Abstract
This article examines the seemingly oppositional yet corollary perspectives of imperial management and leadership found in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” arguing that the exploitative, profit-driven capitalist tendencies and the utopian, romantic notions of nineteenth century British culture are not contradictory but complementary. Drawing on Karl Marx’s Capital, Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Thomas Carlyle’s “Captains of Industry,” and John Ruskin’s “The Stones of Venice,” the study demonstrates how both texts reveal an implicit connection between these two cultural tendencies which supports and maintains the culture of empire in the metropole.
Keywords: Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, Tennyson, Ulysses, imperialism, capitalism, utopian, Victorian culture, Scrooge, colonialism
Introduction
In his seminal work Orientalism, Edward Said focused on the binary opposition of English hegemony and the appropriated and silenced other of the Orient. Instead of allowing for a mutual influence that shapes both the colonizer and the colonized, Said suggested a one way stream of “saturating hegemonic systems” (14) which does not accurately represent the social and cultural relationships of the nineteenth century English empire. As MacKenzie has argued in Orientalism: History, Theory, and the Arts, the East influences the West as much as the West does the East, so that “the Orient can become the means for a counter-western discourse, that it can offer opportunities for literary extension, spiritual renewal and artistic development” (10).
This openness to a more relational cross-influence between colonizer and colonized yields a more comprehensive understanding of an English culture of empire that could nurture both the exploitative, profit-driven capitalist tendencies of the nineteenth century and the utopian, romantic notions of the same period. Thus, this presentation will focus on the seemingly oppositional yet totally corollary perspectives of imperial management and leadership found in the texts of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”
The Exploitative Face: Profit-Driven Capitalism
The first cultural tendency that this study will analyse in the context of nineteenth century British texts is that of an exploitative, profit-driven capitalism. Marx strove to reconnect the consumer with the process of production so that the human labor inherent in production was no longer hidden by the process of commodity exchange but became valued and acknowledged as an integral part of the commodity creation and valuation.
In the pre-apparition section of the novel, Ebenezer Scrooge is presented as the very embodiment of the capitalist spirit. He seeks profit and is “a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner” (34). He cares little for other human beings, underpays his worker, and when asked to donate to charity, he refuses on the basis that he gives what is necessary through taxation. His alienation is complete. Scrooge practices a very Protestant asceticism which prevents him from enjoying the profits he gains.
The Utopian Face: Romantic Sentimentalism
This profit-seeking, exploitative capitalist vision of English culture is a key aspect of the culture of empire which pervaded nineteenth century British society; however, there is another seemingly oppositional yet compatible aspect of this culture which must be explored: the utopian, romantic and sentimentalist counterpart. Carlyle indirectly advocates it when he wishfully posits in “Captains of Industry” that “to be a noble Master will again be the first ambitions with some few; to be a rich Master only the second” (1008).
In the post-apparition section of A Christmas Carol, however, a seemingly opposite ethos of utopian sentimentalism and idealism is espoused. After Marley and the three other apparitions force Scrooge to think about his overly capitalist and self-serving patterns of behavior, he embraces fellow human beings as vehicles for his own redemption. Thus Scrooge comes to embody the utopian and romantic tendencies of English society in the nineteenth century.
In Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” the two main characters represent two very different models of management which are clearly connected by service to the colonial power, Britain. While Ulysses embodies the exploitative and exploratory tendencies of imperialism, his son Telemachus embodies a tendency toward a utopian romantic model of management — “centred in the sphere / of common duties, decent not to fail / in offices of tenderness.”
Conclusion
Charles Dickens’ novel A Christmas Carol and Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” are canonical texts that clearly reflect the influence of two distinct yet concordant leadership tendencies of imperial culture on nineteenth century British literature. The profit-driven capitalist managerial style is portrayed as diametrically opposed to the utopian romantic sentimentalist approach; however, these texts reveal an implicit connection which renders them complementary instead of oppositional. This analysis then opens spaces for a discourse of complicity between these two tendencies, found in nineteenth century British literature, which support and maintain the culture of empire in the metropole.