72 pages • 2 hours read
Charles DickensThe Old Curiosity Shop
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1840A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
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BetaChapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
The novel begins with the narrator, an unnamed elderly man, going out for a walk at night. The narrator prefers walking at night because there are fewer crowds, making it easier to go wherever he pleases. As he walks, a lost little girl approaches him and asks for directions. He knows the street she mentions and walks her home to a shop full of assorted, curious items, including suits of armor, strange figurines, and other oddities. Upon arrival, he meets her grandfather and learns her name: Nell. As the narrator and Nell’s grandfather discuss her status as an orphan, Nell prepares supper; Kit Nubbles, the grandfather’s errand boy, stops by to join their meal. When Kit leaves, the narrator prepares to leave too. Nell fetches her grandfather’s cane and outerwear, and he leaves with the narrator. Nell stays behind in the shop alone. After parting ways with Nell’s grandfather, the narrator walks up and down the streets, worrying over what could befall Nell if she is left alone. Eventually, he returns to his own house and falls asleep, resolved to put the matter out of his mind.
Chapter 2 Summary
A week later, the narrator returns to the Curiosity Shop. His arrival interrupts a heated conversation between Nell’s grandfather and Frederick, Nell’s brother. Frederick believes that their grandfather is lying to Nell about how much he loves her so she will do hard labor for free. One of Frederick’s friends, Richard “Dick” Swiveller, arrives drunk from the night before. Dick summarizes the root of the discord between grandfather and grandson: their grandfather raised and educated Frederick, sent him out into the world on his own, and now hides Nell away in the Curiosity Shop, stashing away every coin he earns and sharing none with either grandchild. As the argument about money progresses, Nell arrives.
Chapter 3 Summary
Nells is accompanied by a shabby and somewhat menacing man, Mr. Daniel Quilp, a “dwarf” who seems to be friends with her grandfather. Nell and Frederick talk, assuring one another that they love each other despite anything their grandfather says. Mr. Quilp hands Nell’s grandfather an undisclosed sum of money and then returns home to his wife. Nell’s grandfather tries to talk with Nell about what may happen in the event of his death, but Kit arrives, interrupting them. As Nell greets Kit outside, her grandfather tells the narrator that he does not want Nell to endure the poverty her mother faced. He claims he will leave Nell a fortune, and the narrator realizes the grandfather has become obsessed with amassing wealth. Nell and Kit return, and the narrator states he will “detach” himself from the rest of the narrative “and leave those who have prominent and necessary parts in it to speak and act for themselves” (36).
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
The novel begins with an interesting narrative perspective: that of an individual who is himself a character in the world of the story, yet conducts himself outside the main plot, functioning as a witness to the story’s inciting incidents. That said, he does not merely observe the characters from afar and report their behavior to the reader; he has his own internal thoughts and feelings, and he interacts with the characters on a personal level. He meets them at the same time as the reader meets him, and the reader form their impressions of Nell, her grandfather, and Daniel Quilp alongside his own judgments of them. Instead of having a detached, omniscient narrator who sees and knows everything all at the same time—the kind that features in most of Dickens’s other novels—Dickens puts his reader squarely in the shoes of this stranger, which may color the reader’s perception of these characters from the very beginning. What this narrative strategy does is effectively prepare the reader to move beyond biases. The reader does not decide what kind of people the characters are; the reader sees someone else deciding for themselves, and one must then take that information and parse it out to form their own judgments.
This narrator’s interactions with the main characters establish some of the novel’s main themes, including the efforts to prevent the past from repeating itself and the many, nuanced forms of greed. There is the overt greed of Daniel Quilp and Nell’s brother Frederick—they either want to hoard more money than they already have, tricking people into debt so they can amass more wealth, or they have no money at all and will scheme against their own family to steal even a few coins. However, there is a type of greed perhaps even more dangerous than Quilp’s or Frederick’s, and that is the grandfather’s greed. His greed is more covert than the others’; his greed hides behind his desire to protect Nell. His sole focus is her inheritance, and how he can accumulate more and more money for her. He claims he only does this to keep her safe from poverty, but the urgency of this goal reflects the extreme importance he places upon having money. It is not enough to have a tidy sum stashed away for emergencies—he must have more and more, and it is not unreasonable to wonder if he really does only do it for Nell’s sake.
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