The Old Curiosity Shop

The women’s luncheon is perhaps the only time in the course of the novel in which the reader sees the complexity of Mrs. Quilp’s feelings towards her husband. Her mother, Mrs. Jiniwin, urged her into the marriage, but despite the union’s arranged aspect and her husband’s cruelty, she does seem to have some love for Quilp, as evidenced by her reluctance to partake in the group’s negative comments about him. It can be frustrating for a modern reader to hear these women talk so earnestly about how important it is for a woman to stand up for herself, only to see them become meek and compliant as soon as a man walks into the room. Mrs. Jiniwin hates Quilp for how he mistreats her daughter, but she is genuinely afraid of him—making it significantly harder to walk the walk than it is to talk the talk. Their position in the household and in society is precarious enough, but being tethered to Daniel Quilp puts them in actual danger. The tension between words and actions may also reflect Dickens’s (and the era’s) ambivalent views on women’s rights; the novel associates women’s assertion of their rights with Mrs. Jiniwin’s “shrewish” nature, but it also recognizes women’s vulnerability to spousal abuse.

The reader also learns the true extent of Quilp’s manipulativeness. He eavesdrops on his wife’s private conversations with her mother so that he can determine if she ever speaks ill of him. He can and will use anything she says against her later, either to scare her into compliance or guilt her into manipulating another for Quilp’s own gain—or both. Beyond her usefulness, Quilp has little regard for his wife at all. He proposes marriage to Nell while his current wife is still alive. His words suggest something might happen to Mrs. Quilp by the time Nell comes of age, and given what the reader has already seen him put her through, the idea that he might eliminate his wife so as to seize Nell’s inheritance via marriage does not seem so far-fetched.

Quilp’s eavesdropping is not limited to only his wife; he eavesdrops on Nell’s conversation, too. The contents of her grandfather’s letter were sufficiently intriguing for Quilp to threaten his wife with further abuse if she did not help him extract information from Nell. Mrs. Quilp clearly pities Nell and hates what her husband makes her do, but she does it out of fear for her own safety. Quilp is not only greedy for the wealth he thinks Nell possesses but also for information, hoarding it through nefarious means and weaponizing it for his own gain.