The book was very popular, a financial success, and cause for much debate after its printing. While this book was certainly intended to be a Christmas book, a book primarily for profit, Dickens is very clearly offering a moral message. Clearly, in The Chimes, the middle-class are not pleased with the poor, including Trotty and his family.
Another of these gentlemen, Alderman Cute, goes through a list of working-class people he intends to “Put Down” including single women, boys, suicide victims, widows, and so on. When the middle-class men hear of Meg’s impending marriage, one gentleman immediately contends that the poor have no business getting married. A hard-nosed gentleman declares, “The good old times, the grand old times, the great old times! Those were the times for a bold peasantry, and all that sort of thing” (37).
In the first two quarters, Trotty encounters two groups of middle-class men and hears their unfortunate opinions of the working class. The story begins on New Year’s Eve and is divided into four quarters. He has an adult daughter, Meg, who is soon to be married. Trotty is a poor widower and a self-employed messenger. The story centers on the character of Trotty Veck (properly known as Toby or Tobias). Maclise memorialized the gathering in an iconic sketch reminiscent of “The Last Supper.” These friends included, among others, Thomas Carlyle, John Forster, and Daniel Maclise (Nichols vi-vii). On December 3, he gathered an eclectic group of friends and liberals, some of whom were inspirations for the book, for a reading. Allingham, contributing editor to the Victorian Web, notes that after Dickens finished writing the novel on November 3, 1844, he quickly returned to London to oversee the printing. He found them to be maddening, which inspired him to create the character of Trotty Veck, who loves the bells, but also goes mad from their constant sounding. In the introduction to a rare American printing of the complete version of The Chimes with pictures, H.S Nichols notes that Dickens began writing the story in Genoa This date and location is also when and where Dickens was treating Madame de la Rue (Willis & Wynne)., where he found inspiration in the bells that rang through the city (v). The second of these was titled The Chimes, A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. He found financial success with the publication of four additional Christmas books in each of the following four years. Despite being popular, the Carol was a financial failure for Dickens.
While most Dickensian scholars are very familiar with Dickens' most famous Christmas story, The Christmas Carol, very little scholarship has been done on his lesser known Christmas novellas.
0 kommentar(er)
