While one of the most famous Christmas stories of all time, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol sometimes comes under criticism for weakly addressing the problem of poverty. The complaint goes like this: Ebenezer Scrooge is but one person who learns an individual lesson, and that lesson is for private individuals to be a bit more charitable. One day a year. Thus, the Dickens classic tosses a breadcrumb to the poor, but doesn’t do a thing to address serious social ills. A sentimental tale, but a moral flop. Continue reading
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The Victorian Legacy of Harry Potter
It began with a boy with a lightning bolt on his forehead on a train. And just as the idea came to Rowling, a Dickensian novel could have started out like this: a little orphan boy with a mark on his face being laid at the door of some snobbish middle class brick-heads.
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