A Literary Critique of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol: Gothic Redemption and Victorian Social Reform

By Lewis F. Gordon

A Literary Critique of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol: Gothic Redemption and Victorian Social Reform reframes Dickens's "ghostly little book" as a daring work of literary art-at once Gothic nightmare, moral allegory, social-problem fiction, and proto-economic critique. Lewis F. Gordon shows how Dickens weds supernatural terror to humane reform, using Marley's chains, the spectral triad, and a fog-choked London to expose the cold logic of the 1834 Poor Law, Malthusian indifference, and the spiritual costs of industrial capitalism. Moving from door-knocker dread to Christmas-morning grace, Gordon traces a meticulously engineered narrative arc-five "staves" that play like a carol-through which memory, vision, and forewarning perform the work of psychological healing and civic awakening. Along the way, he situates the novella amid Victorian debates on charity and policy, reads Scrooge's conversion through emerging ideas about consumption and liquidity, and maps the text's extraordinary cultural afterlife, from the mid-century reinvention of Christmas to its hundreds of adaptations. Brimming with close readings, historical context, and interdisciplinary insight, this book restores A Christmas Carol to its original complexity: not a seasonal fable, but a compact masterpiece whose Gothic energies power a radical plea for compassion, responsibility, and social repair.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FPDFL6F5
• ISBN13: 9798263180720
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 90 Pages
• Weight: 0.29 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"