The Ghost of Christmas Present is described as "a jolly Giant", and Leech's hand-coloured illustration of the friendly and cheerful Spirit, his hand open in a gesture of welcome confronted by the amazed Scrooge has been described by Jane Rabb Cohen as elegantly combining "the ideal, real, and supernatural" with humour and sympathy. Origins Engraving of Old Christmas 1842 - Illustrated London News (December 1842). Dickens making the Christmas Spirits a central feature of his story is a reflection of the early- Victorian interest in the paranormal. ![]() In this novella, Dickens was innovative in making the existence of the supernatural a natural extension of the real world in which Scrooge and his contemporaries lived. ĭickens's friend and biographer John Forster said that Dickens had 'a hankering after ghosts', while not actually having a belief in them himself, and his journals Household Words and All the Year Round regularly featured ghost stories, with the novelist publishing an annual ghost story for some years after his first, A Christmas Carol, in 1843. Originally intending to write a political pamphlet titled, An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child, he changed his mind and instead wrote A Christmas Carol which voiced his social concerns about poverty and injustice. Indeed, Dickens experienced poverty as a boy when he was forced to work in a blacking factory after his father's imprisonment for debt. Background Dickens portrait by Margaret Gillies (1843), painted during the period when he was writing A Christmas Carol.īy early 1843 Dickens had been affected by the treatment of the poor and, in particular, the treatment of the children of the poor after witnessing children working in appalling conditions in a tin mine and following a visit to a ragged school. The spirit becomes the mouthpiece for Dickens's view on social reform and Christian charity: generosity and goodwill to all men – especially to the poor – and celebration of Christmas Day. The spirit first appears to Scrooge on a throne made of traditional Christmas foodstuffs that would have been familiar to Dickens's more prosperous readers. ![]() ![]() The Ghost of Christmas Present is presented as a personification of the Christmas spirit, and in the novella's first edition hand-coloured drawing by John Leech resembles early- Victorian images of Father Christmas. The Ghost of Christmas Present is concerned with Scrooge's current life and the present Christmas Day. The Ghost is one of three spirits that appear to miser Ebenezer Scrooge to offer him a chance of redemption.įollowing a visit from the ghost of his deceased business partner Jacob Marley, Scrooge receives nocturnal visits from three Ghosts of Christmas, each representing a different period in Scrooge's life. The Ghost of Christmas Present is a fictional character in Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |