Nell Trent

Nell Trent, also referred to as Little Nell, is a fictional character in the 1841 novel The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. The novel's main character, she is portrayed as infallibly good and virginal. An orphan, she leads her grandfather on their journey to save them from misery but gradually becomes weaker throughout the journey, and although she finds a home with the help of a schoolmaster, she sickens and dies before her friends in London find her. Her death has been described as "the apotheosis of Victorian sentimentality." Character In the novel Nell Trent is a beautiful and virtuous young girl of "not quite fourteen". An orphan, she lives with her maternal grandfather (whose name is never revealed) in his shop of odds and ends, the Old Curiosity Shop of the title. She lives a lonely life with only one friend, Kit Nubbles, an honest boy employed at the shop, whom she is teaching to write. In an attempt to provide for her once he is gone her grandfather gambles extensively at cards and borrows heavily from the villainous Daniel Quilp, who lusts after Little Nell and hopes eventually to marry her after disposing of his wife. Eventually Quilp seizes possession of the shop and evicts Nell and her grandfather who travel to the Midlands to live as beggars. The two are pursued by Nell's wastrel older brother, Frederick, who is convinced that Nell has a secret fortune, and by the good-natured but easily led Dick Swiveller. They are joined by Quilp who knows that there is no fortune, but sadistically chooses to 'help' them to enjoy the misery it will inflict on all concerned. Quilp begins to try to track Nell down, but the fugitives are not easily discovered. Nell, having fallen in with a number of characters, some villainous and some kind, succeeds in leading her grandfather to safety in a far-off village (identified by Dickens as Tong, Shropshire), but this comes at a considerable cost to Nell's health.