The Old Curiosity Shop tells the story of Nell Trent, an orphan, cared for by  her grandfather in his antique (old curiosity) shop. Unfortunately the old man has a gambling addiction, which quickly drives them into poverty. He borrows money to fund his habit from the deliciously evil Daniel Quilp, a hunchbacked dwarf who has to be one of Dickens’ finest, funniest, most grotesque villains. Quilp repossess the shop and contents, leaving Nell and her grandfather on the streets. They embrace this as a freedom from oppression, and go on a long aimless journey that essentially lasts the rest of the novel. The shop is quietly forgotten as a motif or location in the novel – this must be one of Dickens’ most inappropriately named works!

Written as most if not all of Dickens’s novels were, in serial form, the structure of the novel is of necessity rambling, and therefore well suited to both the ‘on the road’ format of Nell and her grandfather’s journey, and the many other threads of the story that Dickens weaves into the rest of the narrative.

Probably the best known feature of this novel, and therefore not constituting a spoiler, is Nell’s eventual tragic death, succumbing to the mysterious wasting illness that ends so many young lives in nineteenth century novels. The story of people waiting at the New York docks and calling out to ask the sailors whether Nell lives is probably apocryphal, but it is a great story nonetheless, and demonstrates Dickens’ superstar status at the time. In fact Dickens signposts Nell’s fate throughout the novel, so much so that when one knows the outcome it seems a little heavy handed – lots of meditations on death, a preoccupation with the graves of younger children, several other deaths of children featuring, and so on – but Dickens obviously had to soften the blow. It was still a bold choice – he could easily have saved Nell and was under pressure to do so – but held his nerve. So perhaps not all that sentimental after all?

The real star of the show however is the demonic Quilp

Slight and ridiculous as the incident was, it made him appear such a little fiend, and withal such a keen and knowing one, that the old woman felt too much afraid of him to utter a single word, and suffered herself to be led with extraordinary politeness to the breakfast-table. Here he by no means diminished the impression he had just produced, 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 till they bent again, and in short performed so many horrifying and uncommon acts that the women were nearly frightened out of their wits, and began to doubt if he were really a human creature.” 

Quilp is hunting for the runaways and at the same time pursuing a vendetta against Kit, their former assistant, who is saved by the evidence of Dick Swiveller and ‘the Marchioness’ – their relationship forming some of the most touching scenes in the novel.

Just a few perhaps somewhat random thoughts about the novel. First,  I don’t think it can be a coincidence that Dickens tells us that Nell is “not quite fourteen”. Juliet is almost exactly the same age, just two weeks short of fourteen, and Dickens, whether subconsciously or not, is inviting the reader to compare and link the two characters – Juliet also suffers a tragically early tragic death of course, another hint that this is to be Nell’s fate as well. But it also reminds the reader that Nell, while invariably described as a girl, is also seen by several men in the novel as on the cusp of becoming a young woman. She is spoken of at several points in sexualised terms. Early on her brother looks to marry her off to Richard Swiveller:

“You saw my sister Nell?’

‘What about her?’ returned Dick.

‘She has a pretty face, has she not?’

‘Why, certainly,’ replied Dick. ‘I must say for her that there’s not any very strong family likeness between her and you.’

‘Has she a pretty face,’ repeated his friend impatiently.

‘Yes,’ said Dick, ‘she has a pretty face, a very pretty face. What of that?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ returned his friend. ‘It’s very plain that the old man and I will remain at daggers drawn to the end of our lives, and that I have nothing to expect from him. You see that, I suppose?’

‘A bat might see that, with the sun shining,’ said Dick.

‘It’s equally plain that the money which the old flint—rot him—first taught me to expect that I should share with her at his death, will all be hers, is it not?’

‘I should said it was,’ replied Dick; ‘unless the way in which I put the case to him, made an impression. It may have done so. It was powerful, Fred. ‘Here is a jolly old grandfather’—that was strong, I thought—very friendly and natural. Did it strike you in that way?’

‘It didn’t strike him,’ returned the other, ‘so we needn’t discuss it. Now look here. Nell is nearly fourteen.’

‘Fine girl of her age, but small,’ observed Richard Swiveller parenthetically.

‘If I am to go on, be quiet for one minute,’ returned Trent, fretting at the slight interest the other appeared to take in the conversation. ‘Now I’m coming to the point.’

‘That’s right,’ said Dick.

‘The girl has strong affections, and brought up as she has been, may, at her age, be easily influenced and persuaded. If I take her in hand, I will be bound by a very little coaxing and threatening to bend her to my will. Not to beat about the bush (for the advantages of the scheme would take a week to tell) what’s to prevent your marrying her?’

To his credit, Dick is shocked

“‘And she “nearly fourteen”!’ cried Dick.”

Incidentally I love the way Dick is casually rude to Fred here.

The odious Quilp also plans to marry Nell when he has arranged an unfortunate accident for his first wife, and is constantly drawing attention to her attractiveness in a sexualised way:

‘Such a fresh, blooming, modest little bud, neighbour,’ said Quilp, nursing his short leg, and making his eyes twinkle very much; ‘such a chubby, rosy, cosy, little Nell!’ . ‘so small, so compact, so beautifully modelled, so fair, with such blue veins and such a transparent skin, and such little feet, and such winning ways”

Dickens’s issues with much younger women have been well covered elsewhere. I appreciate that he is believed to have been working through his grief at the sudden death of his 17 year old sister-in-law when writing about Nell, but these scenes are unquestionably uncomfortable, and it is a relief when the focus moves off this aspect of the character.

Another significant feature of The Old Curiosity Shop that I noticed during this read is the frequency with which characters are anonymised. I don’t think we are ever told the name of Nell’s grandfather or great-uncle, who are known as the old man and the single man respectively. The Marchioness doesn’t know her own name, or possibly doesn’t have one, representing the depths of her abuse by the Brasses; the gentleman who offers Nell shelter at the end of the novel is referred to by all as ‘the bachelor’; even the man who offers Nell a place by his furnace is left unnamed. Why Dickens does this is unclear – in an industrial society people are often stripped of their identity as part of their reduction into the working components of their body – hence the way the term “hands” is used to describe factory workers for example – but some of the more affluent characters in the novel are treated in the same way.

Dickens is an extraordinary novelist, and despite his unquestioned status amongst English writers it could be argued he still doesn’t get the credit he deserves. Yes his characters can be two dimensional – but many are much more rounded and complex than this characterisation would suggest, Quilp being an excellent example. Yes his story lines can meander, but the way he controls his plots despite sometimes writing two novels for weekly publication at the same time is little short of amazing. He may have had issues with the sexualisation of younger women, but he created a huge range of believable and strong women characters. His writing can often be innovative and highly sophisticated, even though it was written for mass consumption. And not least, his support for the poor and down-trodden of Victorian England was authentic – he is the best advocate for social reform the working classes could have wanted:

“If they would but think how hard it is for the very poor to have engendered in their hearts, that love of home from which all domestic virtues spring, when they live in dense and squalid masses where social decency is lost, or rather never found … and [those who rule] strive to improve the wretched dwellings in bye-ways where only Poverty may walk … In hollow voices from Workhouse, Hospital, and jail, this truth is preached from day to day, and has been proclaimed for years.”

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