Video 1: Gothic City
Hello and welcome to week seven lectures on a Christmas Carol in today's lecture, I'm going to discuss the Coptic city and how the city, which is. Being fueled by the industrial revolution, uh, in great Britain is turning into, uh, the city of speck does a Christmas. Carol opens with emphasis through in his Chile counting house on Christmas Eve, outside London. The great wind is shrouded in filthy Brown fog. It is the hungry forties. The 1840s. So huge distress among the working classes and masked starvation in Ireland, charter some working class reformist movement raised the fearful possibility of revolution. It was a nervous time. The details in this set of criticism establishes the context for They can sing a Christmas Carol, which was published in 1843. This novella captures the tome of the hungry forties in great burden, Scrooge who is comparatively comfortable. And the rest of his brethren, uh, in London is still not willing to spend on coal. Therefore his counting house is Chile. The entire London, the London outside has company house counting house is shrouded. The word shroud is very interesting in the goddamn context, there is the suggestion of the funeral, uh, embedded in the word shrouded entire London is covered in this filthy dirty Brown bleak. Fog, which is preventing visibility. Then there were a starvation debts in Ireland at that time. And the working classes in great Britain were they're anxious and in distress, they were not comfortable. Reform is new when movements were ongoing. Um, one such was the chart movement and the charge is movement is suggestive of the possibility of, um, a revolution in great Britain. Um, Something in the, uh, fashion also on the French revolution was expected in great Britain, but, um, it didn't happen anyway. Nevertheless, it wasn't. Now this time, the hungry forties, the 1840s was a nervous time in Britain and Scrooge is used as a symbol to. Resolve some of the problems in society. The solution for providing concert economic comfort is invested on the soldier, uh, on the shoulders of, um, The individual and that individual is ethicist schools into Kansas at Christmas Carol. So yeah, the act of charting was invested with a lot of faith in this particular novella opposites cruises or a dying woman is sitting in the gutter ghosts of rich businessmen, dancing around her. It is they who have brought her to the sad part. It's an interesting image, uh, that begins, um, the novella outside of the content houses, atlases Cruz, there is a poor woman sitting outside and, um, around her, there are ghost of rich businessmen who have brought her to this kind of situation where she is home bliss and penniless. What is implied? Is this, if the businessman I've been charitable, this movement would not be outside in the cold winter. And at the time of Christmas immediately, the point that I was just mentioning, it comes to mind again, the idea that they can do a lot of good to, um, the poor people in society is a suggested time. And again, in this novella, And you can once again, see that Gothic overtones of this novella with a ghost of businessmen in a planting about dancing around this poor woman. At the end of his 12 hour days, cruise dismisses his Clark walk, crunch it crunch crutches, his name, it walks a scratching pen is as proven or. But for typewriters and photocopying machines, then necessarily people's business and legal documents was done. The long hand crunch. It has one days holiday year, a year, and ans 15 shillings, 75 pens per six days a week, half a crown a day that he supports a large happy, but chronically hard at family. The family's favorite is tiny. Tim, a little cripple bore the details here, um, establishes the details, establish the fact that ethicists Scrooge, uh, had been paying starvation wages to his Clark. And the name of the Clark is interesting because it symbolically indicates kind of the work that he does. He crunching on a piece of people that pen. In other words, he's copying information before, um, Typewriters and photocopiers came into this world. So that's his job and project is chronically harder. He is perpetually a penniless. He's perpetually harder up in the sense that there's not sufficient money to run the family comfortably. And therefore the family is, um, in difficult circumstances. The family's favorite is tiny, Tim, the crippled boy, and despite the financial distress of the family, uh, the members are, uh, quite, uh, at peace with themselves. The first stirrings of the tail can be found in a wizard they can make to Manchester a month before he began writing one of the great artists of his time. Only fragmented as a local in the last few while he spoke at the cities. Yeah. A Tanium on 5th of October, it was a memorable evening. So those present and those who read accounts of the speech in the next days, papers, they can see give a lecture in Manchester. The month before he started writing a Christmas para, he was a great art. Uh, he had eloped with, uh, speaking skills, um, Much of it doesn't survive. His speeches don't survive intact, but there are only a fragment here and there, but those who are watched his listen to his speech on that day, uh, were, uh, much impressed by the mucho of truth and the rhetoric with which he, you used to communicate the truth to the audience and not just a, is an industry. Right? Well tone as Dickens biographer, Michael slate to destroy. They can dwelt on the terrible sight he had been. He had seen among the juvenile population in London's jails and DAS houses and stress, the desperate need for educating the poor. This occasion seems to have put into his mind that idea for a Christmas tale, which should help to open the heart to the prosperous and powerful towards the poor and powerless. But we should also bring centrally into play. The theme of memory that as we have seen was always so strongly associated with Christmas for him in that speech. Dickins. Records the need to educate the poor, the needy. And he also States that the prosperous, the weak, the, well, they have to open up their hearts towards those who are in need for the, uh, The idea of memory important to Dickens. I have memory does play quite a bit of a role in much of it's fiction and, uh, As always Christmas is also associated with remembering, remembering one's friends and family. And this is ID. Um, therefore this idea of memory is also used, uh, very, very significantly in this Christmas tale because, uh, Dickens, uh, mixed Scrooge, remember in a very, very potent manner about his past and how the past transforms his present. They can see as much effected by the kind of life that the poor children lived in had in London jails and the word Dobbs houses referred to lodging houses, but the very poor, uh, stayed with very basic MRDs Manchester. The workshop of the world was famous, not merely for its industry, but the utilitarian philosophy that drew away. It may not be clear what just line of business is, but his beliefs before his change of heart, of course still clear beyond Manchester. Are there no work houses he asks when the two gentlemen asked for a charitable donation, um, this is his rhetoric or the new houses. If the poor die, like the poor of a woman outside his house, it will he say, solve the surplus population problem. ablation had been stimulated by the stone philosophy of Thomas Robert. Now this who forced to fulfill catastrophe for England, if it's masters, but not checked by family. Well, a disease, the two things, one industrial revolution was fueling poverty. It was. Um, drastically affecting the fabric of society. Rural population were affected by, uh, the rapid piece of industry, right station second on the issue of surplus population, especially the poor, which is represented by, um, not just, uh, Bob Cratchit and his family, but also that woman who was outside of the company, house, homeless and penniless. So, um, There was this philosophy of Robert Malthus who believed that the overpopulation would become catastrophic unless it was checked, unless the person lesion was reduced by fan mine, war or disease, which would wipe out on this kind of population. So John Sutherland very, very powerfully in this set of criticism. Lays bare. Some of the trajectories wanting through, uh, London and which was refracted through the work of Charles Dickens in aunt Carol and mr. Scrooge represents the heart, a philosophy that a hard heart bitterness of the industry, uh, philosophy, the heart of it. nature of industrialism. Therefore it got some of his questions such as the one aren't, they're not what houses to take care of the poor, um, make sense within that framework, what houses were set up in order to look after the poor, but they were not doing their work and therefore, um, the poor just pilled out of certain institutions, such as a book houses. So. It's very interesting to look at the character of emesis Cruz from the point of view of industrial isolation and understand the glottic nature, which suffuses characters just crude and the businessman like him. Yeah. 1840s, when not merely hungry but hard Hartford. It was a philosophy embodied in them, ethnicity, Scrooge, not really a solitary Meiser. Like, for example, George Elliot, Silas Myrna, but the spirit of the age in human and arguably in human form, hard heads, hard hearts, good business, soft heads, and self taught. Select the bankruptcy court. Scrooge would have said they can speak greed as you've just pointed out the hard hundred niches of, uh, In the slice station is represented in atlases, Scrooge. He's not just an individual, the only, um, my survey character, but he represents the spirit of the age. Um, the nature of the age, um, in all the team humanity. Screws who would have believed that what is the need of the hour is hardheartedness, um, hots that doesn't soften towards the needy because he believed that the hard heart lead to good business. And that is what is represented in the character of Scrooge Howard. It disagreed with that philosophy and he does, um, Something, which is in his power to transform the hard-hearted nature of Scrooge.

Video 2: The City of Spectres
Children worked like slaves in Manchester factories as Michael Slater points out the chimneys in the background of John Lee, just illustration of the destitute, children, ignorance it's and want are more reminiscent of Magisters industrial landscape than of London streets. Six months after a Christmas, Carol was published the 1844 factories act decreed. How are the nine to 13 year olds could only work nine hours a day, six days a week. This was regarded as humane reform. One thing that, uh, has to be acknowledged is that there was a massive prevalence of child labor during the industrial revolution in grade. Oh, Brendan. And the critic, Michael Slater, no planes out that are the illustration, um, in a Christmas Carol, uh, especially, um, there's one Bay. You can see the, uh, chimneys of factories in the background. Uh, and that illustration puts, uh, pertains to the representation, right? Two desperate children, ignorance, and one, they are embodiments of those two qualities. The children represent ignorance and what, and in that illustration, there are, um, uh, just have chimneys and stuff later argues that this image is representative of Manchester factories rather than London streets. And six minutes after the publication of a Christmas, Carol, there is a very, very, uh, influential reform. There was a change in the factories act and that States that I cannot work more than nine hours a day and six days a week. So one can connect the consist writing to this kind of, uh, social reform. Why did the industries employ children? Why were they wanted for this work to live a cheap labor, but more importantly, their fingers was small and dense. Yes. But the machines interests, they were crippled. There are crippled times the Tim's by the a hundred in Manchester, you can see the connections, uh, making sense. Um, you read all these social. Context to a Christmas Carol children, but employed by the masters of factories because chillin better, firstly, cheap labor they had right. Dextrous fingers, which were helpful in that the process of, of fabric producing, um, stuff, things, materials, despite they are, uh, you know, uh, ideally. Cat rustics children were also, uh, negatively affected, uh, by the, uh, dangerous machines they got crippled. And that statement that there were plenty of tiny Tims, uh, in not just that is really disturbing. Children are crippled, turned into Inhumans of human beings by these dangerous machines, children are caught this sized in some sense by these, um, changes, industrial, uh, changes in society. The modern reader of whatever age is less sensitive to sentimentality and our Victorian forebears. I think it's his reading from his novels. Audiences would regularly be moved to a for example, uh, DAPA chairs by for example, but at the middle now and the old curiosity shop or the model of now see, and only with twist one suspects that many victims tears were shed over the foreseen, but happily full stalled, depth of tiny Tim. Victorians were very sentimental and like the modern readers, um, they easily cried. Um, they, they were moved by the depth of, um, a little now that child who was struggling very hard to take care of her own grandfather. And likewise Nancy who looks after her were dressed, um, is somebody who also moves the audience to tears when she dies in a gruesome manner. In the case of tiny Tim in a Christmas Carol, that death is expected, but happily it doesn't happen because there was radical of nation and atmosphere, Scrooge child character, as I've been discussing, uh, over, uh, the lectures are important figures. It is easy to bring them forward and make the reader see the impact that the industrial transformation is having on these tiny bodies and spirits, how the innocence, uh, is negatively effected by the rapid change of, uh, change in industrial revolution and progress. And, uh, Dinkins is very, very, um, Uh, shrewd in the way he, uh, utilizes these, um, child characters in his novella, especially the representation of ignorance and warned, uh, in terms of representations in the form of children does work, um, really powerful in the mind of the readers when they read their destitute nature. The ghost in a Christmas Carol are by turns comic. With Teske and allegorical professor John Mullen reflects on the essential role in developing the novels, meaning and structure, the ghost, the spirits, the supernatural being. He's in a Christmas, Carol, I'm not one dimensional. You can argue that they are very funny. Yeah. Grotesque bizarre. And they also symbolize, um, other values. They are allegorical. They represent certain qualities. Um, there had been goose in literature before they went to new Orleans, but the ghost story as a distinct and popular genre was the invention of the Victorians. Charles Dickens was hugely influential in establishing the journalist day, not only as a writer, but also as an editor, his Jones household words, and all the around specialized in ghost stories and other contemporary journals followed. John Mullen. The critic argues that the ghost story is an invention of the Victorians. And in fact, Had played a massive role in establishing the generic quality of this, uh, ghost, uh, matter, um, both the is like the assets and as an editor, he normally would go stories, but you also encourage the publication of ghost stories in his jungles. Um, just a household word, uh, words and all the year round. Dickinson's close friend and biographer. John Foster said that the novel had a hand growing up the goals. Not that they didn't exactly believe in ghosts, but he was intrigued by our belief in them in the front. This is Carl, the first of his go stories. He harnesses that belief by making the supernatural and natural extension of the real world of Scrooge and his victims. This is a long way from the specters of early Gothic fiction, thinking see loved tales with ghost in them. In fact, he had a proclivity towards NGOs. That's what is mentioned by John Foster, his friend and Piper for, and in fact, a Christmas card. It's the first of its real stories. And in that story, what he does is the one that goes, becomes an extension of the real world. Well, there's no, um, Massive division between real world and the Gothic world, the world supernatural. When that woman they're sitting outside, when that desperate woman is sitting outside a scrooges counting house and with all these ghosts of business men dancing around her, you cannot, um, Differentiate reality. And on the spiritual world, that there was a natural blend of the two. And this has a very, very powerful impact on the readers because we'll go on to make, uh, um, further, um, explorations in the world of, uh, girls stories. But this bright first, um, experiment of Dickens in, um, Both Tori is fantastic and very powerful. The first strictly supernatural site in the story is the door knocker on the outside door of screw, just chambers that met them or forces as the Mesa looks at it in the face as his formal partner, Jacob Marley, uh, dead for seven years, the hair curiously stirred as if by breath or. Hot air and the dough. And though the eyes were wide open, they were perfect motionless. You can see how gradually tickings builds up the pot thick have rustics of the setting. In fact, um, the knocker on the door of school just changed. What changes, um, into the face of his former partner, Jacob Marley, who's now dead, um, has been dead for seven years and look at the way, um, Dickens describes the door. Look of, she looks like the face of Marley. Uh, the hair seems to stir as if somebody is reading. Um, And, uh, or it could be because of hot air and the eyes, even though they are wide open, uh, they are perfectly motionless. They have frozen. So there is an eagerness to this kind of description. Um, on the one hand, they could be very comic as well, if you, um, think about it in a lighthearted way, but at the same time they offer a task. So this is the nature of the terrible. In the hands of Charles Dickens, a terrible can at any moment, the component and the grotesque yet the Kansas sense of fantasy brings the horrible and comic together in the surrounding gloom. The face has a dismissal about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. The wheel mix of the terrible and the comic is kept up and Marley schools finally appears caring chain of cashboxes cheese had walks and the like. Like a parody ghost it's body transparent as coach observes. Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bubbles, but yet never believed until now, once again, there is a nice blend, uh, a comic blend of the horrible and the funny there was dismissal light in that room. It's gloomy. Um, it's bleak, but, um, Yet, it looks good. This looks like a bad lobster. That immediately brings her a lot. Right. Um, to the person looking at that image. Yeah. This is a dark settle, like setting. So you can see that. Yeah. It's a strange combination of the terrible of the comic, um, is, um, kind of kept up by, uh, Dickinson's narrative until the appearance of it. Marley's ghost. And even that post is like a Paris goals. It's as if it's a Sandra Russ representation of the ghost character, because the body is transparent and Scrooge immediately remember that people said that Marlene had no bowels. Um, and, and he can't believe that until this particular moment, because he can just see through and there's nothing inside. So, um, the ghost is. Terrible in, in, in it's visitation yet the representation of the post can also be comics. So this is the nature of the thing that one can see in a Christmas. Carol. Um, the Pima Arctic significance could be that if the ghost is too terrible, too horrible, then, um, Episode screws would just fleet in panic and there would be no transfer matrix work, um, being done on his psyche by his spiritual presences in this novel on Christmas Eve, the city is itself a place of specters where it had not been light all day outside. Screw just counting homes. The fourth is so dense that older, the code was of the narrowest. The houses opposite by our meal fandom, the bell in India by Chuck tower strikes the hours and quarters as if it's steep, but champ. Right. And it's frozen up ahead. Up there. The city itself, London in itself becomes a place of specters goes and there had been new light the entire day and outside of, um, Scrooges house counting homes. The fog is so dense that one cannot see anything outside. Very distinctly. In fact, I think looked like a spirit. The houses look like spirits can, uh, about, and, um, the church tower nearby when it strikes, um, The hour, it looked as surf. It felt as if its teeth were chattering in its head. So you can see how there is a very powerful representation of the city as skills and the people as spirits. So that makes this novel a novella, a very, very powerful. A representation of a particular idea that is a very thoroughly and Lee got incised after Maurice ghost had left. Scrooge looks out of his window and sees the efficacy, but fandoms, many of them change thoughts at once. They're known to Scrooge. It is like a fantastic wishing of the city. That's Scrooge already? No, well like Macbeth, Scrooge, because of sins. Sees wishings that are for him alone. Once Marley's ghost has gone, she just looks at the ad around him. And it seems to me full of girls, full of spirits. We're natural per census, and many of them were up, you know, bound up. So it's changed, um, that cannot, uh, freely, um, Well move about or speak their hearts. And, and what is it? Point it out to the readers, but takings is that these souls have been known to Scrooge were similarly, or with that with them once upon a time. So, this is a fantastic, really bizarre summary elevation of the city. That's food news by heart. I'm like my bath who can see a wish that are meant for him alone. And nobody else around my bed could see those. I go sleep visitation, just like my dad, as food could see these patients that have meant for his eyes alone. Thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next session.