The Healing Journey

December 18, 2024

What would Christmas be without Charles Dickens, the 19th-century English author who gave us many of the traditions and customs we cherish today? When we think of Dickens, we think of Ebenezer Scrooge, the miserly and miserable money-lender whose presence threatened to suck the joy out of the holiday everywhere he went. We think of ghosts, and we think of caroling. We think of festivities in the tradition of Old Fezziwig, with plum pudding and roasted goose. We also think of redemption and forgiveness, which is the message of his most famous Christmas novel, “A Christmas Carol.”

Dickens wrote five Christmas stories, which also included “The Chimes” and “The Cricket on the Hearth,” but his last was the most penetrating because it centered on suffering and grief.

“The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain” is about a man, who is haunted by grief and depression. Unlike Scrooge, the “Haunted Man” is a kind and compassionate person, but he is tormented by his past.

Dickens understood loss. He wrote “The Haunted Man” in 1848 after he lost his sister, and the main character is a successful chemist named Stephen Redlaw, who is on in years and also burdened by the death of his sister. Like Scrooge, Redlaw is visited by a ghost that resembles him, except that he is “ghastly and cold, colorless in its leaden face and hands.”

The ghost offers the tormented man a bargain. He will be able to forget his painful memories, including his grief. And he will be able to confer this gift on others. At first, Redlaw is convinced this is the solution to his sorrow and the sorrow of those he encounters. But after his transformation, he’s no longer a compassionate man, but an uncaring one with a cold heart.

At the end of the story, his cook Milly, who lost her child, shares her grief with him and how it has made her a more caring person. She says, “When I see a beautiful child in its fond mother’s arms, I love it all the better, thinking that my child might have been like that and might have made my heart as proud and happy.”

In an essay about the novel, Jordan Evans-Hill wrote: “To Dickens, Christmas was always a time for joy, but also for remembrance. It is a time when lost loved ones should not be absent, but should be with us all in spirit. Stephen Redlaw learns to reflect and change, as he realizes that grief is a reflection of our love, and that only by making peace with our pain can we really start to love again. ‘The Haunted Man’ was written nearly 175 years ago. Yet the deeply human, sympathetic and moving message is just as relevant today as it has ever been.”

©Joseph Pisani

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