As one of Charles Dickens’s early works, The Old Curiosity Shop, first published in the periodical Master Humphrey’s Clock from April 1840 to February 1841, was a favorite among his contemporary readers. That favorable reception changed over time, as readers no longer could accept the drawn-out, melodramatic death of Little Nell, the novel’s protagonist, in the way that Victorian-age audiences could. Their craving of pathos in fiction gave way to disgust in later readers, trained to read with a more developed sense of irony. Scenes judged powerful in the past appear unintentionally comic or even silly to 21st-century readers. Thus, the novel elicits extreme reactions; readers either embrace or reject it, based on their tolerance for melodrama and sad sentimentality.

As did his earlier Oliver Twist (1838), the novel features a child victim who long suffers the cruelty of adult predators, representative of the many ills of commerce, a constant target of Dickens’s social consciousness. In their mechanical acts of violence, greed, and calumny, the villains suggest the inhumanity that Dickens perceived as inherent to the industrial revolution.

Nell Trent, nicknamed Little Nell, lives with her grandfather in the Old Curiosity Shop that he manages. The reader meets her along with the first-person narrator, who emphasizes the fantasy-like setting of London’s dark evening streets when he references the destruction of “air-built castles” that foreshadow destruction for all Nell’s childish dreams. The narrator takes exception to Nell’s wandering the streets alone, and he confronts her grandfather upon reaching the shop. His description of its exotic contents adds to the nightmarish landscape, which Dickens emphasizes using adjectives such as strange, distorted, and haggard.

While filled with signs of future disaster, that scene assures the readers, as well as the narrator, of the grandfather’s passionate devotion to Nell. It also emphasizes Nell’s role as a victim of society, when the narrator tells the grandfather, “It always grieves me… to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life, when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity—two of the best qualities that Heaven gives them—and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments.”

Although the grandfather clearly treasures Nell, he is also foolish and frustrated, contracting with the evil swindler, Daniel Quilp, to finance repayment of many debts, some forced upon him by grasping relatives, through gambling. Quilp’s initial description as “so low in stature as to be quite a dwarf,” “grotesque,” and sporting a “ghastly smile” that gave him the appearance of a “panting dog,” signals his predatory position, although his wife loves Nell. The grandfather predictably loses all of Quilp’s money through betting and flees to the English countryside with Nell, pursued by Quilp, who believes him to be a wealthy miser. Quilp takes over the shop and launches a revenge scheme. Also in pursuit is Kit Nubbles, a devoted employee of the Curiosity Shop and beloved by Nell. He also falls victim to Quilp, nearly framed by the villain’s false accusations, just escaping a dire fate.

As Nell and her grandfather become more pitiful, reduced to begging, she begins her prolonged death process. The narrator increasingly includes readers, insinuating their responsibility for the conflict, by adopting inclusive terms such as “we” and “our.”

Critics find a problem in Dickens’s juxtaposition of Nell’s nightmare-like suffering with the more comedic and realistic presentation of the problems of the character Dick Swiveller, a friend to Nell’s worthless brother Fred. Swiveller is introduced in the second chapter of the novel in one of Dickens’s trademark subplots containing dozens of characters. While Dick’s problems are not as serious as Nell’s, he must grapple with the ill intent of others. However, their pairing may succeed or fail, their complete separation from the totally inhumane Quilp results in the contrast that Dickens desired between good and evil.

Nell, however, is so good and so innocent that no human can possibly rescue her. Although her great-uncle seeks and eventually finds the castoffs, he is too late to salvage the situation, and Nell’s grandfather dies soon after she does. Just as no one can save Nell, Dickens develops no character strong enough to avenge the evil that Quilp has committed. Instead, he must snuff his own life, drowning in the Thames as he seeks to escape pursuing law enforcers. Dick and Kit represent differing blends of good and bad, and both enjoy redemption. For extremes like Nell and Quilp, such redemption remains unavailable. They do allow Dickens to advance his theme of the importance of storytelling, both through the first-person spectator narrator and through the emphasis of the adult Kit, who shares “that story of good Miss Nell who died” with his own children.

The Old Curiosity Shop is probably the least read of Dickens’s many novels, due to changing tastes among even the most devoted of his followers, although it is available in both print and electronic text. It remains of interest as a study of Victorian readers, eliciting overt emotional reactions from males who would soon, according to social critics, suffer a demand to curtail displays of public emotion. It has been dramatized in various versions, including a 1975 musical titled Quilp.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Horne, Lewis. “The Old Curiosity Shop and the Limits of Melodrama.” The Dalhousie Review 72, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 494–508.
Smiley, Jane. Charles Dickens. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2002.