Context, or AO3, is central to A Christmas Carol, because the novella is a deliberate piece of social protest. The most useful context all points the same way: it explains why Dickens was so angry about poverty and so determined to change his readers' attitudes. Learn these few ideas well and weave them in as single sharp sentences.
Victorian poverty and the Poor Law
Dickens wrote in 1843, during rapid industrialisation that made some people rich while huge numbers lived in desperate poverty. The Poor Law of 1834 sent the destitute into harsh workhouses, deliberately made grim to discourage people from seeking help. Scrooge's cold questions, 'Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses?', voice exactly the attitude Dickens is attacking: that the poor were a problem to be shut away rather than people to be helped.
Malthus and the 'surplus population'
When Scrooge says the poor had better die and 'decrease the surplus population', he is echoing the economist Thomas Malthus, who argued that helping the poor only encouraged overpopulation. This idea was influential and, to Dickens, monstrous. He puts it in Scrooge's mouth so that the whole novella can prove it wrong, showing that the poor are human beings deserving of compassion, not surplus to be culled.
Ignorance, Want and education
Dickens had recently visited a 'ragged school' for destitute children, and he was appalled by what he saw. The two children revealed by the Ghost of Christmas Present, Ignorance and Want, are his direct response, and his warning that Ignorance is the greater danger reflects his belief that education was the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. This is Dickens at his most political.
Dickens's own life and the Christmas revival
Dickens knew poverty first-hand: as a boy he was sent to work in a blacking factory when his father was imprisoned for debt, an experience that shaped his lifelong sympathy for the poor and for suffering children like Tiny Tim. He was also writing at a time when many modern Christmas traditions were being revived, and he helped shape the idea of Christmas as a season of family, charity and goodwill, exactly the spirit embodied by Fred and the Cratchits.
See how this context deepens each theme on the themes page, especially poverty, and connect it to the Scrooge and Ghost of Christmas Present pages.