The Chimes: A Reader's Guide

Dickens's Second Carol — and His Angriest

A year after *A Christmas Carol* (1843), Charles Dickens published *The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In* (1844). Readers expecting Ebenezer Scrooge's cozy redemption meet something harsher: Toby "Trotty" Veck, a poor ticket-porter who eats tripe at a New Year's Eve bell-ringer's dinner, reads hostile newspapers blaming the poor for their misery, and is driven toward suicide by despair before the church bells summon goblins who show him visions of his daughter Meg's future ruin.

The novella is less famous than its predecessor but more politically fierce. Dickens attacks Malthusian rhetoric, workhouse ideology, and respectable cruelty toward "the likes of" the working poor. If the Carol asks the rich to be generous, *The Chimes* asks society to stop crushing the poor and calling it moral science.

Plot: Despair, Visions, Endurance

Trotty, sixty-ish, waits for hire near a church whose bells seem to speak. He carries messages for pennies, loves Meg and her fiancé Richard, and internalizes newspapers that call poor men dangerous. After a humiliating encounter with Alderman Cute and Sir Joseph Bowley (philanthropist who preaches from comfort), Trotty climbs the bell tower in suicidal grief.

The goblins of the bells — spirits of the chimes — put him on trial for losing faith in humanity. They show phantasmal futures: Meg driven to prostitution, Richard to crime, their child dying in poverty. Visions are Dickensian nightmare — social collapse painted as personal fate.

Trotty wakes on New Year's morning with renewed resolve to trust Meg's goodness and resist poisonous rhetoric. The ending is hopeful but strained — survival, not triumph. Dickens offers endurance under injustice more than miraculous wealth.

Characters and Social Types

Meg embodies working-class dignity and romantic devotion; her fragility in visions is Dickens' argument against blaming victims.

Richard is an honest laborer; his downward spiral in visions shows how systemic pressure criminalizes the poor.

Alderman Cute and Filer represent utilitarian contempt — statistics without mercy.

Sir Joseph Bowley is performative charity — feast for the poor that reinforces hierarchy.

Will Fern and his niece Lilian, introduced later, carry rural poverty and legal persecution into London — linking village and city destitution.

Relation to A Christmas Carol

Both use supernatural intervention on a winter night, both end with moral renewal. Differences matter:

- Scrooge is rich; Trotty is poor. - Scrooge's sin is selfishness; Trotty's crisis is believing he deserves contempt. - Carol's ghosts teach personal transformation; Chimes' goblins attack social narratives that make the poor accept shame.

Read *The Chimes* after the Carol to see Dickens' full Christmas politics — not only "be kind" but "stop lying about who suffers and why."

Style and Structure

Four "quarters" mirror bell chimes instead of carol staves. Dickens alternates domestic tenderness (Trotty and Meg's meal) with grotesque satire (newspaper offices, alderman's speech). The tower sequences are surreal — less cozy than Marley's chains, closer to nightmare lecture.

Prose is typical mid-Dickens: performative, comic, then suddenly violent in emotion. Allow the tonal whiplash; it mirrors Trotty's psyche.

Historical Context

1840s Britain debated Poor Law reform, Chartism, and whether poverty indicated moral failure. Dickens read hostile press blaming crime on "low" classes. *The Chimes* is direct rebuttal — written while he also campaigned against Ragged Schools neglect and visited workhouses.

Sales were strong but critical reception mixed; some found goblin trial heavy-handed. Modern readers often find it more relevant than Carol for class politics.

Edition and Reading Tips

Public domain; included in Dickens Christmas book omnibuses (Everyman, Oxford World's Classics). Length ~90 pages — one or two evenings.

Read with notes on Malthus and Political Economy if available — one paragraph of context unlocks Alderman Cute's speeches.

Practical Schedule

Sitting 1: Opening through Trotty's dinner — establish voice and newspaper poison.

Sitting 2: Humiliation by Cute and Bowley — mark phrases Trotty absorbs.

Sitting 3: Bell tower and visions — do not rush; this is the book's core.

Sitting 4: Will Fern plot and New Year resolution.

Themes to Watch

Internalized oppression: Trotty believes slanders against his class until spirits force external view.

Time and bells: Years turn; chimes measure mortality and collective conscience.

Respectability as weapon: Philanthropy that humiliates is worse than open hate.

Hope without fairy tale: Meg may still struggle; Trotty chooses faith anyway.

Common Frustrations

"Too preachy" — yes; Dickens is campaigning. Read as pamphlet-plus-story.

"Goblins less scary than Carol ghosts" — different function; they judge society, not one miser.

"Ending weak" — intentional ambiguity; not every poor man gets turkey and raise.

After Reading

*The Chimes* rewards readers who want Dickens beyond nostalgia. Trotty Veck is not a household name, but his New Year's Eve despair — absorbing headlines that blame the vulnerable — feels contemporary in uncomfortable ways. Read it when you need proof that Victorian Christmas literature was not only mistletoe but indictment — bells ringing out an old year of lies and daring a new year of stubborn human worth.