(2020-06-07) Bushra The Ghost Ofthe Old Curiosity Shop Inthe Diamond Age

Bushra Farooqui: The Ghost of "The Old Curiosity Shop" in "The Diamond Age". While re-reading Stephenson, it’s helpful to consider Diamond Age from the lens of its traditional predecessor, the allusion that lingers between the pages, unspoken, but felt—Charles Dickens’ dark 1840 tale, The Old Curiosity Shop.

In Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, orphaned teenager Nell Trent is a passive model of feminine grace and virtue with a loving, well-meaning grandfather. Ultimately anemic, Grandfather Trent, ponders the course of his granddaughter’s future in a Victorian world where class and her station as a young woman of limited means would offer her few and grim choices.

Saddled with debt, Grandfather Trent and Nell journey to escape creditors, with help that arrives tragically too late. A sick, melancholic Nell ultimately dies and Grandfather Trent too perishes from unbearable grief, maddened by her memory.

Notably, what is missing and absent throughout the story is a warm, maternal presence and an accompanying, guiding “book.”

Little by little, with a bespoke upbringing, tools, and enabling support, Nell reveals a natural capacity to do great things, such that out of all the other readers of the Primer, she not only becomes educated, but truly “intelligent.” (Young Lady's Illustrated Primer)

Stephenson offers Nell an elaborate support system

A brother, like Prometheus, who steals a copy of the Primer

A judge who decides in favor of valuing Nell’s growth and development

An accidental mother-figure in the form of Miranda

Multiple strong male/father figures

Guidance through interest-based story-telling of the Primer

Game-playing, skill-building, and active participation in adventures within the context of a mythological narrative within the Primer;

The ability to dynamically change the direction of her story, or to edit it

Embodiment, safety, and cultural literacy through the formal, rigorous, structure of Miss Matheson’s Academy of the Three Graces amidst peers who were the children of the most powerful in Neo-Victorian society.

These factors enabled her to not only fully develop and become an active agent in the world, but to use her agency as a gift to close the loop and protect her surrogate mother, Miranda.