Accomplished

I did it! I finished The Old Curiosity Shop!



I have owned this book for probably twenty years, started it many times, and at last, after weeks of reading a handful of pages at a time late at night, I turned the last page and sighed with relief and a bit of sadness.  Although this is not my favorite Dickens book, it still had the ability to pull me into the world of Industrial Revolution Era England - and some of the themes seemed to tie in with recent history.

http://allaboutdickens.blogspot.com/

It's easy to see why this book doesn't have the popularity or spirit of David Copperfield or Great Expectations.  The setting is dark, and the plot goes on and on.  Little Nell is a very one dimensional main character. She has no weaknesses except physical weakness.  And her grandfather lacks personality - she is trying to save him from his addiction to gambling and his debtors, but he apparently has more physical endurance than she.  Kit, her faithful swain, is perhaps the easiest character to attach to, but even he has no real roundness.  The evil dwarf Quilp is unrelentingly demonic, a memorable creep.  Dick Swiveller, the clerk, is perhaps the only character who undergoes some conversion experience; from a pawn of Quilp to a patron of the little maid enslaved by the Brasses, he seems to awaken to the need to take personal responsibility for his own livelihood and to care for others.

So if I didn't really love any of the characters, and the setting is for the most part the dark side of Victorian England, except for the little village at the end where Nell and her grandfather and the good schoolteacher finally find respite, why bother finishing the book at all?  I'm not teaching Dickens or taking a class. Part of my doggedness is just to say I did it, so I did not have to look at that book condemning me each time I unpacked it.

But after I was about two hundred pages in, I began to want to read more. I stayed up later, or sneaked chapters in during the day.  Escapism? Or delight? The cast of characters, although cartoonish, are memorable and entertaining. Nell and her grandfather have an interesting series of adventures.  And Dickens's language really is lovely. Contemporary literature has more rounded characters and more realistic settings, but I can't think of any contemporary writer who writes with the vocabulary and syntax that was de rigueur prior to, say World War 1.  And how fewer books existed then! But many of the lackluster novels have disappeared, so those that have stood the test of time may give the era a better reputation than it deserves.

The book is also replete with some witty observations of human nature, even if the characters are rather flat, remarks that remind me, even when tempted to think that our own era is the most immoral ever to exist (because, for example, California now has an assisted suicide law), that human nature has changed very little. For instance, as Mrs. Quilp is bemoaning how weak and guilty she is for not standing up to her evil spouse, Dickens observes "...conscience is an elastic and very flexible article, which will bear a deal of stretching and adapt itself to a great variety of circumstances. Some people by prudent management and leaving it off piece by piece like a flannel waistcoat in warm weather, even contrive, in time, to dispense with it altogether, but there be others who can assume the garment and throw it off at pleasure; and this being the greatest and most convenient improvement, is the one most in vogue."  (100).  Or when the Brasses and Mrs. Quilp are belittling Quilp for his deformity, unaware that he is listening to them and delighting in the thought of catching them misbehaving. He loves the thought of catching them gossiping more than he is hurt by their remarks.

This line regarding Little Nell's feelings on leaving home struck a chord: "Why is it that we can better bear to part in spirit than in body, and while we have the fortitude to act farewell have not the nerve to say it? On the eve of long voyages or an absence of many years, friends who are tenderly attached will separate with the usual look, the usual pressure of the hand, planning one final interview for the morrow, while each well knows that it is but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that one word, and that meeting will never be."  A familiar situation to many a military couple or family. Easier to pretend that the final goodbye is yet to come.

Another pleasant to read passage describes the comforts of coming in from a cold drenching rain to a warm fire, mulled cider and hot stew.  The earlier suffering is quickly forgotten, except to serve as "enhancing the delights of the present time."

The book has several insights into what might be Dickens' religious views. Kit's mother attends a fire and brimstone church with a preacher who condemns incarnational pleasures, and she feels guilty after indulging in a feast of oysters or delighting in pretty things like a bow in her bonnet.  But Kit reproves her by saying, "Can you suppose there's any harm in looking as cheerful and being as cheerful as our poor circumstances will permit? Do I see in anything in the way I'm made, which calls upon me to be a snivelling, solemn, whispering chap, sneaking about as if I couldn't help it, and expressing myself in a most unpleasant snuffle? on the contrary, don't I see every reason why I shouldn't?... ha, ha, ha! An't that as nat'ral as walking, and as good for the health?"   He seems to be akin in feeling to Belloc, whose quote about "Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine / There's always laughter and good red wine" is another reminder to keep the Gospel of Joy exhorted by Pope Francis.

Dickens also shares with Pope Francis a preference for the poor:

 "...if ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. 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 true metal and bear the stamp of Heaven. The man of high descent may love the halls and lands of his inheritance as a part of himself, as trophies of his birth and power; .. the poor man's attachment to the tenement he holds, which strangers have held before, and may tomorrow occupy again, has a worthier root, struck deep into a purer soil,,, that man has his love of home from God, and his rude hut becomes a solemn place... if those who rule the destinies of nations would but remember this, - if they would be think how hard it is for the very poor to have engendered in their hearts that love of home from which all domestic virtues spring, when they live in dense and squalid masses where social decency is lost, or rather never found, -...many low roofs would point more truly to than sky, than the loftiest steeple that now rears proudly up from the midst of guilt, and crime, and horrible disease.... In love of home, the love of country has its rise; and who are truer patriots or the best in time of need -- those who venerate the land, owning its wood, and stream and earth . . or those who love their country, boasting not a foot of ground in all its wide domain?" 

A lot of rhetoric to add to the argument that the poor need decent shelter, a place to call home in which to take pride and comfort.

Additionally, as Nell begins to fear death, Dickens gives some words to an old schoolmaster about the redemptive power of memory -

"There is nothing innocent or good, that dies, and is forgotten. Let us hold to that faith, or none. An infant, ...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."  

He goes on to describe how "angels" do their work on earth by inspiring the loved ones left behind to be good.  Not perhaps an orthodox teaching about death, but it gives comfort to Nell and seems to be a reiteration of the idea that many small kindnesses performed out of love and friendship can generate more good in the world than one or two acts of largesse.  And in fact, several minor characters in the book are vehicles of compassion, despite their unusual jobs (the wax museum owner) or their poverty (the ironworker).

And this idea is reiterated at the end of the book:

"When Death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world, and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. In the Destroyer's steps there spring up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to Heaven."

Such explicit sermonizing is perhaps why some academicians place Dickens on a lower rung of creative genuis (similar to the tongue-in-cheek protest against the sentimentality of Renoir?), and also the reason why movies like "War Room," which we just saw this weekend, probably won't get positive critical reviews from the art critics. But the audience was cheering during "War Room." The public loved it, and Dickens, too, was well loved. Is the moralizing of the secular culture treated so harshly by art critics?

Small victories sometimes feel more like accomplishments than large ones - for instance, I also got hired for a new job!  This may be the fastest turn around I've had in terms of finding employment.  I don't begin until next semester teaching at the Navy College, but I have turned in my new hire packet and met with the advisors.  Next step: hope a class fills so that I actually get to teach. And hope that the Navy doesn't end its relationship with the colleges and universities that offer special degree programs to sailors and dependents.  The cost to the military is minimal compared to other costs - the military provides space and utilities on bases and ships, manpower to process base pass applications for personnel, and some tuition assistance, but on paper it doesn't look like these programs are mission essential.  In reality, they improve the minds and morale of the sailors immensely, adding value to the Navy's forces that can't be calculated.

Perhaps I'll add a little Dickens into the syllabus next term.  But not The Old Curiosity Shop... time to decide if I let it remain on my shelf. Still undecided whether the value of these quotes is worth the shelf space consumed by a book no one else in the family will read, and I will probably never read again. But I am happy to have read it at last and enjoyed the evenings I spent wandering the English countryside with Nell and her grandfather.

http://charlesdickenspage.com/curiosityshop.html