The Gospel in Dickens: Selections from His Works

By Charles Dickens, Gina Dalfonzo and Karen Swallow Prior

Wish you had time to re-read and enjoy that daunting stack of Charles Dickens novels?

Take heart: Dickens enthusiast Gina Dalfonzo has done the heavy lifting for you. In short, readable excerpts she presents the essence of the great novelist’s prodigious output, teasing out dozens of the most memorable scenes to reveal the Christian vision and values that suffuse all his work.

Dickens can certainly entertain, but his legacy endures because of his power to stir consciences with the humanity of his characters and their predicaments. While he could be ruthless in his characterization of greed, injustice, and religious hypocrisy, again and again the hope of redemption shines through.

In spite of – or perhaps because of – his own failings, Dickens never stopped exploring the themes of sin, guilt, repentance, redemption, and restoration found in the gospel. In some passages the Christian elements are explicit, in others implicit, but, as Dickens himself said, they all reflect his understanding of and reverence for the gospel.

The Gospel in Dickens includes selections from Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, Our Mutual Friend, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Sketches by Boz – with a cast of unforgettable characters such as Ebenezer Scrooge, Sydney Carton, Jenny Wren, Fagin, Pip, Joe Gargery, Mr. Bumble, Miss Havisham, betsey Trotwood, and Madame Defarge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Plough Publishing House
• Release date: Sep 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9780874863437

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was an English writer and social critic. Regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, Dickens had a prolific collection of works including fifteen novels, five novellas, and hundreds of short stories and articles. The term “cliffhanger endings” was created because of his practice of ending his serial short stories with drama and suspense. Dickens’ political and social beliefs heavily shaped his literary work. He argued against capitalist beliefs, and advocated for children’s rights, education, and other social reforms. Dickens advocacy for such causes is apparent in his empathetic portrayal of lower classes in his famous works, such as The Christmas Carol and Hard Times.

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I

Sin and Its Victims

1. A Tight-Fisted Hand

A Christmas Carol

Dickens saved his greatest wrath for those who hardened their hearts against the poor. As this famous description of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol shows, he also saved for them some of his most striking and colorful imagery.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me? No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!

But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call nuts to Scrooge.

When two gentlemen ask him for a charitable donation, we get the chilling worldview behind Scrooge’s formidable demeanor.

At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, said the gentleman, taking up a pen, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.

Are there no prisons? asked Scrooge.

Plenty of prisons, said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

And the Union workhouses? demanded Scrooge. Are they still in operation?

They are. Still, returned the gentleman, I wish I could say they were not.

"The Treadmill¹ and the Poor Law² are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.

Both very busy, sir.

Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course, said Scrooge. I’m very glad to hear it.

Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude, returned the gentleman, a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?

Nothing! Scrooge replied.

You wish to be anonymous?

I wish to be left alone, said Scrooge. Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.

Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.

If they would rather die, said Scrooge, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides—excuse me—I don’t know that.

But you might know it, observed the gentleman.

It’s not my business, Scrooge returned. It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.

Stave One: Marley’s Ghost

But that night, taken on a Christmas Eve journey through his own past, present, and future, Scrooge comes to learn that his greed and selfishness will have tragic consequences both for others and for himself. In the company of the Ghost of Christmas Present, he sees his own self-centered philosophy play out in the life and potential death of his clerk’s sickly youngest son, Tiny Tim.

Then Bob proposed:

A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!

Which all the family re-echoed.

God bless us every one! said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.

Spirit, said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, tell me if Tiny Tim will live.

I see a vacant seat, replied the Ghost, in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.

No, no, said Scrooge. Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.

If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race, returned the Ghost, will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

Man, said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant,³ forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!"

Scrooge bent before the Ghost’s rebuke, and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground.

Stave Three: The Second of the Three Spirits

Still later that night, guided by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, Scrooge will see another death foreshadowed—a death that he does not yet know is his own.

He recoiled in terror, for … he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language.

The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.

Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge’s part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand WAS open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!

John Leech, The Last of the Spirits

No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s ears, and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly!

He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him.

Stave Four: The Last of the Spirits

1    Used as an instrument of punishment in prisons.

2    The Poor Law of 1834 established the punitive workhouse system. (Dickens, Scrooge and the Victorian poor, Special Collections Exhibitions, King’s College London). Dickens staunchly opposed it.

3    Merriam-Webster defines adamant in this context as a stone (such as a diamond) formerly believed to be of impenetrable hardness, or an unbreakable or extremely hard substance.

2. Cold, Cold Heart

Great Expectations

Scrooge is not the only Dickens villain to find his life poisoned by his own malice. Miss Havisham of Great Expectations, jilted right before her wedding, raised her adopted daughter, Estella, to be heartless and unfeeling, so that she could wreak revenge on all the male sex.⁴ She failed to foresee the consequences for herself.

We were seated by the fire … and Miss Havisham still had Estella’s arm drawn through her own, and still clutched Estella’s hand in hers, when Estella gradually began to detach herself. She had shown a proud impatience more than once before, and had rather endured that fierce affection than accepted or returned it.

What! said Miss Havisham, flashing her eyes upon her, are you tired of me?

Only a little tired of myself, replied Estella, disengaging her arm, and moving to the great chimney-piece, where she stood looking down at the fire.

Speak the truth, you ingrate! cried Miss Havisham, passionately striking her stick upon the floor; you are tired of me.

Estella looked at her with perfect composure, and again looked down at the fire. Her graceful figure and her beautiful face expressed a self-possessed indifference to the wild heat of the other, that was almost cruel.

You stock and stone! exclaimed Miss Havisham. You cold, cold heart!

What? said Estella, preserving her attitude of indifference as she leaned against the great chimney-piece and only moving her eyes; do you reproach me for being cold? You?

Are you not? was the fierce retort.

You should know, said Estella. I am what you have made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me.

O, look at her, look at her! cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; Look at her, so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared! Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years of tenderness upon her!

At least I was no party to the compact, said Estella, for if I could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I could do. But what would you have? You have been very good to me, and I owe everything to you. What would you have?

Love, replied the other.

You have it.

I have not, said Miss Havisham.

Mother by adoption, retorted Estella, never departing from the easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other did, never yielding either to anger or tenderness, Mother by adoption, I have said that I owe everything to you. All I possess is freely yours. All that you have given me, is at your command to have again. Beyond that, I have nothing. And if you ask me to give you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities.

Did I never give her love! cried Miss Havisham, turning wildly to me. Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable from jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus to me! Let her call me mad, let her call me mad!

Why should I call you mad, returned Estella, I, of all people? Does any one live, who knows what set purposes you have, half as well as I do? Does any one live, who knows what a steady memory you have, half as well as I do? I who have sat on this same hearth on the little stool that is even now beside you there, learning your lessons and looking up into your face, when your face was strange and frightened me!

Soon forgotten! moaned Miss Havisham. Times soon forgotten!

No, not forgotten, retorted Estella. Not forgotten, but treasured up in my memory. When have you found me false to your teaching? When have you found me unmindful of your lessons? When have you found me giving admission here, she touched her bosom with her hand, to anything that you excluded? Be just to me.

So proud, so proud! moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her grey hair with both her hands.

Who taught me to be proud? returned Estella. Who praised me when I learnt my lesson?

So hard, so hard! moaned Miss Havisham, with her former action.

Who taught me to be hard? returned Estella. Who praised me when I learnt my lesson?

But to be proud and hard to me! Miss Havisham quite shrieked, as she stretched out her arms. "Estella, Estella, Estella, to be proud and hard to me!"

Estella looked at her for a moment with a kind of calm wonder, but was not otherwise disturbed; when the moment was past, she looked down at the fire again.

I cannot think, said Estella, raising her eyes after a silence, why you should be so unreasonable when I come to see you after a separation. I have never forgotten your wrongs and their causes. I have never been unfaithful to you or your schooling. I have never shown any weakness that I can charge myself with.

Would it be weakness to return my love? exclaimed Miss Havisham. But yes, yes, she would call it so!

I begin to think, said Estella, in a musing way, after another moment of calm wonder, that I almost understand how this comes about. If you had brought up your adopted daughter wholly in the dark confinement of these rooms, and had never let her know that there was such a thing as the daylight by which she has never once seen your face—if you had done that, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to understand the daylight and know all about it, you would have been disappointed and angry?

Miss Havisham, with her head in her hands, sat making a low moaning, and swaying herself on her chair, but gave no answer.

Or, said Estella, —which is a nearer case—if you had taught her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her;—if you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have been disappointed and angry?

Miss Havisham sat listening (or it seemed so, for I could not see her face), but still made no answer.

So, said Estella, I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.

Miss Havisham had settled down, I hardly knew how, upon the floor, among the faded bridal relics with which it was strewn. I took advantage of the moment—I had sought one from the first—to leave the room, after beseeching Estella’s attention to her with a movement of my hand. When I left, Estella was yet standing by the great chimney-piece, just as she had stood throughout. Miss Havisham’s grey hair was all adrift upon the ground, among the other bridal wrecks, and was a miserable sight to see.

Chapter 38

4    Chapter 22.

3. Turtle Soup and Venison

Hard Times

As callous as Scrooge and Miss Havisham are, there is still something deep inside them that is willing to hear the call of redemption, as we will see. The same cannot be said of all Dickens’s villains. Wealthy industrialist Josiah Bounderby of Hard Times is well aware of the terrible conditions in which his factory workers, or Hands, live and work, but as we see in his conversation with a guest, Mr. Harthouse, he pretends that those conditions are ideal and that any appeals for relief are little more than the demands of spoiled children.

Coketown, sir, said Bounderby, obstinately taking a chair, is not the kind of place you have been accustomed to. Therefore, if you will allow me—or whether you will or not, for I am a plain man—I’ll tell you something about it before we go any further.

Mr. Harthouse would be charmed.

Don’t be too sure of that, said Bounderby. I don’t promise it. First of all, you see our smoke. That’s meat and drink to us. It’s the healthiest thing in the world in all respects, and particularly for the lungs. If you are one of those who want us to consume it, I differ from you. We are not going to wear the bottoms of our boilers out any faster than we wear ’em out now, for all the humbugging sentiment in Great Britain and Ireland.

By way of going in to the fullest extent, Mr. Harthouse rejoined, Mr. Bounderby, I assure you I am entirely and completely of your way of thinking. On conviction.

I am glad to hear it, said Bounderby. Now, you have heard a lot of talk about the work in our mills, no doubt. You have? Very good. I’ll state the fact of it to you. It’s the pleasantest work there is, and it’s the lightest work there is, and it’s the best paid work there is. More than that, we couldn’t improve the mills themselves, unless we laid down Turkey carpets on the floors. Which we’re not a-going to do.

Mr. Bounderby, perfectly right.

Lastly, said Bounderby, as to our Hands. There’s not a Hand in this town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life. That object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. Now, they’re not a-going—none of ’em—ever to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. And now you know the place.

Mr. Harthouse professed himself in the highest degree instructed and refreshed, by this condensed epitome of the whole Coketown question.

Book the Second: Reaping, Chapter 2: Mr. James Harthouse

When Mr. Bounderby is confronted directly with the poverty and misery of these workers, his response, unlike Scrooge’s, is to double down on his cruel insensitivity. We see this in his interactions with Stephen Blackpool, a Hand in particularly dire circumstances.

Now, what do you complain of? asked Mr. Bounderby.

I ha’ not coom here, sir, Stephen reminded him, to complain. I coom for that I were sent for.

What, repeated Mr. Bounderby, folding his arms, do you people, in a general way, complain of?

Stephen looked at him with some little irresolution for a moment, and then seemed to make up his mind.

"Sir, I were never good at showin o’t, though I ha had’n my share in feeling o’t. ’Deed we are in a muddle, sir. Look round town—so rich as ’tis—and see the numbers o’ people as has been broughten into bein heer, fur to weave, an to card, an to piece out a livin’, aw the same one way, somehows, twixt their cradles and their graves. Look how we live, an wheer we live, an in what numbers, an by what chances, and wi’ what sameness; and look how the mills is awlus a goin, and how they never works us no nigher to ony dis’ant object—ceptin awlus, Death. Look how you considers of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi’ yor deputations to Secretaries o’ State ’bout us, and how yo are awlus right, and how we are awlus wrong, and never had ’n no reason in us sin