Part Two: Absent Mothers
In a speech at the Reichsparteiung in 1935 Adolf Hitler said, “He alone, who owns the youth, owns the future.” The idea (cribbed from Ignatius who borrowed it from Aristotle) was the bedrock of his plan for the child soldiers of the Hitlerjugend to be moulded into physically and culturally perfect future citizens of his Thousand Year Reich propagating the theory that our earliest experiences have the strongest impact on our development as adults – even when we can no longer remember them. Furthermore, the idea that the impact of adversity in the early years can condition humans for life and, left unchecked, severely hamper, or even suppress the ability to form healthy emotional attachments.
Dickens was fascinated by childhood and took great pains to elicit sympathy for innocents who were neither responsible for nor capable of understanding the disadvantage of their circumstances. To this end, he paints a picture of Scrooge’s childhood as one of utter misery. Losing a parent is hard enough without being rejected by the other one and consigned to spending holidays alone in a Victorian boarding school, which (in the 1800s) was tantamount to a prison sentence because in such places, traditional education was often secondary to conditioning and discipline through hardship. Scrooge, in his ‘confinement’ at boarding school (which brings a whole new dimension to the adjective ‘solitary’ later used to describe him) was thereby raised in a way that tacitly communicated to him that he was being punished for simply existing.
When we first meet Scrooge as a boy, he is sitting alone reading in a deserted school room. Years later, he’s still doing the same thing. Dickens could have portrayed him doing anything but meaningfully, he shows a child whose only childhood company was the characters in his favourite books – which is utterly tragic. Incidentally, the Daniel Defoe classic Dickens’ references apparently resonated significantly with the author. The character of Robinson Crusoe – an adventurer who is forced to employ ingenious survival tactics when marooned on a desert island – was an inspiration to Dickens who admired the character’s strength and innovation in the face of adversity. Dickens himself was proud of his success despite his family’s early financial misfortunes. In a speech in 1867, he spoke about his writing career evolving ‘without influence, without money, without companion, introducer, or advisor’ hinting that, like Scrooge, his fortune was forged out of necessity and hard work – a legacy he strived to maintain until his death.
As a schoolboy, Scrooge is portrayed alone in a decrepit, cold, deeply lonely place casting about for the warmth of comradeship in the pages of books in the same pitiful way Bob Cratchit tries to warm his fingers on a candle in the counting house. It is here that the reader becomes aware of the emotional and social deprivation of a child who has known nothing but exiguousness and impassivity. The image is deliberately wretched and compounded by the fact that it is Christmas, and he has nowhere whatsoever to go. Dickens’ intention was to juxtapose the image of him as an irredeemable old misanthrope with a child who was forsaken and neglected from a very early age, signalling to the reader that his goodness does exist - albeit buried deep in his troubled past and mauled psyche. This monotony and repetition of a melancholy routine informing and moulding his later habits is reinforced later in Stave Two when, we meet young Scrooge again, and his situation is apparently completely unchanged.
The interminable sameness of his schooldays is redressed explosively by the unexpected entrance of his young sister - Fan - who brings news that he is to be allowed home and can leave the lonely school because he is ‘to be a man’. From Fan we also learn that Scrooge has had such a poor relationship with his father that he was sent away permanently to school and explains why he has remained there, even in the holidays. We can also confirm from this that his mother is most likely dead. It is not made clear whether Fan (who is some years younger than him) is a half sibling and possibly the product of a happier or subsequent union, but clearly Fan, while fearful of their father, holds some sway over his decisions when he is in a good mood, whereas the old man cannot even bear to have Scrooge in his company on special occasions. The fact that he has relented to Fan’s requests but not come himself might suggest a degree of affection for his daughter that he somehow does not have in any measure for his son. For a late-Georgian patriarch, that rift would have to have been monumental. In any case, we realise that as a young child, Scrooge was abandoned or somehow rejected by both of his parents. Fan was clearly a sympathetic ally, hence her campaign to bring him home, which took years to achieve and succeeded just in time for him to seek his own way as an adult. The lateness of the decision to relent over Scrooge’s exile renders her victory rather hollow and it is significant that the Ghost does not show us how that Christmas went with his father. I think we can guess.
Instead, the teenage Scrooge leaves school to complete an apprenticeship which he clearly took some pleasure in, despite his circumstances. At Fezziwig’s, he had at least one friend and a kind mentor and was surrounded by happiness and positive role models; he even had a true sense of family connection – perhaps for the first time in his life. Still, the old comforts of denial are still present when we learn that he does not have a bed of his own – sleeping instead under a counter in the front shop alongside his fellow Dick Wilkins. At this time, apprenticeships lasted for seven years, so he and Dick should have been primed to set out and make their fortune together by their early to mid-twenties. At some point during that time, Fezziwig presumably died, and Wilkins disappeared from Scrooge’s life, leaving him alone again and at the mercy of the malign and unscrupulous. People like Jacob Marley.
We gather from the description of his school days that he had no early experience of positive peer bonding. Perhaps the richness of life with Fezziwig was something that sat badly with him and prevented him from perpetuating healthy relationships even with those willing to participate. Later, when Marley visits him, he at first dismisses the spectre as the product of indigestion – comically ‘underdone potato’ - reflecting Scrooge’s tendency for brooding introspection as something that has a massively delicate balance and also hints at the protagonist’s resistance to change that belies his outward lack of care. Scrooge makes much of how ‘poor Dick’ was ‘very much attached to’ him but does not indicate that he in any way reciprocated his fellow’s affection and implies that Dick, like Fezziwig, may well also have died. Certainly, by the time we meet Scrooge as an older man, his habit of avoiding company was well entrenched with Scrooge counting only the rich bankers in the financial district and a single employee as necessary for keeping company. Tellingly, one of these acquaintances refers to him by a derogatory nick name - ‘Old Scratch’ – emphasising the nature of their relationship as one of detached reputation rather than familiar affection while the only record of his real name rots on a gravestone for his eyes only. Doubtless, Scrooge would have liked it that way before the ghosts’ visit. It was ‘all the same to him’ until confronted with his true identity in death and finally understands the full consequences of his choices.
In later years, despite his accumulation of massive wealth, the trappings of his life of solitude and self-denial are still very much present in his lifestyle. For instance, he does not extend the luxury of warmth to himself at work, having only a ‘very small fire’ and keeping his offices dark and cold throughout. Scrooge is seen spurning light in every aspect of his life which he gives voice to when he tries to suppress the light from the Ghost of Christmas Past. When he has dismissed Bob for Christmas, he eats his ‘melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern’ and ‘takes’ his gruel – like bitter medicine - before ‘a very low’ fire in his quarters where heavy bed curtains are a preference over heating costs, even in the dead of winter. Scrooge was a miser but not a hypocrite. He lived according to his own dictates – ‘brooding’ away his evenings in a self-destructive state of parsimony and frugality. Scrooge it seems takes comfort in the familiar masochism of deprivation in every aspect of his life, which is perhaps understandable when we consider that it was all he ever experienced whilst growing up without a family.
Scrooge’s inability to form social bonds may well have been compounded by the death of his sister who he clearly adored. Women represent stoic, emotional bedrock in Dickens’ novel as we see not only in Fan and Belle, but also in the ‘brave’ Mrs Cratchit, Bob’s assorted hardworking daughters, the beloved female Fezziwigs and Fred’s nameless - but apparently irresistibly kissable - wife. These women are portrayed as a constant and unswerving source of nurture and support for every major male character. Yet Scrooge remains alone. Perhaps this absence of female influence in his life adds additional meaning to the lighthouse Dickens describes in Stave Three. Scrooge sits alone on his ‘dismal reef of sunken rocks’ in the water while the free storm-birds ‘born of the wind’ wheel around him –unable to ‘nest’ and ultimately returning to the air while Scrooge maintains a steady warning to keep away.
In this way, and throughout the novella, women represent abandonment to Scrooge. Fan was the first woman who represented maternal shelter, protection, and unconditional love to him. We are told that she was ‘delicate’ but died a woman (possibly in childbirth becoming a mother to Fred) which might explain Scrooge’s awkwardness around and hostility to children in general and particularly his grown-up nephew, whose annual invitation to dinner is traditionally rebuffed. He cannot feel rejected, being the first to refuse and Fred’s jovial family reflects one possible future that Scrooge could have had and which he was denied – or that he even denied himself. It might also explain Scrooge’s utter distain for Fred’s happy and loving marriage. Either he saw no merit in female companionship or feared the idea of loving something that it would be devastating to lose. Cold hard cash, while painful to endure the loss of, could at least be re-accumulated, whilst the warmth of a devoted spouse could not.
In Belle, he appears to have found some happiness, but in the end, it is she who ‘releases’ him from their engagement when she recognises that his love of wealth has completely swept aside his affection for her. There is no room left for the compassion of a woman who could have provided him with the abundant love that he clearly lacked. When she confronts him with his greed, he lashes out defensively and seems resigned to her decision almost immediately. He doesn’t fight for her. Instead, he appears defiant which implies that he doesn’t understand or care for her particularly. But, when the Ghost of Christmas Past ‘torments’ him with a vision of Belle as a happy wife and mother, Scrooge loses control and physically attacks the ghost, confirming that the opposite is true.
Dickens’ language indicates that Scrooge’s reasons for allowing ‘gain’ to engross him are motivated by his wish to avoid judgement and derision from others. Belle describes it as ‘sordid reproach’. Scrooge’s lonely childhood and experiences of poverty seem to have driven him to measure his success in life by the amount of money he accumulates despite his rootless beginnings, and he appears indignant that Belle does not share his view. At this point in his life, it is apparently impossible for him to discern between the value of material wealth and the value of human connection – most likely because he is more familiar and comfortable with one over the other. Money and Marley’s privateering are entities he could wholly rely on. The consistency of a loving, female presence, he could not. Perhaps this is why Dickens describes the light from the Ghost of Christmas Past causing Belle’s tears to ‘sparkle’ in a powerful image reminiscent of diamonds. Belle’s priceless value as a life partner for Scrooge was literally leaking out of her in front of his eyes, and yet he was still blind to her true worth.
Perhaps Scrooge chose Belle because he speculated that she was likely to reject him eventually anyway. Afterall, she represented another source of protection and comfort in his life that could be snatched away and, after the passing of his mother and Fan, maybe that possibility was too much of a risk. The Christmas we are shown at her home was only seven years before Scrooge encounters the ghosts (Belle’s husband tells her that Marley is on his deathbed) and Belle is shown with young children about her. Scrooge was not young when he lost his business partner. While it was not uncommon for Victorian men to marry much younger women, if their engagement broke off when he was at quite an advanced aged and she considerably his junior, it could suggest an outcome he was anticipating – or even planning - because he had become, in modern terms ‘attachment avoidant’ – choosing unsuitable life companions BECAUSE they would leave him eventually in one way or another. Scrooge may have loved Belle deeply enough to ‘displace’ her on purpose and make her leave him to protect his heart from more pain than he could bear, which is evident in his emotionally distant rejection of her reasoning that manifests itself in irritation at her perceived clinginess when asking him to be affectionate or even kind.
Scrooge’s choices for company in his earlier life explain and clarify his reasons for rejecting attempts by others to become permanent fixtures in his later years. By taking the much older Marley as a business partner and choosing a much younger fiancée in Belle, Scrooge replicates the pattern of seeking out relationships which lead to him being abandoned in one way or another and force him into a cycle of unhealthy and increasingly isolating behaviour. The only way to break this pattern would therefore be for some ‘event’ to occur that was of sufficient magnitude to force Scrooge to reflect consciously on his choices and confront the demons of his past. By the time the Ghosts arrive, Scrooge’s soul is so horribly compromised that it will take the memories of what he has lost to shake him from his determination to self-destruct, which is Dickens’ message to all about the dangers of failing to face life’s responsibilities head on and becoming complacent and soulless ‘passengers to the grave’ as a result.
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