ENCUESTA DEL SART

In Victorian Relativity, Christopher Herbert argues that Einstein’s work on relativity is an outgrowth of nineteenth-century philosophy. He writes: “The relativity movement, even in its most abstract and technically scientific manifestations, has been driven by the imagining of a newly emancipated order of thought amid a context of growing and (its distinctive characteristic) ever more insidious repression, and it has always been inseparable from ‘moral relativism’” (8). While Herbert traces this history chiefly through Victorian moral philosophers and scientific minds such as J. S. Mill, Herbert Spenser, and Karl Pearson, the antagonism between “insidious repression” and moral relativism is evident in the time-as-money public sphere with which Dickens concerns himself in A Christmas Carol. Discussing Dombey and Son, Crawford writes, “The chief object of satire in the novel is hubristic unconsciousness of the relativity of every perspective, of every account of the shape of history” (203). The Victorian man of business, of which Dombey and Scrooge both serve as examples, is concerned only with gain, and sees the world only as so much raw material out of which useful (and

profitable) products may be made. In an oft-quoted passage, Dickens sums up Dombey’s outlook:

The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships . . . . stars and planets circled in their orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre. Common abbreviations took new meaning in his eyes, and had sole reference to them. A. D. had no concern with anno Domini, but stood for Anno Dombei – and Son. (50)

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The absolutism of Dombey’s perception leaves no room for the relevance of history – to Dombey the past can be read in the ledgers recording his firm’s business transactions. The time-is-money mentality of the public sphere thus represses and excludes every other type of thought. Herbert notes that Victorian writing on relativity posits “an ideal regime of values. This ideal regime forms the inverse image of all systems of autocracy and absolutism. Its presiding values are reciprocity; interconnectedness; the privileging of diversity, dissent, and creativity; and the systematic demystification of established structures of authority” (9). In Herbert’s list we can see many of the lessons absolutist businessmen like Dombey and Scrooge come to learn: Lee Erickson argues that in a “primitive Keynesian” way, Scrooge learns the value of reciprocity (51); Harry Stone argues that the moral of A Christmas Carol is “All society is connected” (50). Certainly the novel privileges creativity: Scrooge in the beginning of the narrative “had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the City of London” (54); however, in the end of the novel, we give him high marks for addressing his bedpost as if it were a sentient being. My chief concern, however, is with the “systematic demystification of established structures of authority” – specifically, with the public sphere’s absolutist view of time. In setting up Christmas as an atemporal space, Dickens has already begun the demystification process; in addressing Scrooge’s conscious relationship to Christmas, he posits a solution to its inherent threat.

The absolutist view of time is dangerous not only in that it discounts all other ways of thinking, it is also the mechanism whereby Greg’s “young” lose touch with the higher and deeper life. In relativistic terms, Herbert expresses Greg’s anxiety: “not to enter into two-way relations with another thing is simply not to exist. All things, in order

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to have identities of their own, are enmeshed in a perpetual traffic of communication with other things” (9). In not contemplating the world around them, Victorian men of business cease to have identities of their own – it is Greg’s inadequate, unworthy life. Dickens exemplifies this lack of identity early in A Christmas Carol. He writes, “The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him” (46). Scrooge’s identity is lost in his preoccupying interest in his business – its name takes precedence over his. He is so out of touch with his personal identity that even his name is irrelevant to him. The firm of Scrooge and Marley has literally consumed him. Psychologist Alexander Bain, in his 1855 treatise The Senses and the Intellect, explains this lack of identity differently. In defining the intellect, Bain writes, “The first and most fundamental property is the Consciousness of Difference, or Discrimination” (325); “every mental experience is necessarily twofold . . . everything known to us is known in connexion with . . . the opposite or negation of itself . . . when we pass from one member of a contrast to the other . . . both members must be present” (565). In light of this theory, Scrooge’s refrain “Bah! Humbug!” takes on new meaning. Each time he is confronted with an idea outside his time-is-money mentality, he rejects it with this

offhand remark. When Fred presents him with the logic “What right have you to be dismal? what reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough,” Dickens writes, “Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment said ‘Bah!’ again; and followed it up with ‘Humbug’” (48). In this way, Scrooge remains unconscious of difference, and can thus be said to be entirely lacking in “mental experience.” In the spiritual journey Scrooge undertakes, he will be forced to examine difference; this

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ultimately helps him develop the tools of self-awareness necessary for his moral conversion.

Dickens explicitly links Scrooge’s moral conversion to his re-estimation of the significance of time, marking A Christmas Carol as a direct address to the concerns about the psychological damage done to Victorians living in the high-speed world of

commerce. Dickens takes pains to depict Scrooge as the stereotypical businessman who emphatically believes that time is money. When Fred confronts his uncle with a “Merry Christmas,” Scrooge returns: “Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in ‘em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you?” (48). Scrooge cannot conceive of another way to think of Christmas time but through the measure of profit – and in Fred’s case – loss. Likewise, when Bob Cratchit observes that a day off for Christmas is only a once-a-year occurrence, Scrooge replies, “A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!” (53). Scrooge measures each day in terms of its monetary value. A day not spent earning money is to him a day wasted. Scrooge’s association of time with economic gain makes him unappreciative of past time or future time. When Scrooge is told that the Ghost of Christmas Past is the ghost not of “Long Past,” but of “[his] past” the narrator writes, “Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered” (69). Scrooge’s first thought, when confronted with his past, is to try to cover it, to bury it. It is something he has no use for, and as this passage suggests, something he finds disquieting. The Ghost’s reply indicates

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that Scrooge’s desire is habitual to him: “‘What!’ exclaimed the Ghost, ‘would you so soon put out, with worldly hands the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow!’” (69). Scrooge has a history of ignoring the past and is part of a group whose “worldly hands,” i.e. material interests, have reduced the role of the past, the light of which represents the moral good learned from experience, in favor of

concentration on present monetary gain. This lost value is precisely what the Christmas spirits teach Scrooge.

The rules for Scrooge’s engagement with the spirits are established in temporal terms. Marley tells Scrooge, “Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls one. . . . Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate” (63). The three-day timeline not only recalls Christian symbolism associating three days with resurrection and redemption, it also creates the dissonance between Scrooge’s perception of time as money and its passage over the course of his spiritual journey. When Scrooge awakens after his encounter with Marley’s ghost he finds that instead of morning, it appears to be night again. Scrooge is at first afraid that, like a scene out of Byron’s “Darkness,” night has taken over the world:

“Why, it isn’t possible,” said Scrooge, “that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!”

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window . . . . All he could make out was, that . . . there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief, because “three days after sight of this First

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of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order” and so forth, would have become a mere United States security if there were no days to count by.

(66)

Scrooge’s concern here, even in the face of a possible apocalypse, is with the loss of a system for measuring when bills are due. Contrasted to this is Scrooge’s perception of the loss of a day when he awakens after his experience with the Ghost of Christmas Past. Dickens writes, “Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger despatched to him” (85). In this case, Scrooge is completely unconcerned about what appears to be the loss of another day; instead, his feelings toward time are more passive. He feels himself “restored” at the “right time” as if he recognizes a higher will guiding his course. And while Scrooge in the opening sequence watches the clock jealously lest he lose a minute of the labor Cratchit owes him – “With an ill-will Scrooge . . . tacitly admitted the fact [that the work-day was over] to the expectant clerk” – Scrooge post- ghostly encounter no longer needs the clock to know the hour (53). His sense of time has become less quantitative and more qualitative.

Each scene Scrooge visits with his spirit guides helps him empathize with others; each also forces him to see time in other than monetary terms. The first scene Scrooge visits with the Ghost of Christmas Past is one that shows him the sympathetic child he used to be, but more precisely, it shows him a child still able to participate in other modes of time, before time became to him a way to measure gain. He sees himself reading, and

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as he watches, fictional being after fictional being spring to life around him: “‘It’s dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And Valentine,’ said Scrooge, ‘and his wild brother, Orson; there they go!’” (72). Here is a Scrooge who is happy to “spend” time in such unproductive ways as reading fiction, and further, here is a Scrooge able to participate imaginatively in other times and others’ lives. So strong is this imaginative capacity that Scrooge is able to call the characters forth into visible form – he sees them as clearly as he sees the ghost of Jacob Marley and the three Christmas spirits. Catherine Crowe points to a connection between the

imagination and ghost-seeing: “By imagination I do not simply mean to convey the common notion implied by that much abused word, which is only fancy, but the

constructive imagination, which is a much higher function, and which, inasmuch as man in made in the likeness of God, bears a distant relation to that sublime power by which the Creator projects, creates and upholds his universe” (276). Crowe suggest that even the imaginative act of ghost-seeing brings us more in line with the divine and puts us in touch with our spiritual selves. This is the ability Scrooge needs to regain. Further, Scrooge’s childhood ability to participate in these fictional lives marks his past

relativism. As a child he is able to accommodate worldviews he does not share, unlike the dismissive “Bah! Humbug!” absolutism of his adult self.

In furthering Scrooge’s education in the proper uses of time, the Ghost of Christmas Past shows him scenes where he chose rightly how to spend time, and scenes where he chose wrongly. The Ghost takes Scrooge to the warehouse where he served his apprenticeship; there old Fezziwig tells his two apprentices, “‘Yo ho, my boys . . . . No

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more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer!’” (75). Fezziwig does not begrudge his employees’ time off, but encourages them in their play. He is Dickens’s idealized model of a businessman. Throughout the whole of the “domestic ball” which follows, “Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation” (78). Forcing Scrooge to view his past revives in him his understanding of the joy to be had in pursuits other than business. This is an understanding Scrooge lacked in his earlier encounter with Fred, and in gaining it his emotional and moral senses are rekindled.

The next scene shows Scrooge with his fiancé, Belle, who in releasing him from their engagement says, “You may – the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will – have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you awoke” (80- 81). The truth of Belle’s words is forced upon the present-day Scrooge who for many years has ceased to think of her existence. In burying this memory as “unprofitable” Scrooge made the choice to concentrate on time as money rather than time as teacher and moral guide. Ironically, Belle’s criticism of Scrooge in this scene – that his avarice has blinded him to all other human feelings and concerns – is precisely the lesson the spirits seek to teach him. The key to his redemption was already always available to Scrooge, but only if he understood and practiced his mental ability to move freely in time and space.

That the Ghost of Christmas Present shows Scrooge so many domestic scenes – the dinner at the Cratchits, the miner and his family singing carols, the sailors with their

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“homeward hopes,” Fred’s Christmas party – indicates his particular lesson regarding Scrooge’s reorientation in time. The Ghost helps Scrooge understand difference, in Bain’s sense of the word; Scrooge can better understand what his life is not by viewing its opposite and seeing what others’ lives are. It is only by having this opposite always before him mentally that he can gain knowledge of himself. Scrooge must contemplate present time – including the present time that others occupy – in order to be morally guided by it. It is another step towards abolishing Scrooge’s absolutist mentality in favor of relativistic thinking. As a confirmed bachelor, domestic scenes are largely unknown to Scrooge. This in itself is troubling in terms of Victorian ideology. Generally, the

domestic sphere was thought to act as a panacea to the ills of the world of commerce; in his home, surrounded by wife and children, the Victorian man of business could find redemption for the sins he committed in the greedy, sordid public sphere. The home, with the angelic wife at its center, provided a “time out” to Greg’s fast-paced, morally bankrupt life at high pressure. In “Of Queen’s Gardens” Ruskin writes

The man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all peril and trial: to him, therefore, must be the failure, the offense, the inevitable error: often he must be wounded, or subdued; often misled; and always hardened. But he guards the woman from all this; within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offense. This is the true nature of home—it is the place of Peace; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, doubt, and division.

Indeed, Dickens himself often made use of this formula – witness Wemmick’s conversion from the dry, hard “post-office” mouthed man only interested in portable property to the genial, considerate son and lover when he transitions from the office to his Walworth property (Great Expectations 210). Scrooge, and Redlaw as well, must do

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without this haven. Dickens’s solution is to have each man learn to rely on inner resources. Scrooge’s ability to visit his own past and to imaginatively participate in others’ presents (as he does when he plays Christmas games at his nephew’s party) gives him access to domestic spaces wherein he can find redemption.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come demonstrates to Scrooge what is lost in only thinking of the present and in valuing time as a measure of monetary gain. Long before