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Spectacular Sympathy: Visuality and Ideology in Dickens's A Christmas Carol

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Audrey Jaffe
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Abstract

Dickens's A Christmas Carol exemplifies the literary and cinematic use of visual representation to reinforce ideological values in Western culture. The story positions Scrooge and its readers as spectators of a series of culturally valorized scenes; access to the spectator's idealized self depends on the ability to perceive and desire (to identify and identify with) the values embedded in those scenes. Scrooge saves his life by recovering what the story posits as his natural ability to identify with representations, an ability that characterizes both his ideal, sympathetic self and the ideal subject of commodity culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 109 , Issue 2 , March 1994 , pp. 254 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1994

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