51 pages • 1 hour read
Samantha SilvaMr. Dickens And His Carol
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Search for Inspiration
Throughout Dickens’s writing process, he looks for new sources of inspiration. He makes references to his “mental museum” (32), in which he keeps names that interest him and inspire him to create future characters. For example, he gets the inspiration for the names of the characters Fezziwig and Cratchit from a business card, and he uses the name of a disgruntled man who threw away his autograph to create the character of Jacob Marley. However, after starting on his Christmas book, Dickens suffers from writer’s block, which drives him to search for inspiration wherever he can. He is so desperate to reinvigorate his imagination that he goes looking for inspiration in problematic places, such as when he grudgingly agrees to meet with his former love, Maria Beadnell, believing that because she has inspired him to write before, she “could lead [him] to write again” (61). This proves an imprudent and disastrous decision, as Maria visits Catherine, precipitating the crisis that shakes Catherine’s trust in him and drives her to take the children to Scotland.
In his resulting solitude, his search for inspiration takes him in ever more erratic directions. On an aimless walk through London, he irrationally hopes that he can hoping “count on [the city] to fill his head with novel things, or at least show him where to look” (72). When he meets Eleanor, however, he finds in her a muse that he has not had in a long time. He becomes fixated on her to the point that he confesses to Forster that he “cannot write another word” until he knows “everything about her” (99-100). After he meets Eleanor, he uses the name of the temperance society and the costume Eleanor makes for him to create the miserly character of Ebenezer Scrooge. Thus, Eleanor herself comes to represent the very concept of artistic inspiration. Accordingly, after his book is stolen, Eleanor inspires him to rewrite the book by telling him to “let the specter of [his] memory be the spark of [his] imagination” (189). He allows Eleanor’s words to inspire him to write the book with a lighter mood and a more hopeful sentiment, and he uses Timothy’s family sketch as an inspiration for the book’s ending. Dickens’s search for inspiration therefore brings positive changes to his dynamics, eventually helping him heal his relationships with his family, friends, peers, and even the public as he pens one of the most successful books of his career.
Balancing Artistic Integrity and Commercial Success
Dickens struggles with finding and obtaining a balance between staying true to his artistic vision and ensuring that he will make enough money to support his family. Chapman and Hall’s news of Martin Chuzzlewit’s commercial failure disappoints him, and rather than pragmatically abandoning the project, he fruitlessly wishes to find a way to make them love and appreciate the story. When Chapman and Hall demand a Christmas book and encourage him to include ghosts because “[T]he public adore spirits and goblins in a good winter’s tale,” Dickens immediately declines, saying, “I am not haunted by ghosts, but by the monsters of ignorance, poverty, want!” (15). Forster supports Dickens’s decision and even encourages him to lower his budget, but Dickens has numerous bills to pay, and Catherine and the children all have Christmas wishes. As a result, he tells Catherine, “I think without a Christmas book, we are done for” (49). For these reasons, he begins the project with a great deal of resentment, and the tone of his first draft reflects this fraught beginning.
When Dickens later shows Forster his manuscript, Forster tells him the plain truth: that the story does not have enough Christmas elements and that Scrooge is a deeply unlikable person who wants to kill his innocent nephew. He asks Dickens if it is the kind of Christmas book he should write. Dickens reveals the depths of his resentment when he replies, “Christmas need not always end in eggnog and sugarplums!” (134). When they walk outside Mudie’s bookshop and Forster tells Dickens about the discount there for the books, Dickens exasperatedly cries, “Writers told what to write. Readers told what to read” (134). He finds Mudie’s decision cynical and manipulative and feels that the world wants to sacrifice artistic vision and free choice for consumerist compliance.
After Dickens’s manuscript is stolen and he talks to Eleanor, he starts to rewrite the book with renewed hope and Christmas spirit and gives the book a more hopeful and heartfelt story. Dickens is passionate in his rewriting and completes it with barely a pause. When he publishes it, A Christmas Carol is an instant commercial and critical success, thereby reconciling the conflict inherent in this recurring theme. Thus, Dickens successfully balances artistic integrity and commercial success.
The Essence of the Christmas Spirit
Charles Dickens’s journey in regaining his Christmas spirit is a vital aspect of the novel. At the beginning of the story, Dickens has no sense of the Christmas spirit, for the narrator asserts, “On that unseasonably warm November day at One Devonshire Terrace, Christmas was not in his head at all” (1). This mindset intensifies his frustration when he is tasked with writing a Christmas story and feels the mounting financial pressure of unpaid bills. His family’s desire for a big Christmas adds to his distress, and he starts to become cynical about Christmas. Though his father always told him that “Christmas begins […] in the heart” (43), Dickens feels like his family takes him for granted and is careless about Christmas spending. As he is increasingly tormented by his family’s absence, the pressure of writing the book, and his financial woes, he loses all hope of regaining the Christmas spirit. Eventually, this attitude culminates in his accusation to his brother, for he says that Fred only sees Christmas as “a time for paying bills with no money” and declares, “Christmas begins and ends in the purse” (121-23).
After he learns that his father has stolen his manuscript, Dickens confronts his trauma of his father’s imprisonment and his time working at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse and confesses to Eleanor that he has “no other Christmas book within [him]” (188). However, Eleanor reverses his mood when she explains that all of his books contain the meaning of the Christmas spirit, which gives people hope. She explains the impact his books have had on her family at Christmas:
‘And your books made me think of my own family, and our Christmases past. How we had no money, yet felt rich as kings. We danced and made merry into the wee hours,’ she continued, eyes lighting at the memory. ‘All the worries of the year seemed to vanish with the first snow, for then we’d gather ‘round the hearth and tell stories, all ending happily …’ Her voice caught in her throat – a melancholy so powerful she had to pause to let it pass. ‘And the colder it was, the nearer we were to each other, and to the truth of Christmas. The truth of your books […] That despite what is cold and dark in the world, perhaps it is a loving place after all’ (188-89).
With Eleanor’s help, Dickens regains his Christmas spirit and finds the hope and joy to write his Christmas book. He also regains an appreciation for the importance of hope and family, and he realizes that his financial struggles and his past do not have to define Christmas for him. As he completes his book, he takes inspiration from Timothy’s sketch, which reminds him that he already has everything he needs in life. With Eleanor and Timothy’s help, Dickens finds it within himself to create A Christmas Carol, which helps restore his Christmas spirit and spread positive sentiments to his readers as well.
