Abstract The Old Man and the Child in The Old Curiosity Shop The purpose of this paper is to show the symbolic meaning of the death of Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) by considering the novel from the viewpoint of the pilgrimage of the old man and the child. Nell leaves the house of London with her grandfather to escape from the menace of the grotesqueness of Quilp, a moneylender, but she cannot be released from her difficulties; the old man cannot overcome the temptation to gamble without the help of Nell and she has to go through Birmingham as an industrial city. Nell as a victim of the old man overlaps with Victorian children as victims of adults, especially those who worked in mines and factories. Dickens not only created the image of the child coming home to heaven by using a bird as a metaphor of celestial soul and emphasizing the death of Nell in the Victorian age, but also showed the meaning of the forgiveness of sin by Jesus Christ by the representation of the pilgrimage of the old man and Nell. The Old Curiosity Shop Key Words: 1. The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) (Charles Dickens, 1812-70) 1840 25 1841 Master Humphrey s Clock The Old Curiosity Shop Master Humphrey s Clock
(Paul Davis) (Paul Schlicke) (6) (6) King Lear The Pilgrim s Progress (1678) The Old Curiosity Shop King Lear The Pilgrim s Progress King Lear The Pilgrim s Progress 2. (13) (13)
(Quilp) (74) (714) (74) H (George H. Ford) The Old Curiosity Shop King Lear (Cordelia) (Lear) (Goneril) (Regan) (F. S. Schwarzbach) The Old Curiosity Shop King Lear (..8-18) The Old Curiosity Shop 12
(94) King Lear The Old Curiosity Shop (Kit) (John Bunyan, 1628-88)The Pilgrim s Progress The Pilgrim s Progress (116-7) (117) The Pilgrim s Progress 27 (Jarley) (Isaac List) (223) 30
(240) The Pilgrim s Progress (Evangelist) (Worldly Wiseman) (Christian) (Luke 13:24) (Matthew 7 : 13-14) The Old Curiosity Shop The Pilgrim s Progress The Pilgrim s Progress 3. 44 45 13 13 Oliver Twist (1838) 1314 57 20
The Old Curiosity Shop (331) The Old Curiosity Shop (Monflathers) (334) 100 (334) The Pilgrim s Progress (Good-Will) The Pilgrim s Progress
(340) (Marton) (343) (344) (Harry) 4. 35 (386) (386) (389) (390)
(539) (544) (554) The Pilgrim s Progress (Christiana) (Great-heart)
The Old Curiosity Shop King Lear The Pilgrim s Progress (Mary Hogarth) 1 Paul Davis, Dickens Companion, 348. 2 Ibid., 349. 3 Ibid., 349. 4 Paul Schlicke, The Old Curiosity Shop, in Oxford Reader s Companion to Dickens, 426. 5 George H. Ford, Dickens and his Readers, 69. King Lear The Old Curiosity Shop King Lear The Old Curiosity Shop (Ibid., 70) 6 F.S. Schwarzback, Dickens and the City, 71. 7 King Lear [Paul Schlicke, op. cit. 424.] 8 (Robert Newsom) [Robert Newsom, Charles Dickens
Revisited, 88.] 9 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim s Progress, 19. 10 Paul Davis, Charles Dickens A to Z, 278-79. 11 12 157. 12 220. 13 Pamela Horn, Children s Work and Welfare, 1780-1890, 32. 14 John Bunyan, op. cit., 18. 15 (Humphry House) [Humphry House, The Dickens World, 180.] 16 John Bunyan, op. cit. 175. 17 John R. Reed, op. cit. 110. (Michael Wheeler) [Michael Wheeler, Death and the Future Life in Victorian Literature and Theology, 295.] Works Cited Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim s Progress. Oxford: Oxford UP. 1966. Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop, New York: Oxford UP, 1991. Davis, Paul. Dickens Companion. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1999.. Charles Dickens A to Z. New York: Checkmark Books, 1999. Ford, George H. Dickens and his Readers. New York: The Norton Library, 1965. Horn, Pamela. Children s Work and Welfare, 1780-1890. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994. House, Humphry. The Dickens World. London: Oxford UP, 1961. Reed, R. John. Dickens and Thackeray. Athens: Ohio UP, 1995.
Shakespeare, William. The Arden Shakespeare: King Lear. Ed. Kenneth Muir. New York: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1972. Schlicke, Paul. The Old Curiosity Shop, in Oxford Reader s Companion to Dickens. Ed. Paul Schlicke. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Schwarzback, F.S. Dickens and the City. London: The Athlone Press, 1979. Wheeler, Michael. Death and the Future Life in Victorian Literature and Theology. Cambriodge: Cambridge UP. 1990. 12 1991. 1997. 2004 10