Question

Based on the context in which it appears in this excerpt from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, what is the meaning of the word obscene?
“Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,” replied the woman with a laugh. “Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If calico an’t good enough for such a purpose, it isn’t good enough for anything. It’s quite as becoming to the body. He can’t look uglier than he did in that one.”

As they sat grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man’s lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and disgust, which could hardly have been greater, though they had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself.

“Ha, ha!” laughed the same woman, when old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. “This is the end of it, you see! He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!”

wicked
barely visible
unsympathetic
attention-seeking

Answer 1

Wicked. Because of obscene means offensive or disgusting, one infer that because it means those things it would also be a word to describe evil things. Thus wicked is the closest answer to the actual word. 

Answer 2

offensive or disgusting by accepted standards of morality and decency.