Ratna Rajya Laxmi Campus

Exhibition road, Kathmandu

Thesis Proposal

Name of the Student : Jeevnath Aryal

Roll No : 05

Year of Admission : 2061/62

Date of Submission :

Introduction

Traditional Vs Modern Personality in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

Statement of the Problem

Scrooge is the protagonist of the novel who is tremendously traditional, money

minded and greedy in the onset of the novel. Despite his innumerable efforts to follow

traditionalism, he gets release from his traditional personality due to the tension between

his inner and outer self. Ultimately, he gets success to change his traditional personality

to modern by donating economically helpless person and participating as a sociable and

responsible person among his employees’ relatives and friends.

Hypothesis

Conflict between Scrooge’s traditional and modern self is designated towards his

dignity to establish his modern individuality.

Methodology

Intensive study of the text will be the center point of this research. The broad

range of the materials pertaining to Existentialism will be used as the theoretical tool. In

addition, internet, library consultation and related commentaries will be supportive

materials. Guidance from the professors and the lecturers will be further inspiration to

bring the research into its complete alive shape.

Review of Literature

A Christmas Carole has been analyzed from different perspectives such as New

Historicist, Marxist, Gothic and Religious among the others. Some critics view the novel

as a social commentary. About the social importance of A Christmas Carole, Edger

Johnson comments:

Everyone knows Dickens’ Christmas Carole for its colourful painting of a

rosy fireside good cheer and warmth of felling, made all the more vivid by

the contrasting chill wintry darkness in which its radiant scenes are

framed. Most readers realize too how characteristics of all Dickens’

sentiments season are the laughter and tenderness and jollity he poured

into the carol. (1)

In A Critical History of English Literature, David Daiches says that, “Dickens

demonstrated the variety of human characters so spectacularly that only Chaucer and

Shakespeare could do so”. (1058)

Dickens wants to reform the people through A Christmas Carole. To support this

statement Edward Albert remarks:

Though Dickens works embody no systematic social or political theory,

from the first he took himself very seriously as a social reformer […].

Deference to the fastidiousness of his public excluded the crudest realism

from his pictures of poverty, and he seems to have built his hopes for

improvement on spread of the spirit of benevolence rather than upon

 political upheaval or his work suffered from his preoccupation with social

problems. (391)

In many of Dickens’ novels, he illuminates the social problems of Victorian Era

England. With growing industrial English population, he points out the problems inherent

with the protagonist Scrooge. David Kelly in an essay for “Novels for Students” remarks:

In his personal life, too, Dickens paints Scrooge’s heartlessness more

sharply than is necessary to establish the idea of the cranky old miser who

has a heart of gold deep within. The strength of his ici- ness comes

through when Belle surprises him by breaking off their engagement of the

grounds that he idolizes only money. He has no argument to raise, forced

to admit in the face her well- stated rationality that she is right. (2)

When particularly aroused by an offense against humanity, Dickens may

introduce biting irony that revolves into open sarcasm. Hence his rumors have

contributed a lot to our life. As, Allen writes on Dickens: “He is attacking a whole social

system in all its complexity wherever it seems to him to impede or prevent the flow of

generous impulse between man and man, the exercise of natural kindliness and trust”(59).

Some critics have deemed A Christmas Carole a biting piece of social

commentary. The prevailing socio- economic theory of that time held that anyone who

was in debt should be put in a poorhouse. In this story, Dickens contended that the

reformation of such a traditional society could be achieved gradually through the concept

of modern individuality.
Delimitation

Existentialism will be the tool of the thesis where the conflict of traditional and

modern personality and its related theory will be discussed mainly giving emphasis on

Sartre’s “Freedom of Choice” and Albert Camus, “Absurd Freedom”

Chapter Division

Chapter I. Introduction: Dickens’ and his novels

Chapter II. Existentialism

Chapter III. A Christmas Carol, ‘Conflict between Traditional and Modern

Personality

Chapter IV. Conclusion: Victory of modern personality

 Works Cited

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. New Delhi: Harcourt, 1999.

Albert, Edward. History of English Literature. 5th ed. Calcutta: Oxford , 1987.

Allen, Walter. The English Novel: A Short Critical History, Harmonds Worth: Penguine

Books, 1982

Baker, Ernest Albert. The History of the English Novel. Vol 5. London: Longman, 1939

Bloom, Harold. ed. Charles Dickens. New York: Chelsea House, 1987

Chesterton, G.K. Charles Dickens. London: Methldin, 1906

Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature. Vol 4. New Delhi: Allied, 1906.

Daleski, H.M. Dickens and the Art of Analogy. New York: Schocken Books, 1970.

Engel, Monroe. The Maturity of Charles Dickens. Cambridge: Harvard, 1959.

Jonson, Edgar. “Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph”. 1952.

Kelly, David, “Novel for Students”. Gale, 2000.

Monod, Sylvere. Dickens the Novelist. Norman: Oklahoma, 1968.

Neill, Daina. A short History of the English Novel. New York: Routledge, 1992