A new journey : Morality, religion, and The Old Curiosity Shop

This book focuses on the death of Nell. Readers who knew of Nell's exceptional filial piety said that she certainly would deliver a sorrowful and touching farewell speech, as in my translation of the diary La dame aux camellias. Yet Dickens did not write about Nell. Instead, he focus on how her grandfather, in his sorrowful state of love toward Nell, half asleep, half dead, exuded through his numbness a sense of deep emotion. It is a different writing style from that of the diary La dame aux camellias. For if he had focused on Nell, the writing would come off as too elegant. It was only by writing about the poor and stupid old man that he did not betray his chief purpose of writing about the lower classes of society. This clearly shows the care with which Dickens wrote.