Charles Dickens' The Cricket on the Hearth - Review

The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Take a glimpse into the past from a festive fireside.

A tranquil family evening is interrupted by the arrival of a stranger on the eve of a local wedding.

So begins a chain of unexpected events that lead the lives of a small group of people in unforeseen directions.

Truths will finally be seen and new paths chosen in a fairy tale of home.

'The Cricket on the Hearth' is Charles Dickens' third Christmas novella, originally published in 1845. It's more light-hearted than the previous book, ‘The Chimes’, and lacks the gothic shadows of ‘A Christmas Carol’, nonetheless feeling as if it possesses less Christmas magic. It is perhaps a much more subtle depiction of the themes of love, goodwill and family that we cherish at Christmas, the pivotal day instead being a wedding day (it may indeed be subtle commentary from Dickens that such notions are not only seasonal and exclusively for Christmas, while some sources suggest this story's plot was not originally intended as one of the Christmas books).

As with much of Dickens' work, we experience the class structure of society of the time, the deprivation of the lower classes, and the social constructs and expectations - not least of all the role assigned to women in this society. The morality of adultery becomes suddenly far more grey when one did not fully have a choice in entering into marriage. It is always interesting to consider both how much has changed and also how little has changed within our societies when reading this in the 21st century.

The Christmas books tend to include events supernatural in nature or characters preternatural in origin - previously the ghosts of 'A Christmas Carol' and goblins of 'The Chimes'. In this novella, are the fairies - their appearance is fleeting, though it may be the fairy spirits which possess a certain insect and inanimate objects throughout, the supernatural elements being far more subtle. During the Victorian era, crickets were seen as a symbol of luck and finding one in one's home was believed to bring good fortune, hence the novella's title - "to have a cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in the world."

Though more a sub-plot, it is the story of blind girl Bertha and the fiction her father has built for her that resonated most with me - when she finds out the truth of what is beneath the veneer described to her, she sees with a clarity that sight could not give her - a perfectly orchestrated metaphor for emotion and a person's true character beneath the skin. Their relationship felt emotionally authentic and possessing a far deeper connection than that between the various couples.

As to the identity of the omniscient narrator - this is somewhat ambiguous. Perhaps the reader, or the person who may have performed the tale at a public narration? The story has the feel of witnessing a play and is also told in three acts. My own interpretation was that our experiencing this domestic drama was akin to witnessing the interactions of spirits of the past, perhaps making the narrator somewhat a Ghost of Christmas Past.

A heartwarming and whimsical domestic fable, 'The Cricket on the Hearth' makes for a short, charming read during the Yuletide season.



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