The Cratchits.
If the 1834 Poor Laws treated the impoverished as an idle, undeserving, lumpen group so they could be left to languish and forgotten in the Parish Workhouse, then Dickens reminds his ignorant, judgemental readers that the Poor belonged to families, suffered severe hardships, and even had names! Thus, In the novel, the Cratchit family are keenly differentiated as characters, each having a distinct personality in order to undermine the callous dehumanization and objectification practised by the wealthy. This representation of the individual members of the Cratchit family serves to highlight Dickens’ sympathy for the abject suffering of families attempting to scratch out a living like the blighted Cratchits and to avoid the ignominious horrors of the workhouse.
Far from being ‘surplus’ to society as Malthusian disciples would argue, the Cratchits are hardworking, honourable and loyal. When Bob Cratchit has suggested at toast to his employer, Scrooge, just before this extract begins, his long-suffering wife is reluctant to toast the man she believes have brought her family to near starvation, a sentiment even the youngest of the family, Tiny Tim shares ‘ Tiny Tim drank last of all…Scrooge was the ogre of the family..‘ The shared repugnance for Scrooge unites the family against Scrooge’s cruelty and inhumanity and only Bob’s determination to adhere to his own moral code persuades his family to comply. The fairy tale labelling of Scrooge as an ‘ogre’ underlines the wickedness of his behaviour and his nightmarish effect on the family’s health and future. The fact that Scrooge’s dismal effect on the family celebration lasts a ‘ full five minutes’ testifies to the horror of his personality in terms of his behaviour and its effects on the well being of the Cratchit family.
Accompanied by the illuminating, Ghost of Christmas Present, Scrooge is rendered a witness to the effects of his meanness as their table is meagre and the declining health of Tiny Tim cannot be remedied by a visit to a doctor as medicine was private and far too expensive for a family as poverty-stricken as the Cratchits.
The transformation of the family mood however reminds the reader of their natural buoyancy and goodwill as well as enduring affection for one another. ‘Ten times merrier than before.‘ This resurgence of merriment shows how relieved they are to escape the thought of Scrooge, however temporary and reminds us of the exuberance of Bob Cratchit’s release from Scrooge on Christmas Eve when he participated on the snow slide ‘twenty’ times, a figure that reflects Bob Cratchit’s capacity for joy and his anticipation of a whole day with his family, unencumbered by the dismal presence of his pathologically miserly employer.
The playful banter enjoyed between the family members and the humour emanating from Peter ‘being a man of business’ reveals their innocence and vulnerability as all their employers or prospective employers would be exploiting the poverty and desperation of the Cratchits who suffer the effects of exploitation because they have no other choice. The single ‘coal’ on Cratchit’s small, office fire is symptomatic of the degradation in which poor family’s like the Cratchits were expected and forced to live. The ‘ plaintive little voice. ‘ of Tiny Tim reveals his fragile health yet his heroic determination to join with his family in celebrating Christmas. Perhaps this stoicism and virtue might seem too forced, too contrived, even too idealistic or sentimental, forcing an angelic like status on Tiny Tim to make an inescapable moral point for Dickens’s readers.
Knowing this, and perhaps to counterbalance this moment of superlative pathos and innocence, the narrator’s comments at the end of the extract ( and illuminated scene on Scrooge’s journey) offer an overview that contextualizes the Cratchit family in both aesthetic and practical terms: ‘They were not a handsome family…And Peter might have known….the inside of a pawnbroker’s.’ Their ordinary appearance and acceptance of the harsh poverty which still cannot destroy their affection for each other, remind the uncharitable readers that the Cratchit family are human beings who are suffering because of a punitive system that seeks to marginalise them to death through poverty that destroys both the mind and body. .
The final image of Scrooge remaining compelled to watch the disappearing, yet still illuminated Tiny Tim as the scene fades, acts as a metaphor for the miser’s awakening, ‘enlightened’ conscience. He literally cannot look away as he is learning about human values all over again.
The reader recognises that in Tiny Tim, Scrooge is remembering himself as the ‘ lonely ‘ young child abandoned at school over Christmas and only saved by the compassion of his now-dead sister. Thus in visiting the Cratchits and immersing himself in their joyful yet deeply compromised world, Scrooge, like the privileged Victorian readers of the novella, is being taught a lesson about the dehumanizing effects of poverty and its evil. The ‘surplus population’ are composed of human beings with faces, with hopes and fears and the Ghost of Christmas Present is forcing Scrooge and those like him to acknowledge this and feel profoundly uncomfortable and even guilty.
