Dear Serial Readers,
With these early segments of Curiosity Shop, Dickens was still including in his new magazine Master Humphrey's Clock other short items in addition to this story. In the May 30, 1840 issue along with the fifth chapter of Curiosity, Dickens ran a piece that harkens back to his first serial Pickwick: "Sam Weller's Clock." Apparently TIME gets lots of play in the short pieces in the magazine too, as it does in Curiosity Shop. Given the serial form's dependence on reading in time, I'm intrigued by the CLOCK theme.
Chapter Five brings the beautiful child Nell to her antithesis, the "hunchy" grotesque Quilp. Again, Dickens seems intent on "curtain scenes" like Nell's mysterious message to Quilp to get readers to return the next week. Quilp is clearly implicated in shady monetary matters with his waterside counting-house. Although he's not explicitly marked as Jewish, Quilp does seem to have some traits notoriously close to the anti-Jewish arsenal of Dickens's day: his voracious and uncouth appetite, his excessive embodiment with its misshapen ugliness (clearly deviating from the normative), and finally his nefarious powers linked to money in the City of London and east of that neighborhood. That he'd like to elevate Nell to Mrs Quilp #2 when she's a bit older and when #1 dies is both comical and appalling.
Nell seems rather heavily marriage plotted in the paired chapters of 6-7 (the June 6, 1840 installment)--Quilp's plan may be the comical-grotesque, but her brother Fred's design with Swiveller isn't delicious either. Yet is it clear that Nell is in line for a nice inheritance? Or is this Fred's fancy as the unfavored grandson? In any case, Dickens has (to jump ahead in the time of his career) many brothers who try to take advantage of their sisters' good looks or other attributes--Tom Gradgrind and Charley Hexam are two that spring to mind.
Next time: chapter 8 (which appeared along with "Master Humphrey from the Clock Side"); chapters 9-10. After chapter 8, Dickens turned the magazine entirely over to Curiosity Shop. I supposed his readers were sufficiently Curious to merit this move by then! See if you notice some kind of shift in the story at this stage.
Serially yours,
Susan
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