“The Old Curiosity Shop” Chapters 1-3 Lesson 6:Dickens

The aim of the lesson is to analyze the way the novelist presents his characters, displays his attitude to them and to explain how the characters determine the development of the plot.

“In reference to the tale itself. I desire to say very little here. The many friends it has won me, and the many hearts it has turned to me when they were full of private sorrow, invest it with an interest, in my mind, which is not a public one, and a rightful place which appeared to be a more removed ground.” (Dickens. Preface.)

1. If ever a novelist gave us a word of his own, Dickens did. We have only to peep into it a second or so to recognize it. It is essentially a fantastic world, at some remove from the one most of us know. The materials of which it is composed seem realistic enough. Dickens who saw and remembered everything that came his way, crammed it full of facts and acute observation, here is no vague dreamland, but a place filled with sharply etched detail; yet it seems a very strange realm he shows us, situated somewhere between Victorian England and Elfland. Thus, in the first three chapters of “The Old Curiosity Shop”

Reproduce the information bringing it to a close in your own way, adding a few sentences

concerning the novel under discussion and the opening chapters.

2. “But my present purpose is not to expatiate upon my walks. An adventure which I am about to relate, and to which I shall recur at intervals, arouse out of one of these rambles … One night …

Sum up the events of the chapters you have read.

3. In “The Old Curiosity Shop” there simultaneously co-exist the fairy and real worlds there is no hard and fast border-line put between them. And though they are displayed as two parallels at some crucial moments of the characters’ life these worlds come into collision and at this juncture one of them is sure to prevail over the other.

Express your agreement or disagreement. Find the characteristic features that could be referred to each of the worlds mentioned. Read them out and provide a few words of comment.

4. Dickens’ great peculiar strength lay in the delineation of life as it passed around him, and especially in the crowd of characters to be meant with in the great London he knew so well. Dickens displays a wonderful fertility of invention. His characters can be enumerated by the hundreds, and most of them possess a very high degree of freshness and originality. There are many ways a novelist uses to depict his characters. He may use dialogue, setting appearance, manners, the author’s comment, the comment of the other characters, etc.

In the first three chapters of the novel the reader comes across seven characters: Master Humphrey, the story-teller; little Nell: her grandfather Mr. Trent; Kit, the boy serving them; Nell’s brother, Fred Trent; his friend Dick Swiveller; Daniel Quilp, the dwarf. Some other characters are only mentioned (e.g. Mrs. Quilp).

What are the chief methods Dickens resorts to, to bring his characters to life, as far as these chapters are concerned? Explain.

5. Dickens is seldom, if ever, impartial to his characters. He takes sides, and his attitude to them is usually manifested immediately (though sometimes his rather acid criticism may be gradually softened by pity, compassion or by his sense of fun of life).

What is Dickens’ attitude to little Nell? What traits of character are revealed by her actions and the way of seeing and telling things to the reader? Select the necessary characteristics among the following, think if anything can be added and prove your opinion by details provided in the novel.

*** naïve, practical, shy, bold, intimidated, affectionate, indifferent, primitive, wise (un)grateful, melancholic, self-confident, pleased with herself, critical of herself, (un)friendly, (in)sensitive, stupid, observant, reserved, compassionate, …………………..

6. Dickens caught and rendered people in the way children saw grown-ups. People never appear ordinary to a child: they are sometimes absurdly comic, sometimes terrifying, sometimes both at once. The very notion of ordinary is foreign to a child, to whom everything encountered is unique. Dickens catches with merciless delight the externals, the apparently meaningless gestures and nervous tricks we all have without knowing we have them; and he catches too, the habits of speech, repetitions of favourite words and phrases which, taken together, make us in some degree walking caricatures of ourselves.

Analyze the way Dickens presents Mr. Trent, Nell’s grandfather and a dealer in curiosities as a personality. Does he concentrate on chiefly: his appearance, his manners and peculiarities of his behaviour, his dialogue? Do the descriptive details of the setting contribute to the presentation of the character? Is Dickens’ description of the old man dry and matter-of-fact or is it highly imaginative? What images catch the eye? What stylistic devices does he employ (metaphors, epithets, similes, hyperbole, exaggeration? Provide examples.