Context

Context (AO3)

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, during the Victorian era, a time of huge social inequality. Britain was becoming industrialised — factories, poor housing, and long working hours created extreme poverty for many, while the wealthy lived in comfort. Dickens witnessed this divide firsthand.

He was especially influenced by:

• The Poor Laws (1834), which forced the poor into harsh workhouses.

• Visits to ragged schools, where children from poor families received basic education.

• His own experience of poverty — when Dickens was a child, his father was imprisoned for debt, and Charles had to work in a factory.

These experiences shaped Dickens’s compassion for the poor and his anger toward society’s indifference.

Victorian readers believed that poverty was a result of laziness or moral weakness. Dickens challenged this view, showing that kindness and generosity — not wealth — made someone truly “rich.”