There's No Place Like Home
A Review of Dickens' Third Christmas Story: The Cricket on the Hearth
…everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.1 -Jesus
It is a welcome relief to those who have struggled through the darkness in Dickens’ second Christmas story, The Chimes, to find his pen set, in his third Christmas story, to this noble theme. A happy home makes all the difference in the world, not by a lack of conflict, but by a family’s ability to weather the storms of life.
The Cricket on the Hearth begins with a wonderful description of the beauty of everyday home life. Dickens shows his writing “super power” in a delightful, extended description of a woman struggling to put a water-heavy pot over the home fire. Once her strenuous goal is achieved, she sits in her rocking chair, comforted by the soothing sounds of her boiling kettle.
Now it was, that the kettle, growing mellow and musical, began to have irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to indulge in short vocal snorts, which it checked in bud, as if it hadn’t quite made up its mind yet, to be good company. Now it was, that after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a scream of song so cosy and hilarious...2
As a cricket on the hearth of the home joins in the merry song, Dickens continues taking the time and care to portray everyday experiences, choosing words and phrases that bring them to life.
The Kettle…persevered with undiminished ardor, but the Cricket took the first fiddle and kept it. Good heaven how it chirped! Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer darkness like a star…Yet they went very well together, the Cricket and the kettle.3
We have toured other homes in Dickens’ first two Christmas stories. A glimpse of the Cratchit family after their Christmas dinner in A Christmas Carol:
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up….Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth…Then Bob proposed: “A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!” Which all the family re-echoed. “God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.4
None of the home visits has the detail of The Cricket on the Hearth. Dickens sees the cozy English home as a shelter against the harshness of the world. As G.K. Chesterton puts it in his biography of Dickens, the open fire of the hearth is “the red heart of the room. The open fire is the veritable flame of England…” (footnote). The strong marital relationship of John and Dot, who inhabit the home with the kettle and the cricket, fans the flames of the story. Early in the story, Dot says to her husband John:
This has been a happy home, John; and I love the cricket for its sake!”…“I love it for the many times I have heard it, and the many thoughts its harmless music has given me. Sometimes, in the twilight, when I have felt a little solitary and down-hearted, John - before baby was here, to keep me company and make the house gay - when I have thought how lonely you would be if I should die: how lonely I should be, if I could know that you had lost me dear…its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp has cheered me up again and filled me with new trust and confidence.”5
This strong emphasis on home is combined with a dramatic shift in tone. The story is a pendulum swing from the darkened goblins of the clanging chimes in the previous Christmas story to the bright, melodious sounds of a boiling pot and a cricket on the hearth. This is a relief to those who braved the darkness of the second story. But the pendulum swings too far.
Like any good story, we are introduced to a villain who threatens the whole narrative. Mr. Tackleton is a treacherous toy merchant who doesn’t believe in happy homes. As he says while visiting John and Dot’s home:
“Bah! What’s home?” cried Tackleton. “Four walls and a ceiling! (Why don’t you kill that Cricket; I would! I always do. I hate their noise.) …
You kill your crickets, eh?” said John.
“Scrunch ‘em, sir,” returned the other, setting his heel heavily on the floor.6
Tackleton is engaged to a woman who had lost the man she truly loved. The contrast between their relationship and the love shared by John and Dot could have been developed into a viable threat to the happy home. But Dickens builds a threat of infidelity into the story, which just isn’t believable. John thinks he sees Dot in the embrace of another man. But all that Dickens has told us about Dot makes the idea completely unbelievable. This flaw in the story, however, is also a point of application for the reader.
Reading this story teaches us that we should put our best abilities into building a happy home. At the heart of our happy home must be the kind of relationships that Dickens describes so well:
“…the only magic art that still remains to us, the magic of devoted, deathless love.”
“…I love you John, so well, and take pleasure in your ways…”
“Now my dear husband take me to your heart again! That’s my home John; and never, never think of sending me to any other.”7
We need to fan the flames of love to the point that the threat of infidelity within our home simply rings hollow, as it does for Dot and John.
As Jesus’ parable assumes, every home will be hit with rain, wind and the threat of being overwhelmed. When we love each other with devoted, deathless love, we will overcome these storms and our homes will be happy hearths rather than dysfunctional ones.
Matthew 5:24b-25
The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume II, (New York: P.F. Collier), 1870, p. 275
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 244.
Ibid., p. 277.
Ibid., p. 279.
Ibid., p. 294.