72 pages • 2 hours read
Charles DickensThe Old Curiosity Shop
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1840A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Literary Devices
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapters 33-37Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 33 Summary
The narrator’s voice returns, offering to “take the friendly reader by the hand” and go visit Mr. Sampson Brass in Bevis Marks (233). Brass is a lawyer whom Quilp keeps on retainer. His office is dusty, full of cobwebs, and messy with documents and other belongings. His sister, Sarah (“Sally”), works as his clerk, though it is soon clear that she is more knowledgeable and more in charge than Sampson is. The Brasses debate hiring a clerk Mr. Quilp referred, and at that very moment Mr. Quilp himself appears in their window. He introduces the clerk he proposed: none other than Dick Swiveller. Quilp put Dick up for the job so he can keep a closer eye on him as the search for Nell continues. Sampson and Quilp leave to have a private conversation in the other room. Dick seems caught off guard by Sally, “staring with all his might […] as if she had been some curious animal whose like had never lived” (239). He calms his agitated feelings by fidgeting with a ruler.
Chapter 34 Summary
Sally finishes her tasks and steps out, leaving Dick alone in the offices. Dick reflects on his circumstances—namely, Fred’s supporting Quilp assigning him to the Brasses, and his aunt stopping his allowance and significantly reducing his inheritance in her latest will. Dick takes messages from clients. A young girl suddenly appears in the house, asking Dick to show a client the upstairs lodgings. The girl is the housemaid, the client a single gentleman.
Chapter 35 Summary
Sampson returns home and praises Dick’s first day of work. Sally found a stool for Dick to use at work, as they had no additional furniture, having not intended to hire any new staff. Sally asks about the single gentleman upstairs. Dick cannot answer her and Sampson’s many questions because the man himself gave no clues. The trio tries to wake the lodger, explaining that he has slept so long they thought he died. The gentleman invites only Dick into his room; they have breakfast and engage in frank discussion about the Brasses. The gentleman asserts that he never has any callers, nor does he ever receive packages, and as such will not share his name.
Chapter 36 Summary
The single gentleman only communicates with Dick. The Brasses see him as having influence with the lodger, and this puts Dick in Sally’s favor, but this favor is not as positive as it seems. As Dick and the Brasses grow closer, he treats Sally more and more like a brother and even refers to her as “the dragon.” Dick still holds concerns for the servant girl, especially after he sees Sally scold her, beat her, lock her up, and feed her scraps like an animal.
Chapter 37 Summary
The single gentleman proves to be extraordinarily interested in Punch and Judy shows. He attends every show that comes to town and even invites the puppeteers and proprietors up to his rooms for drinks and conversation. Sampson is annoyed by the crowds wanting to see the show waiting outside his office, so he pours water on them and throws trash down at them from the windows.
One night, the single gentleman invites Tom Codlin and Short Trotters upstairs. As he asks about their travels, he determines that they are indeed the ones he has been searching for, especially when they mention having traveled with an old man and a beautiful young girl: The gentleman is apparently looking for Nell and her grandfather. Codlin and Trotters provide him with the information to contact Jerry, who trains the dancing dogs; they themselves do not know where Nell and her grandfather went after the races, but they suspect Jerry might.
Chapters 33-37 Analysis
The arrival of the single gentleman signals an important turning point in the novel’s forward momentum. A secretive, reclusive man appears out of nowhere and takes a keen interest in the Punch and Judy shows and in Dick Swiveller. He is clearly there searching for something, and he keeps it so closely guarded that other characters’ desire to be let in on the secret is palpable. Slowly but surely, he assembles clues to Nell’s whereabouts; he finds out information no other character has so far, which one may reasonably attribute to his willingness to approach people “beneath” him. Sally or Quilp would be hard-pressed to invite traveling puppeteers into their home. The single gentleman, however, welcomes them in as equals, and because of his willingness to put class aside, he can get information from them.
In these chapters, the reader also meets the Brasses’ housemaid, whom Sally abuses on a regular basis, much to Dick’s surprise and disgust. As mentioned previously, the Victorians tended to associate outward beauty with inner moral goodness, and the scene in which the beautiful Sally Brass beats her servant, feeds her barely enough to stay alive, and locks her in the basement turns that belief on its head. The novel often upends the reader’s preconceptions in this way, though Dickens’s portrayal of Quilp arguably perpetuates stereotypes by lingering on the man’s physical appearance as though it communicates something about his villainy.
Related Titles
By Charles Dickens
