Midge, who blogs at “The Wild Woman Within,” has done us all a great service with her re-evaluation of Ebenezer Scrooge, citing numerous overlooked features of a man who did his best in difficult circumstances. Consider:
- He was environmentally conscious, limiting his use of coal.
- As a small business owner he was a job creator and not one of the 1%.
- And any arm-chair shrink should be able to explain how all his losses combined to create the armor around his heart, which appears as meanness to the casual glance.
We owe Midge our thanks for setting the record straight!
The First Gates 
Very clever interpretation. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I’d never seen her blog before. I love the story and used to teach it each year. After we read it, we would watch my favorite version, the musical Scrooge with Albert Finney. The students would moan and groan that we had to watch a musical, but they were all humming “Thank You Very Much” on their way out of the room.
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I may have confessed before, that among musical versions, I’m partial to The Muppet Christmas Carol, where Michael Caine does a fine Scrooge to Kermit’s Bob Cratchit, and Rizzo narrates as Charles Dickens…
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