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How does the setting of A Christmas Carol portray the discrimination between the rich and poor?

In A Christmas Carol, the setting provides an accurate description of life in Industrial London during the mid-19th century when wealth was unevenly distributed and the poor experienced much discrimination. Arguably, the strongest evidence of this theme appears in Stave Four when Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come visit Joe's shop. Here, the setting illustrates the poverty and filth of the neighbourhoods of London's industrial poor:


In this den of infamous resort,...

In A Christmas Carol, the setting provides an accurate description of life in Industrial London during the mid-19th century when wealth was unevenly distributed and the poor experienced much discrimination. Arguably, the strongest evidence of this theme appears in Stave Four when Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come visit Joe's shop. Here, the setting illustrates the poverty and filth of the neighbourhoods of London's industrial poor:



In this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought.



In this shop, a charwoman and a laundress bring their bundles of stolen goods which they sell to Joe in order to supplement their meagre incomes.


Compare this with Scrooge's counting house in Stave One. Though it is cold and dismal, the counting-house is a symbol of financial wealth and prosperity. It is also the setting for Scrooge's refusal to make a charitable donation to the poor and where he utters the phrases which will haunt him later:



Are there no prisons?


And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation?



In this setting, then, Scrooge represents the ignorance of the wealthier classes who believed that the industrial poor were lazy and immoral and thus created their own poverty. In reality, these people were simply the victims of circumstance and Scrooge's realisation of this fact is evidence of his great transformation.

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