A Christmas Carol,
Charles Dickens, illustrated by Claude Allin Shepperson, 1908 (first published 1843)
In Charles Dickens’ books, the love of games, parties and dancing often indicated or corresponded characters the author wanted the reader to trust or admire. Dickens’ ultimate miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, distanced himself from family and friends, disparaging all their festivities, which he saw as frivolous and indulgent.
In Charles Dickens & the Victorian Child, Ambery Malkovich writes that Victorian authors used “elements of religion, death, irony, fairy worlds, gender, and class to illustrate the need for the ideal child and yet the impossibility of such a construct”.
