“Love Thy Master”: The Medieval Morality of “A Christmas Carol”
Art by Tanzanian Wojak
We often imagine the world of Dickens’ seminal work, A Christmas Carol, as a society in the midst of terrifying change, as industrialization and urbanization gripped Victorian England. But the crux of the story, which highlights the gap between the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge and his pure-hearted clerk Bob Cratchit, was in fact nothing new to Dickens or to the people who read him in his day. His Carol harkens to spirit guides and moral symbols, referencing the poetic epics of a time not too distant from his own.
Dickens was steeped in Medieval English literature, his mind full of tales of religious pilgrimages, corrupt courts, fisher kings, and winter feasts. And while the plain imagery of his writings clearly display these echoes of the medieval world, it is in the fine details that he reveals his earthy, medieval sense for irony and redemption.
When Bob Cratchit toasts to the founder of his family’s Christmas meal, the “founder of the feast,” he notably does not make a Prayer of Thanksgiving. Instead, he pays homage to his earthly lord, his master in this life. He toasts to Scrooge. This moment is why Scrooge’s guide, the Spirit of Christmas Present, must show him the living conditions of his employee. For while Scrooge treats his employee as a mere socially contracted acquaintance, Cratchit is dutiful to bless those that curse him, to give praise for his oppressor, knowing that “while we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.”
The emphasis in the text is simultaneously biblical and pagan, calling back the melding of cultures that never quite solidified even after the long rule of the Catholic Church in England. The double images of fealty to an earthly master and obligation to a Heavenly mandate are a way of heaping hot coals onto Scrooge.
The humility of the servant and the pride of the master collide into a Dantean criticism, an accusation that Scrooge is working against the spirit of his role as an employer and as an earthly master. Scrooge does nothing to ensure his employee is well housed; he has no idea where Cratchit even lives. Scrooge curses the fact that he has to pay Cratchit at all, while Cratchit blesses Scrooge as the source of his few blessings. Scrooge identifies his success as monetary, but Cratchit thinks only of a future for his children.
This use of contrast and juxtaposition is common in medieval literature from Dante to Beowulf, and its key message is thoroughly feudal.
In perhaps the best film rendition of Dickens’ story, A Muppet’s Christmas Carol, the writers retain the spirit of this scene with the score, “Bless Us All.” Far from satirizing or trivializing Dickens’ worldview, the scene reemphasizes the atmosphere of humble thanks as the Cratchit family sings of love that makes them “belong” to each other. This belonging is extended past the family and into the world around them. It is a radically inclusive love, one that creates belonging even between servant and master.
Marx’s praise of Dickens has some value here. Of Dickens’ portrayal of the middle class, Marx commended the author for painting them as “servile to those above, and tyrannical to those beneath them.” In general, this is true. From Pickwick to Sketches, the author’s middle management and clerkish characters are frigid to their underlings and toadies to their masters. But Cratchit is a peculiar clerk for Dickens. His middle status is not what defines him, and his desire for a raise has no means of consuming him. He announces his reliance on a master as a theological necessity, and he refuses to stoop low enough to express pity or contempt for his employer’s unknowable soul.
This simplicity is very special for a clerk in a Dickens story. It is an illustration of the Christian happiness expected of peasants in an age not far removed from the Victorian world.
Dickens is showing his audience a picture of chivalry and piety. The code of chivalry asserted a gentleman’s duty to his lord, and the reason for this loyalty was a sense of holy obligation. Bob Cratchit, whose very name means “crooked” and “small,” is a picture of nobility. Cratchit’s empathy for Scrooge forces him into a position of radical inclusion, suddenly understanding his obligation to include the Cratchits in his own life.
Where Marx sees Scrooge as a meticulous debt collector whose position is untenable for civilized society, Dickens sees a potential benefactor, a heart of stone that can still be made flesh. Where Marx surveys battle lines between the ownership class and the workers, Dickens unveils the inclusion of all persons in the kingdom of Heaven. In a season of undeniable class tensions, it is incredibly easy to imagine that those above deserve blame only. After all, we are obligated as citizens of this Republic to critique power and expose its corruption, just as Dickens critiqued the empire in which he lived. But more than that, we must also understand the radical effect of loving those more fortunate than us, praying for their redemption and repentance with both words and actions.
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