The Old Curiosity Shop was the most popular of Dickens's novels during his lifetime. Yet now there is perhaps no other novel by him which splits opinion so much. How can that be?The simple answer is that tastes change. Just as with modern-day fantasy stories the reader has to suspend their disbelief, accepting the basic premise of the magical or dystopian world described, with Dickens one has to "go along with" his unique view of the world. Yes, he was writing about everyday characters and the highs and lows of their lives. His novels are very much rooted in reality, or they would not have had such an influence on legislation and the public perceptions of the day. But in a way they are also peopled with characters of fantasy. He will refer to "the fairy" or "the goblin" and this is how he views those characters. Their physical descriptions, mannerisms and behaviour all fit the type. Once you buy into the whole package, you realise that this is not a hopelessly sentimental or unrealistic view, but a fabulous tale of good versus evil with a great dollop of chance, and marvellous fairies and grotesques around every corner. And the characters? Oh, the characters! There are literally dozens of cameo pieces. They jump out of the book at every opportunity, these highly coloured images demanding attention, having but a brief, short life of perhaps a few paragraphs at most, before their vitality sizzles and dies, never again to be encountered by the reader. Who remembers Mr Slum, who was trying to persuade Mrs. Jarley to employ his services as a poet in helping to advertise the waxworks? Vividly described, he is actually based on a person Dickens remembered from his horrific days at Warren's Blacking Factory. But he vanishes from the pages without trace. There is the unbearably snooty Miss Maltravers, the hypocritical monster of a teacher, with a crocodile of young ladies trailing in her wake. Unforgiveably, she makes Little Nell cry - and is then never seen again. There is Tom Scott, the only character in the entire novel, apart from Quilp's downtrodden wife, who genuinely seems to like Quilp. Tom has a penchant for standing on his head and walking on his hands; he later becomes a professional tumbler. But often these characters appear for an instant, sparkle brightly, then disappear never to be be seen again.On every page too, there is the fingerprint of the author, for Dickens has a unique way of telling a story. Even when describing a harrowing or tragic episode, he will still manage to somehow make the reader smile. In the main he does this through his characters, and he will also anthropomorphise his animals. Dickens will even personify objects or buildings; it is all grist to his mill of engaging his readers, and if at all possible, amusing us at the same time. His style combines exaggeration, hyperbole, sarcasm, irony, good humour, a sense of the absurd, a strong sense of injustice - all these combined in a formula which is essentially the recipe for the human condition, and reaches a pinnacle in the writing of "The Inimitable" Charles Dickens. Of course, all this can only be experienced through reading the text. The best dramatisation in the world cannot convey any of these linguistic devices. Yet Dickens's stories are perennially popular, adapted for films, TV, radio and stage, and have been retold in numerous ways ever since they were written. Quite an achievement for an author whom some class as "dull"!So what is the story about, and who are the main characters? Well the story started life as a series of sketches for Dickens's weekly magazine, "Master Humphrey's Clock". Dickens's original idea was that the magazine should be similar to "The Pickwick Papers", with an old man surrounded by a group of friends, who would all relate stories to each other. They would all read out their own manuscripts, the proceedings being presided over by Master Humphrey. The magazine contained a few of these short stories, plus the first episodes of both The Old Curiosity Shop and later "Barnaby Rudge". He had started to include a serial expressly because sales of the magazine had begun to drop. The public were disappointed by "Master Humphrey's Clock", but were quickly intrigued by the story of The Old Curiosity Shop. It captured the public's imagination, and after Dickens had written the first three chapters, being the astute businessman that he was, with an eye for what whetted the public's appetite, he decided to turn it into a full novel. Here is the author, in a preface to a later edition of the novel,"Master Humphrey (before his devotion to the bread and butter business) was originally supposed to be the narrator of the story. As it was constructed from the beginning, however, with a view to separate publication when completed, his demise has not involved the necessity of any alteration."He thus neatly got out of any rewriting, although a modern reader is left with an abandoned first person narrator at the end of chapter 3. From the reader's point of view, the voice of the narrator has felt particularly personal up to that point. It is easy to recognise him, even from the very first words of the book, "Night is generally my time for walking."Now anyone who knows anything about Charles Dickens's life, will recognise the author from this. He used to walk for miles, and for hours on end, all over London - and often at night.Then in the novel the narrator tells us, at the end of the third chapter, that he is going to disappear, and from then on, presumably, we will have an omniscient narrator. Oddly, this works. Dickens has already created an atmosphere of mystery, tension and intrigue. We have two abominable grotesques, an old musty house full of "curiosities", and a tiny "fairylike" child. We have been hooked right from the start by the questions the author/narrator also feels. Where does the old man go every night and why? And is he really rich? The upshot of these disjointed events is that the reader, who is already feeling an unworldly sense with this novel, is put on edge even more, and feels a little disturbed and dislocated. At this point it could easily turn into one of Dickens's ghost stories.Once Dickens had freed himself from the constraints of "Master Humphrey's Clock", he was able to give free rein to the story of The Old Curiosity Shop. He was free to expand on his original idea, increasing the suspense, and interweaving unforgettable characters into the action. There are the main characters, such as the malicious and shudderingly evil, hateful, misshapen, dwarf moneylender Daniel Quilp. Descriptions of him are abundant, always emphasising his sub-human qualities, threatening to "bite" people - and even the poor dog - all the time. When asleep he was,"hanging so far out of his bed that he almost seemed to be standing on his head, and whom, either from the uneasiness of this posture or in one of his agreeable habits, was gasping and growling with his mouth wide open, and the whites (or rather the dirty yellows) of his eyes distinctly visible."Quilp revels in plotting the downfall of those around him, and maliciously making a misery of the lives of his nearest and dearest, his shadow of a wife Betsy and her mother Mrs Jiniwin. We meet Sampson and Sally Brass, lawyers, the obsequious brother and dragon of a sister, a sparring duo who provide much comic relief whilst being integral to the plot. Here is a portrait of the charming Sally, of whom, by the way, Quilp is much enamoured,".... the lady carried upon her upper lip certain reddish demonstrations, which, if the imagination had been assisted by her attire, might have been mistaken for a beard. These were, however, in all probability, nothing more than eyelashes in a wrong place, as the eyes of Miss Brass were quite free from any such natural impertinencies. In complexion Miss Brass was sallow - rather a dirty sallow, so to speak - but this hue was agreeably relieved by the healthy glow which mantled in the extreme tip of her laughing nose."There are the young heroes, Dick Swiveller - often rather the worse for drink, disinclined to work, full of blather; a careless rogue, but essentially honest and true, "Mr Richard Swiveller wending his way homeward after this fashion, which is considered by evil-minded men to be symbolical of intoxication, and is not held by such persons to denote that state of deep wisdom and reflection in which the actor knows himself to be," and Kit Nubbins, a salt of the earth, devoted both to Nell and his mother, but not really very bright and easily taken advantage of. There are the Garlands, a kind and generous couple, who put the reader in mind of the benevolence of the Cheeryble brothers in "Nicholas Nickleby". Eccentric characters abound, and many have the most wonderful names: Sophie Wackles, a flighty young girl, Codlin and Short, proprietor and puppeteer of a Punch and Judy show, Isaac List and Joe Jowl, crafty gamblers, Mr Chuckster, an annoying windbag, who is the Clerk to Mr Witherden, not to mention the renamed servant, "Sophronia Sphynx". Yet in this novel Dickens seeks to increase the mystery even further by deliberately keeping the names of some characters from us, sometimes right up to the end. There is "the Small Servant", "the Marchioness", "the Single Gentleman", "the Bachelor". And even Nell Trent's grandfather, a pivotal character in the book, is not given a first name. "The fairy" is of course Little Nell, usually referred to as "the child". "The goblin" is the grotesque dwarf Quilp, quite possibly the most evil villain ever to spring from Dickens's pen. The parts containing these characters are the myth, the fairytale, the eternal struggle of good versus evil, the parts where we want to cheer on our heroes, our angels and fairies, and boo the goblins and baddies. It is also an unworldly doom-laden thread of the story. Simon Callow calls it,"an extraordinary and complex novel, which summons up an almost Wagnerian world with its dwarf and its gold, a cautionary tale about capitalism... It is astounding that Dickens should have whipped up this whole elaborate fable out of thin air, more or less overnight, quickly extrapolating it out of a little story he thought he might write about a sickly child and her grandfather, in order to keep faith with his public; he never pleased them more with anything."Indeed, when published as a novel this gave fresh impetus to the serialisation. The mystery continued right through the story, now given added depth and complexity by virtue of its novel status. It took the public by storm, selling an astonishing hundred thousand copies a week, and for the last episode Dickens was inundated with letters from both sides of the Atlantic, begging him to spare Little Nell's life. When the last instalment arrived by ship, crowds in New York were shouting from the pier, "Is Little Nell dead?" Dickens himself had had great difficulty in deciding this point, with so much of his public pleading for a reprieve. Even William Charles Macready, the great actor to whom Dickens had dedicated his previous novel, "Nicholas Nickleby" begged Dickens to let Little Nell live. Dickens's friend, mentor and biographer, John Forster, advised the opposite, telling him that Little Nell should die, "so that the gentle little pure figure and form should never change to the fancy". Dickens finished writing The Old Curiosity Shop at 4am on January 17th, 1841. The story had been serialised for ten months, and Dickens had been in torment over the planned ending, unable to bring himself to write it, living the experience so vividly that he could not make his characters face the death of their heroine, "I tremble to approach the place a great deal more than Kit; a great deal more than Mr. Garland; a great deal more than the Single Gentleman.... I am slowly murdering that poor child. It wrings my heart. (view spoiler)[Yet it must be. (hide spoiler)]
A Treacly TreatWritten between the spring of 1840 and the late autumn of 1841 for the weekly serial “Master Humphrey’s Clock”, Dickens’s “The Old Curiosity Shop” is utterly blemished by the constraints on a writer’s imagination such a serial publication demands, for the novel is extremely ill-composed, its plot comes out as threadbare and rather pointless, and some of the characters undergo rather improbable changes. In fact, had this been the first Dickens novel I had ever laid eyes on, I would probably never have discovered the wonderful richness and enjoyment this inimitable writer has to offer, as I would hardly have touched another of his books.“The Old Curiosity Shop” tells the story of Little Nell Trent and her dotard of a grandfather, who – due to the machinations of her profligate and money-hungry brother and of the diabolical dwarf Quilp – are made to leave their forfeited home in London, the eponymous Old Curiosity Shop, and abscond into the countryside to lead a humble, but happy life as beggars. Matters are complicated by the grandfather’s compulsive gambling and by Quilp’s determination to hunt the couple down. On the other hand, there appears a strange middle-aged gentleman who has taken a keen interest in finding the whereabouts of Nell and her grandfather and in bringing Quilp to justice.Unfortunately this book is seriously flawed in many ways. After the first three chapters, for instance, the first person narrator withdraws from the story, since Dickens was well aware that this point of view would put him under severe restrictions in constructing his tale, which at first was not intended as a full-length novel but as another of the shorter yarns spun by Master Humphrey. While we may generously pass over such an awkward interference on the author’s part, matters are not improved by the writer’s decision to have Frederick Trent, Nell’s brother, who has played a crucial role in the first few chapters, suddenly drop out of the novel completely, whereas his comical sidekick, Dick Swiveller, is retained through all sorts of twisted plot devices. Speaking of these, Daniel Quilp’s motives for hunting Nell and her relative are rather threadbare, too, and in the second half of the novel, Quilp seems to concentrate his attention on Nell’s former friend and ally Kit so that on the whole there is no coherent plot at all.Admittedly, Dickens was never too convincing at creating plots, but in most cases he made up for this deficiency by inventing inspiring characters and giving haunting descriptions of 19th century life. In these respects, however, “The Old Curiosity Shop” tends to be rather disappointing, too. There is the feckless and indefatigably imaginative Dick Swiveller, to be sure, whose falling in love with the Marchioness, a young servant, shows Dickens at his best, and there are Sampson Brass and his virago of a sister as two vile deceivers, and there is, of course, Daniel Quilp himself, an embodiment of exuberant evil, who is, somehow, flawed by Dickens’s inclination to overstep the mark of verisimilitude, but this is it. Kit Nubbles, for example, a rather naïve and imbecile nitwit at the beginning of the novel, has suddenly turned into a self-confident and honest young man at his next appearance. Worst of all, however, are the pure characters we are supposed to sympathize with, they are even worse than most of Dickens’s paragons of virtue. What can I write about Nell apart from her being virtuous, loving, self-sacrificing, innocent and patient – all this, mark, at the gentle age of twelve? She is so angelic that she fails to arouse any human interest at all. And then there’s grandfather Trent, an ineffectual, lachrymose and peevish egotist, who gambles, not for his own sake, but in order to earn abundant riches he wants to lavish on his grandchild. Reading about how these two cut and dried heroes wend their way through all sorts of hardships is tantamount to going on a strict diet of unbuttered and untoasted white bread, which is, paradoxically, made the drier for all the treacly sentiment that Dickens pours on these scenes. Too much sweet is bad for your teeth, so you start grinding them.The worst part, in these terms, is Nell’s deathbed scene, which has been immortalized by Oscar Wilde’s irreverent remark that you must have a heart of stone to read it without dissolving into tears – of laughter. I find that Aldous Huxley in his essay “Vulgarity in Literature” gives an even more devastating, yet clairvoyant analysis of Dickens’s inability to provide a really touching account of the death of a child, because he compares the treatment of Little Nell with Dostoevsky’s artistic rendition of the death of little Ilusha Snegirov in “The Brothers Karamasov” – a scene that actually moves me to tears whenever I read it. “One of Dickens’s most striking peculiarities”, Huxley states, “is that, whenever in his writing he becomes emotional, he ceases instantly to use his intelligence. The overflowing of his heart drowns his head and even dims his eyes; for, whenever he is in the melting mood, Dickens ceases to be able and probably ceases even to wish to see reality. His one and only desire on these occasions is just to overflow, nothing else. Which he does, with a vengeance and in an atrocious blank verse that is meant to be poetical prose and succeeds only in being the worst kind of fustian.” Nowhere in Dickens’s works is this flaw as obtrusively meretricious as in Little Nell’s deathbed scene, and the acclaim he earned for this podgy hotchpotch from his contemporaries might rather prove to be of interest to Peter Gay, in writing another of his insightful books on 19th century mentalities, than serve as evidence of artistic quality.Running down a novel by one of my favourite writers was not an easy thing to do for me, but a spade must be named a bloody spade, coûte que coûte. It is for the creation of Mr. Swiveller, the brazen couple and, to some degree, of Quilp that I would concede that this book has some little merit after all.
What do You think about The Old Curiosity Shop (2001)?
Charles Dickens likes to beat the shit out of his main characters. It's like a form of domestic abuse!Has he beaten the crap out of another character more than poor little Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop? Certainly Pip and Oliver get theirs. But at least with them there's some sort of happy ending or comeuppance for the villains. Like Little Dorrit without the uplifting ending, Nell is flat out beat down. Time and again she is taken advantage of and there is no redemption, not in my eyes. Sure, you could say that she gets to finish out her miserable life in a better place than where she started, but (view spoiler)[then she immediately dies. (hide spoiler)]
—Jason Koivu
More than a century ago, people were waiting on the docks at New York to ask a question to passengers from England ‘Is Nell dead?’. So influential Old Curiosity Shop to those readers’ lives! And how Little Nell has stolen many readers’ hearts! I adore the novel so much and I do think that Little Nell’s life is tragic, yet I didn’t shed any tear when I closed the last page of the book. There are other elements of the book that attract me more, especially the rich description that successfully builds the grim atmosphere of the book. The energy of Old Curiosity Shop does not lie on Nell, yet on the villain Daniel Quilp. Quilp is one of the best characters ever made by Dickens. Not because he’s handsome and super nice, but because he’s ugly and evil. From his appearance, Dickens descibed Quilp as ‘inhuman’ , and thanks to the illustrators, we just wish we won’t meet someone like Quilp on the dark street at midnight! Not only his ugly looks, Quilp is also scary due to his awkward acts:... for he ate hard eggs, shell and all, devoured gigantic prawns with the heads and tails on, chewed tobacco and water-cresses at the same time and with extraordinary greediness, drank boiling tea without winking, bit his fork and spoon until they bent again ... (p. 39)Yeah, that’s Mr. Quilp. He rarely talks, he just growls, chuckles and squeals. We do not have to know why he acts like that. He is pure evil and that’s what’s weirdly interesting from him. I also sense Quilp being sexually attracted to Nell (who is 13 years old, is he Humbert-Humbert prototype?). He adores Nell’s beauty and even directly says to Nell she should be Mrs. Quilp number two! I shivered when I read he flirted at Nell. But oddly, it is Quilp that truly gripped me. Every time he appears, I couldn’t wait to know what he’s gonna do next. Another character that I think is also Dickens’ finest creation is Richard Swiveller. At first, he seems to be a flamboyant young person and is soon going to be the stupid character in the book due to his flowery phrases and quotations here and there. One scene of Mr. Swiveller that I like is when he meets Miss Brass for the first time. It is hilarious and proves the witty humour of Dickens (chapter 33). Yet as the story goes, Mr. Swiveller grows into a young man with a golden heart. Because of him, all matters are solved. The world needs more of Mr. Swiveller. He saves the day and as important as that, he brings fun and joy to us! The struggle to get a copy of Old Curiosity Shop wasn’t an easy one (ask Sherien), and thank God I got it because reading it was a truly pleasant experience. It took me around two weeks to finally finish the novel since I wanted to read every line carefully. I wanted to enjoy the rich description of the book, and yes I did. However, no matter how big my love to Old Curiosity Shop , I still have to be objective. I was about to give it five stars yet there are a thing from the plot that kinda annoys me. Actually the plot walks in the right straight path, but then the character of Fred Trent (Nell’s brother) is quite useless. The conflict could have been more interestingly complex if Dickens explored his character more. But then, the main question is: is the novel worth reading? Absolutely.
—Ayu Palar
I am quite worried by this insipid-looking woman on the cover...So far my favourite character is Whiskers the pony. I'm not sure if that bodes well.I confess: I abandoned Little Nell. In a drawer, in a B&B in Tobermory. I did however finish the book, after lugging it about since March. I'm afraid my initial reservations were confirmed: Nell was insipid, and Whiskers the pony was ace. Especially as it is reported that his final act was to kick his doctor in his last illness. The doctor is never introduced, but there are many other characters in this book that could do with a good kicking.
—Duntay
