The Old Curiosity Shop

“I could form no comprehension of his character, unless he were one of those miserable wretches who, having made gain the sole end and object of their lives, and having succeeded in amassing great riches, are constantly tortured by the dread of poverty, and beset by fears of loss and ruin. Many things he had said, which I had been at a loss to understand, were quite reconcilable with the idea thus presented to me, and at length I concluded that beyond all doubt he was one of this unhappy race.”

The single gentleman sees right to the core of Nell’s grandfather—what drives him, what motivates him—and it is not purely love. The grandfather‘s apparent paranoia stems from deep financial fears. The single gentleman perceives the cause of this fear as being the same in a poor man as it is in a rich man—they constantly feel they need more wealth and more power for fear they will somehow lose it all. The single gentleman astutely associates greed with misery, and the events of the novel prove his assessment correct.

“[I]n the majority of cases, conscience is an elastic and very flexible article, which will bear a great deal of stretching and adapt itself to a great variety of circumstances.”

Here the narrator addresses a common characteristic of the novel’s villains: their flexible conscience. It is the characters’ integrity the narrator calls into question here; for example, the characters do not outright declare themselves Christians, but they regularly reference their Christian faith and/or the Christian Bible. Despite this, they treat one another in a decidedly un-Christian manner, because their flexible conscience keeps their religious tenets separate from their interpersonal relationships and/or professional interactions. The narrator’s reference to the “majority of cases” suggests that this hypocrisy is a common real-world failing.

“Besides that it was very difficult to impart to any person not intimately acquainted with the life she led, an adequate sense of its gloom and loneliness, a constant fear of in some way committing or injuring the old man to whom she was so tenderly attached, had restrained her.

It is difficult to explain trauma to anyone who has not lived it, but Nell is also still a child, and as a child she does not have the words to articulate her experiences in a way that an adult might be able to. Since the adults in the novel forsake one another at every chance, so her loyalty is strongly linked to her youth. Her grandfather is the only family she really has, and she has neither the knowledge nor the experience to give him up and live on her own.

“I am not a child in that I think, but even if I am, oh hear me pray that we may beg, or work in open roads or fields, to earn a scanty living, rather than live as we do now.”

Nell acknowledges her youth here, while at the same time insisting that her youth should not determine the future that she envisions for herself and for her grandfather. She insists that her plan is not a childish fantasy, but that even if it is childish, she feels it so strongly that she cannot allow it to be ignored.

“[S]he knew very well that her husband wished to enter the house in this order, that he might have a favourable opportunity of inflicting a few pinches on her arms, which were seldom free from impressions of his fingers in black and blue colors.”

Mrs. Quilp knows her husband well enough to realize that even the slightest gesture of politeness or kindness is actually his effort to abuse her further. While an outsider may see a husband holding the door for his wife, Mrs. Quilp knows that Mr. Quilp only wants to enter last so no one can see him pinching her. The image of her bruised arms illustrates how severe the physical side of the abuse can be.

“It was enough to leave dumb things behind, and objects that were insensible both to her love and sorrow. To have parted from her only other friend upon the threshold of that wild journey, would have wrung her heart indeed.”

Growing up in the Curiosity Shop, Nell feels an attachment to the few material objects she owns. These items are not only books she enjoys or trinkets she has collected, but they are also tangible reminders of happier times in her life. When she has to leave them behind, it is a just cause for sadness, and she can’t bear to part with Kit in the same manner; she tells him that he has been dismissed but not that she intends to leave London.

“She felt a curious kind of pleasure in lingering among these houses of the dead, and read the inscriptions on the tombs of the good people (a great number of good people were buried there), passing on from one to another with increasing interest.”

Nell’s interest in death is apparent even before this quotation appears, but these middle chapters expand on her interest in death and the afterlife. The narration notes Nell’s time spent at the graves of “good” people whose lives she finds interesting, but it makes no mention of “bad” or unsavory people, suggesting that there either are not any buried there, or that Nell shies away from them, aligning herself with “good” people even if they are dead.

“Death doesn’t change us more than life, my dear.”

The old widow’s conversation with Nell is one of the first significant conversations about death and grief in the novel. The widow’s view is that the death of a loved one does not change a person any more or less than living a full life with that person would have—the love is still there, as is the joy and sadness.

“Go, deceiver, go, some day, sir, p’r’aps you’ll waken, from pleasure’s dream to know, the grief of orphans forsaken.”

Dick Swiveller’s words to Mr. Quilp seem to be a kind of curse upon him. Quilp has lied to him many times over and manipulated him into his schemes, and in his drunken state Dick curses him to know not just his pain and loneliness—as he grew up an orphan—but implicitly Nell’s, too.

“A man of your appearance couldn’t be. If you’re any spirit at all, sir, you’re an evil spirit. Choice spirits […] are quite a different-looking sort of people, you may take your oath of that, sir.”

Dick astutely sums up a common belief of the time, which is that one’s outward appearance, whether ugly or handsome, reflects one’s inner good or evil. He assertively tells Quilp that because he is ugly, he could not possibly be a good, or “choice,” spirit.

“In the midst of her grief and tears she was yet careful to conceal their real cause from the old man, for the dead boy had been a grandchild, and left but one aged relative to mourn his premature decay.”

Nell works hard to conceal her true pain from her grandfather not just because she feels he might not understand, but also because if he does understand, her pain would only increase his own. When she mourns the young scholar’s death, she feels particularly attached to the situation because of how closely it mirrors her own life and her fears: If she ever died, her grandfather would have no family left, and he would mourn her alone.

“We are very thankful to you […] but neither of us could part from the other if all the wealth in the world were halved between us.”

Nell expresses her wish to Mrs. Jarley that she not separate her from her grandfather. Once again, Nell demonstrates her firm belief that her family is more important than any amount of money. She would not leave her grandfather for any sum or luxury, but now that the reader knows of her grandfather’s addictive gambling habits, one has to wonder if he would say the same.

“The terror she had lately felt was nothing compared with that which now oppressed her. No strange robber, no treacherous host conniving at the plunder of his guests, or stealing to their beds to kill them in their sleep, no nightly prowler, however terribly and cruel, could have awakened in her bosom half the dread which the recognition of her silent visitor inspired.”

Nell’s realization that her grandfather was the one who snuck into her room and robbed her inspires terrible fear and anxiety. She continues to love him despite his betrayal, even and especially when his relapse means they have to leave the first safe place they found since leaving London. Nell is not necessarily afraid of her grandfather, but she is certainly afraid for him. It is here that she realizes just how profoundly their roles have reversed, from him being her caretaker to her becoming his.

“No man knocks himself down; if his destiny knocks him down, his destiny must pick him up again.”

This quotation anticipates a late 19th-century genre called naturalism, which paints a deterministic view of people’s lives. According to the naturalist perspective, no one actually has power over the direction of their own life—we are all pushed and pulled by universal forces beyond our control. Naturalism conflicts with the Victorian belief in individual agency and the era’s general optimism, so it isn’t surprising that Dick expresses this fatalistic view prior to fully reforming; by the novel’s governing ideology, it’s little more than an excuse.

“Nobody ever came to see her, nobody spoke of her, nobody cared about her. Mr. Brass had said once, that he believed she was a ‘love child’ (which means anything but a child of love), and that was all the information Richard Swiveller could obtain.”

Dick tries to learn more about the Marchioness’ background, but Sampson is not forthcoming at all. What this quotation does offer is an interesting revision of the phrase “love child.” Typically, the phrase refers to the child of a couple who, while unmarried, were intimate because they loved one another. However, Dickens’s narrator spins the meaning to become a sadder one: a love child is not a child born of love, and she is also a child who is entirely unloved by the people around her.

“The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may be forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of the truer metal and bear the stamp of Heaven.”

This passage captures one of Dickens’s idealization of the decent, working poor. For Dickens, a wealthy man accumulates wealth in the name of power, but a poor man has no power and consequently finds true richness in the life he cultivates out of love.

“[H]as all my agony of care brought her to this at last? Was I a happy man once, and have I lost happiness and all I had, for this?”

Nell’s grandfather experiences a rare moment of clarity, in which it occurs to him that he bears responsibility for Nell’s failing health. While he does not verbally apologize to her for his gambling, his thefts, or the adult responsibility he has placed upon her, the fact that he is cogent enough to even realize his role in their situation is one of the novel’s most tragic scenes.

“That is my third dead child, and last. Do you think I have charity to bestow, or a morsel of bread to spare?”

When Nell tries to beg for food in the manufacturing town, she finds herself faced with a world full of worse hardships than she perhaps ever imagined. Since losing his job, this man has lost all three of his children—most likely to starvation since he snaps back at Nell’s query regarding food.

“In a word, he would have had every stone, and every plate of brass, the monument only of deeds whose memory should survive. All others he was willing to forget. They might be buried in consecrated ground, but he would have had them buried deep, and never brought to light again.”

The bachelor takes pride in his knowledge of the church’s history, but he feels only those who did good deeds ought to be remembered. The church and its cemetery serve as structural reminders of the dead even after all the people who knew them have also passed on. The bachelor wishes to commemorate only those he deems worthy, the implication being that one should remember good people and forget bad people.

“An infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those who loved it, and will play its part, through them, in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes or drowned in the deepest sea.”

The schoolmaster’s view of death comforts Nell. When she feels overwhelmed at the possibility of people forgetting her when she dies, he reassures her with the promise that nobody is truly forgotten, whether they are commemorated or not. When we love someone, we emulate the things about them we admire or otherwise strive to be better for their sake. The schoolmaster proposes that each person is a living monument to those they loved.

“There are chords in the human heart—strange, varying strings—which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.”

This passage calls back to earlier quotations regarding one’s conscience, and the moral flexibility some people possess. We may be able to ignore passionate cries for help, especially if they do not affect us personally in the moment. However, a moment may come in which the slightest, unexpected thing opens the heart to others and inspires a more compassionate nature.

“Was I ever once dishonest when I was poor and hungry, and is it likely I would begin now?”

When Kit pleads his innocence, he urges his captors to recall his behavior when he was significantly poorer. His statement implies that he was more likely to steal back then than he would be now that he has a steady living wage at a job he enjoys.

“She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead. Her little bird—a poor slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed—was stirring nimbly in its cage; and the heart of its child mistress was mute and motionless forever.”

The narrative does not actually bring the reader to Nell’s deathbed; one only sees the aftermath. The fact that Kit carried Nell’s bird all the way from London is significant in itself, but the caged bird’s presence near her dead body creates a significant dual image. One piece of the image is the caged bird, representing stifled freedom. The other piece is Nell, who freed herself from the miseries of the city, now dead in the country.