Good class chats about this bit of ACC Stave 3:
Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so.
I love the word HERESY here.
1/
Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so.
I love the word HERESY here.
1/
It's not just that complaining about the scant food would be ungrateful or upsetting for the Cratchits.
It would be HERETICAL: it would go against a shared belief, an ethical code that they share implicitly, that what they have is enough.
2/
It would be HERETICAL: it would go against a shared belief, an ethical code that they share implicitly, that what they have is enough.
2/
Their poverty is the elephant in the room, but their moral code dictates that family, humility and gratitude are how one lives, not jealousy or anger.
3/
3/
Now, as a modern reader I could get quite annoyed at Dickens' moral landscape of the grateful, deserving poor and the benevolent rich. It doesn't amount to a real critique of inequality at a structural level, even compared to AIC.
But.
4/
But.
4/
I do think between this section and the Fezziwig section there's enough evidence of a discussion not just of rich and poor, but of employer and employee.
The duty of care, and the huge influence, that a man owes to those in his employ.
5/
The duty of care, and the huge influence, that a man owes to those in his employ.
5/
And of course, Dickens being Dickens, it's hard to pin down his exact viewpoint. Does he see the Cratchit's grateful ethos as a virtue in itself? Or does he recognise it as a coping mechanism against the spectre of poverty? Should we feel admiration or guilt?
Anyway
6/6
Anyway
6/6
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