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A Fairy Tale
for Adults: The Old Curiosity Shop,
by Charles Dickens
by
Marilyn Green Faulkner
Everybody has
heard of Little Nell, but few people of our generation have actually
read The Old Curiosity Shop. Published in serial form in 1840 –
1841, The Old Curiosity Shop enthralled readers with its combination
of the grotesque and the sublime. Little Nell Trent is the quintessential
Dickens heroine, “sensitive, frightened, and prematurely responsible,”
in Paul Schlicke’s summation. Hers is the most celebrated
deathbed scene in literary history. Conceived as a kind of allegory,
the story follows Nell as she travels through a sinister world,
pursued by the evil dwarf Quilp, one of Dickens’s most amazing
creations, whose personality, by turns hilarious and sadistic, colors
the landscape she is forced to inhabit. Nell’s only protector,
her hapless grandfather, is ironically also the source of her troubles,
for he is the victim of a terrible addiction that places her in
constant jeopardy. Like many children of addictive parents, Nell
is forced prematurely into adulthood. She leaves the shop full of
strange “curiosities,” where she has been raised, and
embarks on a journey where she encounters their living counterparts.
Like Alice in
Wonderland, Nell dwells in a dream world. (She is constantly wondering
if she is awake or asleep.) Besides the maniacal dwarf who pursues
her, Nell meets puppeteers, clowns, magicians, and even works as
the assistant in a waxwork exhibition. Each of these characters
is drawn in intricate and often hilarious detail. As he always does,
Dickens gives us subplots in plenty, with threats to the safety
of the little girl growing as Quilp weaves a scheme to defraud her
of a fortune she does not actually possess. In the process we have
the pleasure to meet another great Dickens creation, Dick Swiveller,
the drunken profligate who emerges as the unlikely hero of the tale.
Besides having one of the funniest names in fiction, lazy, poetic
Dick is a delight to know. I can’t think of the scene where
he is forced to go to work (a “staggerer,” in his peculiar
vocabulary) without laughing out loud. Mrs. Jarley, the entrepreneur
extraordinaire who employs Nell at the waxworks, is another joy.
Even Quilp, when he is not terrifying, is very funny. The loose
narrative structure allows Dickens to introduce a veritable menagerie
of wild characters in startling contrast to the steady, beautiful
child. We see, through Nell’s eyes, the very human nature
of a carnival world.
The Old Curiosity Shop became a cultural phenomenon comparable to our generation’s
fascination with the miniseries Roots, or the musical Les Miserables.
At its height 100,000 copies sold of each number in the series,
as for over fifty weeks readers on both sides of the Atlantic worried
over the fate of Little Nell. In December of 1841 readers began
to sense a melancholy turn in the tone of the novel, and Dickens
reported to his publishers that they “inundated him with imploring
letters recommending poor little Nell to mercy.” Dickens was
resolute, however, that Nell, as a symbol of purity in an evil world,
must be released to a higher sphere. Summoning up the grief he had
suffered three years earlier when his beloved sister-in-law Mary
Hogarth died in his arms, Dickens composed the famous scene. This
was a terrible experience for a man who called his characters his
“children,” and who suffered more over their fates than
over the fates of real people in his life. “I am,” he
wrote to a friend, “for the time, nearly dead with work and
grief for the loss of my child…I went to bed last night utterly
dispirited and done up. All night I have been pursued by the child;
and this morning I am unrefreshed and miserable. I do not know what
to do with myself.” When he finally finished the novel he
mourned in a letter, “Nobody shall miss her like I shall.”
In America, legend has it that thousands lined the docks in New
York as the ship approached that carried the next issue of Nell’s
saga, crying to those on board, “Is Little Nell dead?”
Sentiment
vs. Sentimentality
Little Nell’s
famous demise brings us to the sharpest criticism leveled against
this novel, and against Dickens in general, namely, his sentimentality.
G.K. Chesterton said of Dickens, “His humor was inspiration,
but his pathos was ambition.” By this he meant that Dickens
could not help creating wonderful, comic characters, but created
sentimental ones in order to sell books. His long, maudlin death
scenes are legendary, and critics from his day to ours accuse him
of emotional manipulation. Oscar Wilde famously quipped that “one
must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without
laughing.” Aldous Huxley wrote: “One of Dickens’s
most striking peculiarities 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.”
(Vulgarity in Literature, 1930)
Is Dickens too
sentimental? You’ll have to see what you think when you read
the book. My own opinion is a firm yes…and no. Yes, I sometimes
feel that Dickens loses hold of his genius when he is presenting
scenes so perfect, so heavenly, that we cease to believe in the
humanity of the characters. And no, I would not trade these deeply
sentimental moments in Dickens for the cynical, faithless fare that
is dealt us by those who seek emotional honesty at the cost of belief.
Dickens was writing to people who faced death often. One third of
the children born in Victorian society died before they were grown.
That meant that nearly every family who gathered by a fireside to
read the latest installment of his novels had buried, or would bury,
a child. Dickens, himself no stranger to death, wanted to do something
through his writing to help people deal with the loss of loved ones.
He wrote, “I resolved to try and do something which might
be read by people about whom Death had been, - with a softened feeling,
and with consolation.” My beloved teacher, Arthur Henry King,
who as a young boy lost both his father and younger brother, movingly
described Dickens’s importance in his emotional life:
“I met
death in Dickens. It made more of an impression on me than anything
else in Dickens. There was the death of Little Nell, the death of
Paul Dombey, the death of Barkis in David Copperfield, the death
(above all) of Dora. I remember reading about that in the autumn
of 1918. It was October; it was a rainy day; and it was late afternoon
when I read that chapter. I read it by the light of the fire. I
can still remember all that. I can still remember my grief, and
I can still remember that it took me several months to overcome
that grief about a fictive character in a book – not that
I have ever really recovered. That experience at the age of eight
prepared me to find value in the passing of loved ones. It helped
me to endure and properly experience the real deaths that followed
it… We need to prepare our children for death. It is one of
the things that they need and have a right to learn, and it is from
literature that they can best learn it.” (Arm the Children,
108-9)
Dickens’s
novels have been a part of my own emotional landscape. I cannot
separate certain experiences of my life from the books I was reading
while they happened, and often these books have been his. I read
The Old Curiosity Shop for the first time when I was very ill, shortly
before the birth of our last child. One morning I received word
that one of my dearest friends had died suddenly, leaving several
young children motherless. That was a very difficult morning, with
my grief compounded by my own fears for my unborn child. I remembered
a passage in the novel and turned to it. Here a little boy has died,
and his schoolmaster, overcome with grief, tries to teach Nell not
to consider his loss a pure tragedy. I read this passage over and
over, and finally memorized it. It brought me great comfort.
“There
is nothing,’ cried her friend, ‘no, nothing innocent
or good, that dies, and is forgotten. Let us hold to that faith,
or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will
live again in the better thoughts of those who loved it; and 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. There
is not an angel added to the Host of heaven but does its blessed
work on earth in those that loved it here. Forgotten! Oh, if the
good deeds of human creatures could be traced to their source, how
beautifully would even death appear; for how much charity, mercy,
and purified affection, would be seen to have their growth in dusty
graves!” (503)
The world changes
very little, really. People are born, they live, they love, and
they die. Through literature we have an opportunity both to rehearse
and to relive some of life’s most difficult and tremendous
moments. Literature can help us come to terms with life and death,
lay down our burden of bitterness and receive wisdom in its stead.
The Old Curiosity Shop will make you laugh and cry, and both will
be (to use my father’s expression) “good for what ails
you.” Enjoy, and write your thoughts to be shared with all
of us who love to read.
The Old Curiosity Shop is the September selection for the Best Books
Club, a gathering place for those who love classic literature. Our
selection for October will be Delta Wedding, by Eudora Welty. For
a complete reading list and to share in the discussion, log on to
our website at www.thebestbooksclub.com.
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