How to write the perfect Christmas Carol GCSE essay on POVERTY! 🎄

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol to open Victorian eyes to the harsh reality of poverty — and this is one of the easiest themes to get top marks in – as long as you make clever analysis points.

Here is what you should talk about:

1️⃣ Society punished the poor

Scrooge is used to highlight how the wealthy ignored the suffering of the poor. His support for the New Poor Law highlights how the rich were helped by the government to neglect and even punish the poor by forcing them into workhouses or throwing them in prison.

Quote:

“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”

2️⃣ Cratchits show how many poor were “deserving”

Many rich people believed the poor were somehow morally corrupt and had put themselves in a position of poverty – so they saw them as the “undeserving poor”. Yet the Cratchit family contradict this. They are hard working, grateful and they have a lot of dignity. They also share much joy being together – showing they were “deserving” of help and fair pay.

Quote:

“Nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family.”
“They were happy, grateful, pleased with one another.”

3️⃣ Ignorance and Want show society’s moral corruption

The worst victims of poverty were poor children who did not get a chance to go to school or even have their basic needs met. The greed of the rich – like Scrooge – indirectly led to the creation of these horrific and neglected children, who later became menaces to society.

Quote:
“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want.”

✨PS: I am running Christmas Carol HALF TERM class on 28 October going over a GCSE model answer: https://www.firstratetutors.com/october-literature