Fran's death help create miserable Scrooge

I should post this most obvious comment on all the other posts of, "A Christmas Carol".

It appears to me that Ebeneezer Scrooge's descent into the misearble, money-grubbing, cold-hearted ba$tard he becomes starts with the death of his belove elder sister, Fran. It was Fran who held the greatest and most positive influence on Ebeneezer's life.

I'm no psychologist but it could be very possible that Ebeneezer's transformation from sensitive young man to cold-hearted miser was a something similar to battlefield trauma or post-traumatic trauma. In losing so much of what Ebeneezer loved and held so dear, he shut off and walled off his feelings to stop the excruciating emotional hurt. In other words, Ebeneezer did not go through the grieving process normally. He had no one to guide him along. He became emotionally traumatized and scarred for it. It reminds me of the old Vietnam War stories where the new G.I.s would find themselves coldly treated by the experienced old-timer grunts. The old-timers weren't vindictive...they had to shut off their feelings to prevent going insane from the ongoing trauma of seeing friends die violently.

What if Fran had lived?

Fran would have exerted a strong counteracting influence on Ebeneezer's tendency to focus on money. She would have had her hands full but she could have managed to keep Ebeneezer on the straight and narrow. Ebeneezer would have remained enough of his original self to have gone on to marry Belle and become a family man. Ebeneezer would no doubt have still become a businessman focused on money, but it's possible the alternate Ebeneezer would have been something between the hard-hearted Scrooge and the warm-hearted redeemed Ebeneezer.