The Old Curiosity Shop

Jane Tompkins, who writes frequently about the literature of sensibility and sentimentality, once answered the question “What is literature for?” by asserting that literature’s purpose is to change things. In your view, what is The Old Curiosity Shop for? What things does it hope to change, and how does the narrative illustrate the necessity for those changes? Avoid mere plot summary.

The first-person narrator of the novel’s first three chapters gives up his position of authority in the story so that the characters can “speak and act for themselves” (36). The narration that follows comes from a detached, third-person narrator who has access to everyone’s thoughts and feelings. What purpose does the narratorial shift serve?

One critique of sentimentalism is that it may fail to interrogate the systemic causes of the misfortunes it portrays, and that there is occasionally an ethical issue of people feeling sympathy but not taking action to help (e.g., “I feel bad, and that’s enough”). Choose two characters from the novel and examine how one exemplifies the best of sentimentalism and how the other embodies the failings mentioned above. Do not rely on plot summary.