The Cricket on the Hearth

The Cricket on the Hearth
Frontispiece of second edition, 1846
Author(s)	Charles Dickens
Illustrator	Daniel Maclise John Leech Richard Doyle Clarkson Stanfield Edwin Landseer
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novella
Publisher	Bradbury and Evans
Publication date	20 December 1845
Media type	Print
Preceded by	The Chimes
Followed by	The Battle of Life

The Cricket on the Hearth. A Fairy Tale of Home is a novella by Charles Dickens, published by Bradbury and Evans, and released 20  December 1845 with illustrations by Daniel Maclise, John Leech, Richard Doyle, Clarkson Stanfield and Edwin Henry Landseer.^[1] Dickens began writing the book around 17 October 1845 and finished it by 1 December. Like all of Dickens' Christmas books, it was published in book form, not as a serial. ^[2] Dickens described the novel as "quiet and domestic [...] innocent and pretty."^[2] It is subdivided into chapters called "Chirps", similar to the "Quarters" of The Chimes or the "Staves" of A Christmas Carol. It is the third of Dickens's five Christmas books, the others being A Christmas Carol (1843), The Chimes (1844), The Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848).

Background

In July 1845, Dickens contemplated forming a periodical focusing on the concerns of the home called The Cricket but the plan fell through, and he transformed his idea into a Christmas book in which he abandoned social criticism, current events, and topical themes in favour of simple fantasy and a domestic setting for his hero's redemption. The book was released on 20 December 1845 (the title page read "1846") and sold briskly into the New Year. Seventeen stage productions opened during the Christmas season 1845 with one production receiving Dickens's approval and opening on the same day as the book's release. Dickens read the tale four times in public performance. It has been dramatized in numerous languages and for years was more popular on stage than "A Christmas Carol." Vladimir Lenin publicly walked out of a performance of the "Cricket" play in the Soviet Union, calling it too sentimental, but it is less explicitly Christian than some of Dickens' other Christmas books. Cricket has been criticized for its sentimentality but contemporary readers were attracted to its depiction of the Victorian ideal of the happy home.^[3]

Plot

John Peerybingle, a carrier, lives with his young wife Dot, their baby, their nanny Tilly Slowboy, and a mysterious old stranger with a long white beard. A cricket constantly chirps on the hearth and acts as a guardian angel to the family, at one point assuming a human voice to warn John that his suspicions that Dot is having an affair with the mysterious lodger are wrong.

The life of the Peerybingles frequently intersects with that of Caleb Plummer, a poor toymaker employed by the miser Mr. Tackleton. Caleb has a blind daughter Bertha, and a son Edward, who traveled to South America and was thought dead. The miser Tackleton is now on the eve of marrying Edward's sweetheart, May, but she does not love Tackleton.

In the end, the mysterious lodger is revealed to be none other than Edward who has returned home in disguise. He marries May hours before she is scheduled to marry Tackleton. However Tackleton's heart is melted by the Christmas season, like Ebenezer Scrooge, and he surrenders May to her true love.

Characters

• John Peerybingle, a carrier; a lumbering, slow, honest man
• Mrs. Mary Peerybingle, ("Dot"), John Peerybingle's wife
• Caleb Plummer, a poor old toymaker in the employ of Tackleton
• Bertha Plummer, the blind daughter of Caleb Plummer
• Edward Plummer, the son of Caleb Plummer
• Tackleton, (called "Gruff and Tackleton"), a stern, ill-natured, sarcastic toy merchant
• May Fielding, a friend to Mrs. Peerybingle
• Mrs. Fielding, her mother; a little, peevish, querulous old lady
• Tilly Slowboy, a great clumsy girl; Mrs. Peerybingle's nursemaid

Literary significance and criticism

The book was a huge commercial success, quickly going through two editions,^[2] and outselling its two Christmas predecessors, Carol and Chimes.^[4] Reviews were favourable, but not all so. The Times of 27 December 1845 opined, "We owe it to literature to protest against this last production of Mr. Dickens [...] Shades of Fielding and Scott! Is it for such jargon as this that we have given your throne to one who cannot estimate his eminence?"^{[citation needed]} However, William Makepeace Thackeray enjoyed the book immensely: "To us, it appears it is a good Christmas book, illuminated with extra gas, crammed with extra bonbons, French plums and sweetness [...] This story is no more a real story than Peerybingle is a real name!"^{[citation needed]}

Dickens portrayal of the blind girl Bertha is significant. Victorians believed disabilities were inherited, and thus it was not socially acceptable for the blind to marry (although they often did in reality).^[5] In fiction courtship plots, the blind were often used to build tension since it was assumed they must be kept from marrying.^[5] The fictional portrayal of Bertha is similar to Dickens' description in American Notes (1842) of the deaf and blind girl Laura Bridgman, whom he saw on a visit to the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston, Massachusetts.^[5]

Modern scholars have given the story little attention, but Andrew Sangers has argued it contains similarities to Shakespeare's comedies and should be seen "both as a significant indication of the tastes of the 1840s and of Dickens himself."^[2]

The identity of the narrator is left to the reader, though possibilities include Bertha Plummer, the blind daughter of Caleb Plummer, and the baby, fully grown and returned to his childhood home. The narration is decidedly masculine, lending more credit to the latter.

Also heavily commentated by author R. J. Spindle as part of their research for their novel based on another work by Dickens, A Christmas Carol.^[6]

Adaptations

Stage adaptations include the successful The Cricket on the Hearth by Albert Richard Smith produced at the Surrey Theatre in 1845, and Dion Boucicault's Dot, A Drama in Three Acts (or simply Dot), first performed at New York's Winter Garden in 1859. It was staged repeatedly in Britain and America for the remainder of the 19th century starring at times John Toole, Henry Irving, Jean Davenport. The play helped launch the career of American actor Joseph Jefferson (1829–1905).

The novella was the basis for at least two operas: Karl Goldmark's Das Heimchem am Herd with a libretto by A. M. Willner (premiere: June 1896, Berlin; New York 1910),^[7] and Riccardo Zandonai's Il grillo del focolare with a libretto by Cesare Hanau (premiere: November 1908, Turin).^[8] Goldmark's opera was performed in Philadelphia in November 1912 with the Cricket sung by American soprano Mabel Riegelman (1889, Cincinnati – 1967, Burlingame, California).

Film, radio, and television adaptations include three American silent film versions: one, directed by D.W. Griffith (1909) starring Owen Moore, another directed by L. Marston (1914) starring Alan Hale, and one directed by Lorimer Johnston (1923). A silent Russian version, Sverchok na Pechi (1915) was directed by Boris Sushkevich and Aleksandr Uralsky and starred Maria Ouspenskaya. A silent French version, Le Grillon du Foyer (1922), was directed and adapted by Jean Manoussi and starred Charles Boyer as Edouard.^[9] A 25-minute NBC radio play adaptation aired on December 24, 1945.^[10] On television, a 50-minute 1967 Rankin-Bass animated adaptation featured the voices of Roddy MacDowall as the Cricket, and father and daughter Danny Thomas and Marlo Thomas as Caleb and Bertha.^[11]

Notes

1. ^ Kitton, Frederic G. (1900). The Minor Writings of Charles Dickens. London: Elliot Stock. p. 48. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d} Schlicke, Paul (1999). Oxford Reader's Companion to Dickens. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-866253-X. 
3. ^ Dickens, Charles; Glancy, Ruth (Ed.) (1988). Christmas Books. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. xv-xvi. ISBN 0-19-283435-5. 
4. ^ Guida, Fred (2000). 'A Christmas Carol' and Its Adaptations: A Critical Examination of Dickens's Story and Its Productions on Screen and Television. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. pp. 41–2. ISBN 0-7864-0738-7. 
5. ^ ^{a b c} Holmes, Martha Stoddard. Dickens, Charles: The Cricket on the Hearth. Web page sourced from Christmas Books (The New Oxford Illustrated Dickens) (1954)
6. ^ http://www.rjspindle.com/content/cricket-hearth-fairy-tale-home-charles-dickens Full Length Commentary on The Cricket on the Hearth
7. ^ McSpadden, J. Walker (1921). Opera Synopses: A Guide to the Plots and Characters of the Standard Operas. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. p. 100. 
8. ^ Hill, Edward Burlingame (Ed.); Newman, Ernest (Ed.) (1915). The Art of Music: Volume Three; Modern Music Being Book Three of A Narrative History of Music. New York: The National Society of Music. pp. 241–2,380. 
9. ^ Glavin, John (2003). Dickens on Screen. Cambridge University Press. p. 208. ISBN 0-521-80652-6. 
10. ^ "The Cricket on the Hearth: Dickens's Other Christmas Story". http://www.archive.org/details/otr_cricketonthehearth. Retrieved 2009-12-24. 
11. ^ Hischak, Thomas S. (2008). The Oxford Companion to the American Musical: Theatre, Film, and Television. Oxford University Press. p. 609. ISBN 0-978-19-533533-0. 

External links

Online editions

• The Cricket on the Hearth at Internet Archive.
• The Cricket on the Hearth at Project Gutenberg
• The Cricket on the Hearth at Dickens Literature
• The Cricket on the Hearth at The University of Adelaide Library
• The Cricket on the Hearth audibook by LibriVox

Adaptations

• Dot, A Drama in Three Acts by Dion Boucicault (1859)
• Picture Gallery from Victorian Web