#jacob marley

[ravencromwell]

Rereading Dickens Christmas Carol for the first time in a long time. And the more I reread, the more it strikes me how seamlessly a queer reading could slip within these pages. Not an especially twee reading, wherein all Scrooge's troubles start and end with grief over Jacob Marley's death. For we know that Scrooge was a "Tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!" And we know that he and Marley were "two kindred spirits"

And perhaps that very fact makes the similarities to queer life, unintended as they most likely were by Mr. Dickens, achingly poignant to me. Scrooge is, we're told, "secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster." How much that resonates, for so many of us who shield our innermost selves but from a select group of friends. And we know that Scrooge and Marley were, at the very least, certainly that for one another. Scrooge is Marley's sole mourner; his sole executor and beneficiary; and even Dickens notes, "friend." How reminiscent is that of queer couples across history, estranged from their families?

Scrooge lives in a set of chambers that once belonged to Marley—clearly Dickens wanted us to believe Scrooge gave up his own dwellings after Marley's death to economize. But with only a flicker of change, those chambers become _their chambers, rented by Marley as the senior member of the couple. The place is so desolate Dickens notes "one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again." The perfect abode for two queer misers who wanted no one prying into their business.

Marley's name is still above the door of Scrooge's counting-house: a mark by which, no doubt, Dickens meant to convey Scrooge such a penny-pincher he couldn't bother to have it changed. But a thing can be both! mark of frugality to ludicrous excess and! mark of mourning. "sometimes," Dickens opines, "People new to the

business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him."

This is why "death of the author" matters so much, in expanding our interpretations of texts. It is vastly far from the lens Dickens would have intended. But, the idea of a ghost of queerness, so taboo in the society it could barely be glanced at sidewise in this tale that is all about the inexplicable and yet that lingers over everything becomes an astonishing lens through which to read this book. Thinking of Scrooge as a queer man, his "melancholy dinner at his usual melancholy tavern" becomes a eerie prefiguring of the hollowness of days spent by Isherwood's A Single Man. In this universe, little wonder Scrooge doubly hates mention of time with family, marriage, etc. when the precise nature of his grief is both unacknowledged and unacknowledgable.

And readings like this are vital, because the uncomfortable truth is, discrimination doesn't "discriminate between sinners and saints", to borrow a Miranda phrase. It is easy, in my liberal circles, to fight for queer people who hold "the good sorts of politics". But what about men like Michael Hess, culpable for supporting Reagan even as his contemptuous homophobia let the aids epidemic run rampant? How much harder is it to remember Michael had a partner? That he deserves empathy and compassion for being practically tarred and feathered out of the party upon his own aids diagnosis?

Expanding our imaginative universes to include queerness, not as redemptive panacea, but merely as one aspect of identity, personality, often in vicious conflict with others. Even! as we consider those stories equally worthy of being told feels vital if we're ever to truly express the complexity of what queer humanity looks like.

[itsdefinitely]

fucking transcendent

[notaplaceofhonour]

reverse A Christmas Carol where Charles Dickens is visited by eight spirits during Hanukkah to terrorize him into being normal about Jews

[owchie-wowchie]

Starkid was onto something with having Jacob Marley be androgynous as all hell

[kmesons]

feverishly doodled jacob marley in my phone's notes app immediately following my first watch of vhscc. I'm going to be looping this for several hours

[rysttle]

CLAWS MY WAY UP TO THE SURFACE,,, Woauhhh Made an animatic for the uh (checks calendar) Holiday spirit I guess lol

The thumbnail is a bit misleading ngl lol but uh expect some spooky stuff in it yeay

Video description that nobody usually reads so I'm putting this in read more lol

Bonus dumb doodle thing idk man it's late lol:

1.I know this isn't the tone of the actual song but I'm making it silly bc it's self indulgent

2.IF YOU NOTICE THAT THEY ALL LOOK DIFFERENT, it's bc theyre drawn in different days Ouh I have no character sheet for them so I draw by feel lol

3.the song is the dylan version and the art is the AJ version bc i've already drawn him and then about halfway through making it realised it's no longer a public video lol It's on me fr I apologise

4.You can see how I gradually get lazier and lazier with the chainsss!! YOU CAN SEE THE LACK OF CHAINS!! Just imagine it for me, pleas,,,e,,,,

[crimzydiamond]

Talkin about 3 spirits ✨

[the-forest-library]

Look at these adorable A Christmas Carol ornaments 😭

From mmmcrafts

[epefanio]

It’s me Jacob Marley your old friend who’s dead

[spiritusloci]

A Christmas Carol (2024)

[kairithemang0]

Curt, remember Owen, your old partner and friend. Just thought I'd drop by I was in the area

Remember Owen Carvour, your old partner who's dead? You're in for one crazy night, just to prepare ya

Sorry

[gavotte-paradisio]

Something something Meredith was holding the watch chain something something Meredith plays Jacob Marley something something chains

[princesssarisa]

I've posted about this before, but I'll do it again.

I still think it's hilarious that in Scrooge (1970), both Scrooge and Marley are played by actors who went on to play older versions of Ewan McGregor.

Albert Finney...

...played the older version of McGregor's character in Big Fish.

And as for Alec Guinness...

...I think everyone knows.

Even without this coincidence, it's funny to see Guinness playing a ghost in Scrooge, since Obi-Wan spends two-thirds of the original trilogy as a Force ghost.

Now all we need is for Ewan McGregor to play either Scrooge or Marley in a new Christmas Carol adaptation (not that we need another one, but they never stop), and it will all have come full circle.

@justice-for-jacob-marley

[inkwell-illustrations]

The definition of gender envy:

[gayjew69]

HAPPY HANUKKAH!!

[sweethangman]

why does marley keep getting gayer. man keep it together you're trying to save his soul not. not whatever your homosexual ass is doing