The Christmas season insists that love is the strongest, truest thing we have. It appears on greeting cards, in sermons, and in sentimental songs. Few writers embraced this conviction more fervently than Charles Dickens.
Yet once Christmastime ends and ordinary life resumes—with its prenuptial agreements, messy divorces, and jaded former lovers—the claim feels less certain. Is love truly a way of seeing reality, or merely a comforting illusion? Is looking out for self the only truth in a cold and dark universe? In the novel, “The Cricket on the Hearth,” Dickens offers serious answers to these questions.
