English Literature · Professor Quill

Every card in Nineteenth-century novel, Year 10: the poor in 1840s Britain, language and the narrator's voice (A Christmas Carol option)

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1 GCSE-ENLI-NOV-0048

In which year was A Christmas Carol published? (year, four digits)

1843

HintEarly in Queen Victoria's reign, in the decade later called the Hungry Forties.

WhyIt came out on 19 December and the first edition had sold out by Christmas Eve.

2 GCSE-ENLI-NOV-0049

Under the Poor Law of 1834, where did a poor family in England usually have to go in order to get help?

Into the workhouse

HintScrooge asks whether they are still in operation.

WhyConditions were made deliberately harsh so that only the desperate would ask. Families were split up. This is why the collectors say many would rather die than go there.

3 GCSE-ENLI-NOV-0050

The writer on population who argued that the number of people tends to grow faster than the supply of food

Thomas Malthus

HintA clergyman and economist; ideas like his are named after him.

WhyScrooge's phrase about the surplus population echoes this argument. Dickens gives it to a miser so that the reader hears how it sounds when applied to real people.

4 GCSE-ENLI-NOV-0051

When Charles Dickens was twelve his father was sent to prison. What for?

Debt

HintHe owed money he could not pay.

WhyDickens was taken out of school and sent to work in a factory that made boot blacking. The memory of that poverty fed his writing about poor children.

5 GCSE-ENLI-NOV-0052

In 1843, shortly before writing the book, Dickens visited a free school for London's poorest children. What were such schools called?

Ragged schools

HintNamed after the state of their pupils' clothes.

WhyHe visited the one at Field Lane. What he saw there fed into the figures of Ignorance and Want.

6 GCSE-ENLI-NOV-0053

As the first Spirit draws back Scrooge's bed-curtains, someone says they are as close to it “as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.” Who is “I”?

The narrator, speaking directly to the reader

HintNot a character in the story.

WhyThe narrator of this book chats, jokes and gives opinions. The friendly voice at the reader's elbow is part of how the book persuades.

7 GCSE-ENLI-NOV-0054

From the description of Scrooge in Stave One: “The ____ within him froze his old features”.

cold

HintA temperature.

WhyHis coldness comes from inside. “No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him.” Cold and fog are attached to him all through the first stave.

8 GCSE-ENLI-NOV-0055

In Scrooge's counting-house the clerk's fire is so small “that it looked like one coal”. What does fire stand for in this book?

Human warmth and generosity

HintThink of what Fezziwig's and the Cratchits' rooms are full of.

WhyScrooge keeps the coal-box in his own room. Warm, bright firesides appear wherever people are kind to one another.

9 GCSE-ENLI-NOV-0056

What does the chain that Marley's Ghost drags stand for?

The greed and selfish dealings of his life, which now weigh him down

HintLook at what the links are made from.

WhyDickens often turns an idea into something a reader can see. Marley's guilt is not described; it is hung on him in steel.

10 GCSE-ENLI-NOV-0057

The weather on Christmas morning in Stave Five: “No ____, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold”.

fog

HintIt filled the streets and came in at every keyhole in Stave One.

WhyThe weather changes with Scrooge. The first stave is dark and choked; the last is clear and full of bells.

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