Michael's book traces its um a biography of Dickens as the professional author, what he's writing alongside each other.
00:35:45
Speaker
and um Michael Slater points out how Dickens is working up to Martin Chuzzlewit's sort of full transformation, reformation, that he's going to recognize that his former selfishness has been a harmful thing that has damaged those around him and have ah a change of heart, very like the one Dickens practices in A Christmas Carol. um And then once this is done, he goes on to write that section of Martin Chuzzlewit. So he's kind of trying to draw the threads of this much longer piece together while writing this short fiction over just a couple of months before he's handing it in to the publisher, ready for for it to be out in December 1843. he's writing quite quickly then this, if he's if he's churning out in a couple of months, like it's very breezy. Yeah, when Dickens isn't known for heavy edits, maybe the exception of Great Expectations where he's laboring the ending and they're scoring through and he's changing the ending. and Dickens manuscripts are not heavily rethought that that there'll be mild changes but
00:36:58
Speaker
typically as he writes is what you get. And that's maybe a function of serialization that he's writing often to weekly or more often monthly deadlines, but and having more than one project on the go. and Christmas Carol Stickens' first Christmas book, but then due to its great success and the fact that he sees a kind of both social and commercial function to it, he then...
00:37:28
Speaker
has a habit of doing Christmas writings which just have to fit in alongside all his other scheduled work. I always find it surprising as well that he's such a prolific letter writer that the um Dickens and surviving letters run to 12 volumes and he's just writing all this correspondence every day as well.
00:37:48
Speaker
Later in his life and he'll go on to edit journals as well as write journalism for them and I think he's writing some journalism through this period as well so he works across genres and is sort of turning his hands to different kinds of writing within every day yeah he's had he works at pace yeah that's really fascinating and i wonder whether about that drafting as well i mean i imagine it'd be interesting to be working on this massive like book in serial installments right writing as you go like tweaking the narrative and then writing something like in its entirety that you know is going to be published in one piece right that isn't reliant on the cliffhanger the you know all of these like narrative devices that he's used to using right like at the end of a section or kind of like leaving questions open that he's writing in kind of one piece with ah yeah i really i would love to know like to ask him like how satisfying that was in a way maybe to just write something in its entirety and send it out as opposed to this kind of ongoing long project which i don't know that would stress me the hell out i think And then to get an immediate response to the finished thing rather than getting kind of the unfolding of how readers are reacting and watching the sales of his next.
00:39:06
Speaker
novelized installment to think, oh, people going along with this. yeah um He had a kind of immediate outpouring of public love for a Christmas Carol. um So that would have felt very different, I think, from the the experience of having, along with his readers, this kind of long journey and wait for what everybody really thinks, that affirmation. oh, they loved it, they love me. um He often spoke about people's reaction to A Christmas Carol and Thackeray's reaction in particular really meant a lot to Dickens where Thackeray talked about it as like a national benefit.
00:39:47
Speaker
um So clearly Dickens was reading his reviews and um that would have been quite different to his typical way of publishing and maybe is also a reason why this Christmas publication becomes um a kind of habit for him that he wants to do this again.
00:40:06
Speaker
yeah And interesting that we don't, we don't talk about those other Christmas books as
Conclusion and Podcast Information
00:40:10
Speaker
much, right? Like this is the one, like this is the one that people know. And even if if you have read A Christmas Carol, like I wonder how many people have read the other ones that are, some of them are like really weird also and quite fun and strange. Like some of them also have other ghosts in them, right? He's repeating certain motifs and But really fascinating, like this is the one that kind of like hooks the public imagination. I'm sure there are people who've read no other Dickens books, but like this one they might have.
00:40:35
Speaker
That is nice to kind of go back to. Definitely that he he is right in this opening section that if we understand the premise, something wonderful is going to come of it. And I think there is a wonderment still in like the desire to tell, retell this story, adapting it, remaking it. and There's a book called um by a critic called Paul Davis, the Carol as Culture text, which uses the the adaptations of the Christmas Carol over the 20th century to tell a story about 20th century culture, like how we need the Christmas Carol at different moments and how we reinvent it, re-inflect it for our own era, right?
00:41:21
Speaker
um yeah amazing adaptations of it and the way that that just doesn't seem to look like stopping fantastically that people will still want to put on different versions of a Christmas carol and Dickens gave us a bit of a gift there I think as well by also leaving the reading text of Christmas Carol mentioned earlier that he went out and delivered it as part of his public reading tours often using it for fundraisers as well not only for his own commercial benefit but also
00:41:54
Speaker
to to raise money for things like Great Ormond Street. um So it has, and it still often is used like for um charity events, isn't it? It has that kind of oh social responsibility element to it. But I was just thinking about an incredible performance of Christmas Carol I saw as a one-man show by Patrick Stewart. Mm-hmm.
00:42:16
Speaker
um which was partly based on Dickens's reading text, as well as adapting the novel, drawing those things together. And that was just incredible thing to to witness, be part of. And I think my feeling for that is replicated for probably lots of people listening and thinking, oh yeah, I remember the Christmas carol that I've really loved. Yeah, for sure. And there's ah there's a new one. I keep seeing it on buses everywhere. It's called Christmas Karma, oh which is, and I think it's from the director of Bend It Like Beckham.
00:42:47
Speaker
But I read a review recently and it said it was terrible, but... Maybe it'll be good. I don't know. But like again, just the the need to keep returning to it. And yeah if our conversation is anything, like readers, please go back to the text, go buy it, go find it, or it's free online in many, many forms. Go back to the original text and see whether it whether you have a different response to it from all the film versions or the theater versions you know.
00:43:10
Speaker
I highly recommend it You can read it really quickly. You'll you'll fly through it. It's very pacey and engaging and it's much quicker than like you imagine it to be or what you imagine a Dickens book to be.
00:43:21
Speaker
Yeah, it's ah it's a real pleasure, I think, to be able to read it alongside the other versions that you know and that you might see over Christmas that if you've got time to fit in a reading of it alongside seeing an adaptation. And then you get you get that joy of looking at the things that are being pulled out. yeah And a kind of, it sometimes feels a bit unfamiliar, doesn't it? When you go back to A Christmas Carol and all of its strangeness, some of it's like actual social horror yeah where um the kind of critique of Scrooge's attitude
00:44:02
Speaker
based on views about surplus population, a kind of violence, that that idea that some of the poor might as well die, that's really energetically exploded by a Christmas carol. Like, how can that kind of thinking exist? But is that so far from some of our own thinking about, like, who counts as the fully human? Whose lives do we value enough? Are we saying actually some people... yeah Sadly, in our culture today, some migrants, we'd rather allow them to shipwreck yeah and not receive care. Like some of these debates about like who is the so in Dickens's language surplus population, some of those are still really live and reading Christmas carol. now can can point those up to us. Yeah, that's brilliant. And a great place to stop that bit of the conversation. Go back and read the book. Basically, that's we're saying. and Just go read it right now. We always end this way, but do you have any book recommendations for us, Holly? Like ah as a Dickens person, like you may want to recommend a Dickens book we've not read, maybe, but are there other things you want to tell us to read that people can quickly maybe put on a Christmas list if this comes out early enough?
00:45:17
Speaker
Yeah, am I allowed to recommend some quite obscure yeah later Christmas fiction by Dickens? Or as obscure as you want writes some more Christmas books through the 1840s. But then later when he's um the editor of his own magazines, he starts having Christmas numbers of the magazines, typically in collaboration with other authors. They're nearly all multi-authored and sometimes working with now quite famous names like Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, they're they're regular collaborators with Dickens on these Christmas numbers. And there's a run of them through the 1860s that I really love because I'm interested in Dickens and adoptive family, Dickens and the family of choice, Dickens and parents who are spinsters and bachelors who just long to have a child. And Dickens goes back to this plot line repeatedly as kind of the good news story of his Christmas numbers for his journal all the year round through the 1860s. So the one I really want to recommend, I think it's 1862, is Somebody's Luggage. And it has ah lots of stories by different authors around the theme of the luggage left at an inn.
00:46:39
Speaker
And Dickens tells the story attached to the boots in the hall. And it's an incredible um adoption story. And i'll I'll leave that to listeners to go in here. But basically, Dickens is still using the Christmas number.
00:46:54
Speaker
And we could say pretty much all of his stories, and his fiction in the same way to encourage interconnection to think about. how we could be transformed by our love for one another.
00:47:08
Speaker
So that's that's persisting in the 1860s. And yeah, somebody's luggage, I think 1862. That's my recommendation. That's perfect. This is a great recommendation. Thank you so much. And I will try and find it online and link it for everyone in the notes. Holly, thank you so much for your time today. I really, really appreciate it. This was really fun.
00:47:27
Speaker
Yeah, that was super fun. Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to this episode. Please subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review and share with people you know.
00:47:39
Speaker
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00:47:50
Speaker
You can get show transcripts and more information by subscribing to the Substack. This show is made possible by an Impact Accelerator Award from the University of Hertfordshire and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.