The Death of Little Nell: Comfort, Symbol, or 'Literary Onion'?

The edition of The Old Curiosity Shop that I read was the Wordsworth Classics Edition, 2001.

The character of Little Nell, the impossibly perfect child in Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop is one which has endured within our culture. However, Nell is arguably most famous for her death and the effect is had on readers’ upon first publication, as well as the effect it continues to have over 150 years later. I wish to explore  why Little Nell resounded so greatly with readers of the day and why her fate has endured in modern-day culture. Dickens’ intention was to bring some sort of comfort to those who had experienced grief. This idea that Nell could bring comfort to readers is questionable in my opinion, given that she suffers so much while alive, as pointed out in ‘G.K Chesterton’s dismissive “it is not the death of Little Nell but the life of Little Nell that I object to”’¹. Victorian parents who lost a child were encouraged to believe that their children had ‘gone to a better place’ and were free from the otherwise inevitable sinfulness of adulthood. ‘Christianity told them that they must accept and even be glad when a child went to heaven, but this hardly makes sense to a grieving parent’.² When  Nell dies, the narrator’s words of comfort are typical of the period and offer no new insight. Whatever Nell meant to Dickens; and this was clearly something quite important, his expression of her death would not have offered much new comfort. If anything, Nell in her childish perfection would only summon up long buried feelings of grief. 

Another view is that Nell is in some way a symbol, a symbol of death’s preservation of innocence as well as the purity and asexuality of children. This view is certainly an interesting one, especially when considered alongside the third and final notion; namely, that Nell is a ‘literary onion’, designed to prey upon the Victorian weakness for sentimentality. This final idea would certainly go some way towards explaining not only the huge effect Nell had on contemporary readers, but also why she continues to endure so much time later. It would be impossible to analyse the death of Little Nell out of context, so it is important to take into account the far higher levels of child poverty and mortality in the early part of the 19^th century, as well as the social and political view of children at the time. As David Cody points out in his essay on Victorian Web, ‘Today perhaps, we do not find it [Little Nell’s death] so mawkishly sentimental, but we cannot read it, obviously, as the Victorians did.’¹ In the introduction to The Old Curiosity Shop, Peter Preston notes that ‘As Peter Ackroyd points out, in 1839 almost half the funerals in London were those of children under ten; and for those who did survive, particularly young girls, the streets of London could be very dangerous (Ackroyd, Charles Dickens, p,320).’ Such huge levels of child mortality are, of course, relevant, but the fact remains that the death of Little Nell, a fictional character, had a resounding effect upon Dickens’ readers.

Contemporary reactions to the death of Little Nell were dramatic and far-reaching. As Peter Preston notes in his introduction to the novel ‘many readers claimed to have wept over the novel. Francis Jeffrey, one of the most intellectual and hard-headed critics of the time, was so stricken by grief when he read of Nell’s death that a visitor, finding him sobbing bitterly with his head on the desk, assumed that a close relative had died (Letters, II, p.238n).’ Preston also points out that this reaction was not confined to Britain. ‘It was reported that impatient readers gathered on the docks of New York to call out to passengers from England, “Is Nell Dead?”’ Even Dickens himself felt his heart breaking at the prospect of ‘murdering’ Little Nell. He wrote, ‘I am the wretchedest of the wretched. It casts the most horrible shadow over me and it is as much as I can do to keep moving at all… Nobody will miss her like I shall. It is such a painful thing to me, that I really cannot express my sorrow’ (Letters, II, p.181). One notion which is interesting is that in writing Nell’s death Dickens summoned his feelings regarding his sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, who died in his arms in 1837, at the age of just seventeen. Her memory is often believed to have haunted his work and, in a letter to Forster, Dickens admitted that ‘Old wounds bleed afresh when I only think of the way of [killing Little Nell]. Dear Mary died yesterday, when I think of this sad story!’ (Letters, II, pp.181-182).

To some extent, one can imagine the audiences of the day expecting a similar outcome to that of Oliver Twist, Dickens’ earlier novel, in which a much put-upon child suffers greatly but eventually finds happiness in the love and care of a family. Not to mention coming into money. It is mentioned frequently in The Old Curiosity Shop that there is money connected mysteriously to Nell and when this is coupled with the devotion of Kit, one could easily hope, and indeed believe, that better times await Nell. At the very end of the novel, when Nell is safely housed, she comments that the place is “a place to live and learn to die in” to which her schoolmaster friend gives the reader hope by replying “A place to live, and learn to live, and gather health of mind and body in”^p.388. Despite knowing that in so many ways Nell’s death is inevitable, the reader cannot help but grasp onto any hope offered. Nell’s fate matters.

Nell matters to the reader because she is symbolic of so much more. As is pointed out in the essay ‘De-territorialisation and Re-territorialisation in Little Nell’s Death-bed Scene — Deconstructing Little Nell’³ ‘It is not by chance that Dickens chose the age of 13 for Nell Trent, since 14 was considered a marrying age in Victorian England. In the novel she could have been married to Dick Swiveller or even Quilp, and innocence as we know it in her would have ended then and there.’ The notion that Nell remains innocent and escapes the taint of sexual awareness and relationships is very interesting when one also considers the many times the villains of the novel take a (veiled) sexual interest. Dickens very much controls our view and perception of characters – in his description of the schoolmaster; for example, the reader is informed that he has a kind face. As such, Dickens is constantly reminding the reader of Nell’s youth and innocence by referring to her as simply ‘the child’. This reinforcement is then contrasted by the unpleasant comments from Quilp and Mr Swiveller, as well as their intentions of marrying her. In spite of fourteen being marrying age in Victorian England, as the previously mentioned essay states, Dickens insists that we view Nell as a mere child. This is important especially if one wishes to see Nell as a symbolic creature, as Nell must die before reaching adulthood if death is to be the preserver of innocence. 

Religious belief encourages those overwhelmed with grief to think that their loved one is in a better place; in other words, to be grateful that the loved one is at peace. Before her death, Nell startlingly comments on unvisited graves, saying “Perhaps the mourners learn to look to the blue sky by day, and to stars by night, and to think the dead are there, and not in graves,”^p.397 a comment which would have resounded with Victorian readers even more so than it does with modern ones. The schoolmaster, standing by Nell’s body, says “Think what it is, compared with the World in which her young spirit had winged its early flight, and say if one deliberate wish expressed in some terms above this bed could call her back to life, which of us would utter it!⁵²⁹ Descriptions of Nell’s death-bed are also full of religious feeling, with the words ‘Where were the traces of her early cares, her sufferings, and fatigues? All gone. Sorrow was dead indeed in her, but peace and perfect happiness were born, imaged in her tranquil beauty and profound repose.’^p.529 Dickens himself expressed a desire ‘to try and do something which might be read by people about whom Death had been, - with a softened feeling, and with consolation’ (Charles Dickens: A Life, p.115). Dickens’ desire to comfort his readers at first seems a bizarre one, considering that he actually kills Nell, but upon reflection it becomes apparent that to a Victorian reader, notions of heaven and eternal peace had great importance, and that to die young was in some ways ‘romantic’. Before I discuss Victorian sentimentality, it is important to reflect why the  death of Little Nell has endured.

Of course, to some modern readers, religious feeling is just as great and so ideas of heaven will still have their importance. However, it is my belief that it is Dickens’ descriptions of grief that continue to resound today and appeal to readers. After Nell’s death, Dickens writes ‘If there be any who have never known the blank that follows death – the weary void – the sense of desolation that will come upon the strongest minds, when something familiar and beloved is missed at every turn – the connection between inanimate and senseless things, and the object of recollection, when every household god becomes a monument and every room a grave – if there be any who have not known this, and proved it by their own experience, they can never faintly guess how, for many days, the old man pined and moped away the time, and wandered here and there as seeking something, and had no comfort’^p.534. It is this description of the grandfather’s grief that resounds more with modern readers, for grief is something felt by everyone at some time during their existence and something which has always brought, and shall always bring, worlds crashing down. Another way in which Nell’s death ‘appeals’ if you like, to the modern reader, is through our feelings of outrage at her fate. In spite of having so many friends, and being so good, Nell still suffers terribly and is only released from these sufferings by death. Anger at her grandfather is almost unavoidable, even when he is described as a ‘grey-haired child’³⁰⁸ When Mrs Jarley offers Nell a job and Nell’s grandfather says “We can’t separate. What would become of me with her?” Mrs Jarley expresses how all readers must surely feel when she sharply replies “I should have thought you were old enough to take care of yourself, if you ever will be.”^p.200. 

There are critics, both past and present, who would criticise Dickens for appealing too easily to Victorian sentimentality. Certainly, one could point out the repetition of ‘She was dead’ and suggest that it is perhaps crude but more to the point is Nell’s impossible goodness. She enjoys saying her prayers, as they make her feel happy and when upon ‘casting her tearful eyes upon the old man, remembered how weak he was, and how destitute and helpless he would be if she failed him, her heart swelled within her, and animated her with new strength and fortitude.’^p.177 In this sense, Nell is appealing to Victorian ideals of femininity and childhood; meekness, kindness and selflessness. Nell is not of a working-class background, as she is able to read and write and before her grandfather lost everything, they would have been considered fairly well-off. In this sense, the fact that so many children lived and died in extreme poverty becomes irrelevant – Nell was to all intents and purposes a middle-class child, embodying middle-class ideals. It is here, then, that Dickens really reels in his readers’ sympathies, as they see Nell as one of their own. Another defence against accusations against Dickens, of having created a ‘literary onion’, come from Philip Allingham in his essay on Victorian Web, Sentimentality: The Victorian Failing. He writes that ‘as a third-generation Romantic Dickens was writing in a markedly ‘sentimental’ tradition bequeathed him[…] Reason, held the Romantics, had failed to improve either human nature or social conditions in eighteenth-century Europe. Consequently, Romantic writers sought to move readers emotionally and spiritually by appealing to sentiment, “the capacity for moral reflection” (Paul Schlicke, 512).’

Nell is constantly surrounded by the grotesque; as Dickens himself wrote in the preface to the first cheap edition, published 1848, ‘I had it always in my fancy to surround the lonely figure of the child with grotesque and wild, but not impossible companions, and to gather about her innocent face and pure intentions, associates as strange and uncongenial as the grim objects that are about her bed when her story is first foreshadowed.’ Indeed, Nell ends her days in similar old and strange surroundings to those she sleeps near when the story first begins. As well as spending an inordinate amount of time in graveyards, Nell experiences sleeping surrounding by waxworks, in which she finds a resemblance to Quilp. Indeed, Quilp is the balance to Nell, in that she is so pure, innocent and beauty, while he is cruel, ugly and depraved. In fact, Quilp is representative of all the grotesque and crude figures and s situations which haunt Nell’s very existence. Thus, ‘Quilp indeed was a perpetual nightmare to the child, who was constantly haunted by a vision of his ugly face and stunted figure.’^p.212 Ultimately, Nell is out of place in her surroundings and is, in fact, out of place in the mortal world. Far better for so perfect a creature to ascend to heaven and rest with angels.

There are many situations in which Nell finds herself that could be said to foreshadow her death. Her observation of the young scholar’s death (this child leaves behind only a lonely grandparents), and her meeting with the old woman in the graveyard, a woman who was widowed young and has grown old and tragic alone are both examples. Nell is in reality doomed from the beginning as she is caught by her grandfather’s dependency and her own goodness. To the Victorian reader, despite the sadness of her passing, it was in order to reside where she truly belonged, being so virtuous and good. To a modern reader, Nell’s symbolism remains potent; she dies a virgin, untouched by the vileness and cruelty which surrounded her while alive. Finally, Nell may well be a ‘literary onion’ but she is certainly an effective one, and it cannot be criticised when one considers just how massively Nell has endured in our culture.

My next post will be on Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, a very small and apparently mysterious novella! As always, feel free to comment or contact me, and thanks for reading.

-       - K