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The Old Curiosity Shop
Dec. 10th, 2013 11:53 amOne expects Charles Dickens to become a bit saccharine by our colder, more nihilistic standards of today, but he also has his harder, penetrative moments. In this excerpt he absolutely trashes the sweet, condescending idea that an old man is like a child again along with the idea that death is but a sweet sleep.
The scene in the novel comes early on with Little Nell and the old man, feeling persecuted and threatened, running away with scarcely more than the clothes on their backs from London and into the wild country. The old man seems to be falling hard into senility. It is not a promising scenario. This excerpt begins with Dickens focusing on the tragic state of the old man.
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We call this a state of childishness, but it is the same poor hollow mockery of it, that death is of sleep. Where, in the dull eyes of doating men, are the laughing light and life of childhood, the gaiety that has known no check, the frankness that has felt no chill, the hope that has never withered, the joys that fade in blossoming? Where in the sharp lineaments of rigid and unsightly death, is the calm beauty of slumber, telling of rest for the waking hours that are past, and gentle hopes and loves for those which are to come? Lay death and sleep now, side by side, and say who shall find the two akin. Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.
-- Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop”
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The scene in the novel comes early on with Little Nell and the old man, feeling persecuted and threatened, running away with scarcely more than the clothes on their backs from London and into the wild country. The old man seems to be falling hard into senility. It is not a promising scenario. This excerpt begins with Dickens focusing on the tragic state of the old man.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
We call this a state of childishness, but it is the same poor hollow mockery of it, that death is of sleep. Where, in the dull eyes of doating men, are the laughing light and life of childhood, the gaiety that has known no check, the frankness that has felt no chill, the hope that has never withered, the joys that fade in blossoming? Where in the sharp lineaments of rigid and unsightly death, is the calm beauty of slumber, telling of rest for the waking hours that are past, and gentle hopes and loves for those which are to come? Lay death and sleep now, side by side, and say who shall find the two akin. Send forth the child and childish man together, and blush for the pride that libels our own old happy state, and gives its title to an ugly and distorted image.
-- Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop”
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