I’ve been likened to Ebenezer Scrooge, you know. I have, and
maybe the comparison is not entirely without merit. Had he not been so
insufferably prejudiced against the poor, I think I might have preferred his
pre-visitation persona to the one responsible for the survival of Tiny Tim.
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Everybody hates Scrooge, but everybody loves Gregory House, and they're essentially the same person.
I would suggest that the difference possibly lies in the fact that Scrooge has long been more than just a literary character. He’s a sort of cultural tradition passed down through the generations, and maybe he comes complete with the Victorian propensity for sentimentality and consequent love of pathos (played to amusing effect in the TV series The Bleak Old Shop of Stuff.) House, on the other hand, is a modern day character, and maybe modern day audiences are somehow conditioned to appreciate meanness as long as it’s fictional and pushed to the limit.
I never really hated Scrooge, you know. As a young child I was only interested in the first chapter because it was all about Christmas Eve and had a proper ghost in it. The nature of the man Scrooge was almost immaterial. Once I was old enough to take a more critical view, I felt sorry for him because I saw his meanness as an involuntary response to childhood abuse. That’s why I’ve always thought that A Christmas Carol is not about redemption as such, but about regression therapy. That would make it a little beyond its time, I think.
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