Who Is Little Nell?
Nell Trent in “The Old Curiosity Shop” is one of Charles Dickens’s most famous characters. She lives with her grandfather, who keeps the shop of the novel’s title, and cares for him even after he is reduced to poverty and homelessness by the evil Daniel Quilp. Fleeing from Quilp, they eventually find sanctuary, but Nell is so worn out with the strain of providing for her grandfather that she dies. Dickens based her character on his wife’s late sister Mary, whom he had adored; killing off Nell, and reviving old memories, upset him greatly, and after finishing the episode he wrote in his diary, “Dear Mary died yesterday.” For modern readers, Little Nell may be a little too virtuous, and Dickens’s lingering account of her death may lead some to agree with Oscar Wilde that “Only a man with a heart of stone could read [it] without laughing.” Victorian readers, however, were routinely moved to tears by Nell’s sufferings.
