The Old Curiosity Shop Essay

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Recommended: The influence of realism

When Charles Dickens sends his protagonists on the road, the spectacular act of traveling through places and scenes becomes incredible humanized. Journeys lend themselves to Dickens’s skill in character creation and development. Moreover, the embarkation of Little Nell and Grandfather at the end of Chapter 12 in The Old Curiosity Shop takes on a higher purpose than characterization or entertainment. “Forth from the city,” the pair of “poor adventurers” commence a journey with roots in fairy tale and romance. The play between romance and realism resides mostly in Nell’s expectations of their travels: she imagines picaresque fields of carefree sunshine and flowers, but will soon face blistered feet and begging. Additionally, the method of departure fulfills the trope of the hero in folklore or the knight in …show more content…

These are the fantasies of an innocent girl who believes in the existence of a beautiful world—she romanticizes the life of a beggar. Nell has no knowledge, experiential or anecdotal, of the lives of the homeless. Then as Nell and Grandfather finally leave their former home, Grandfather in his weak state of mind is infected with her childlike romance: to the strange pair, “every object was bright and fresh; nothing reminded them, otherwise than by contrast, of the monotony and constraint they had left behind” (Chapter 12). Their hopeful delusions create a pessimistic dramatic irony because the reader expects them to encounter hardships and obstacles on the road, given that the novel has just begun. This irony is almost cruel, as it foreshadows the loss of Little Nell’s innocence. She has “no doubts or misgiving,” not knowing that her fantasies of country wandering must clash with the realism of

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