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Abstract

This research explores the representation of women in a patriarchal society by representing the female characters in Charles Dickens' novel The Old Curiosity Shop. Dickens’ attitude towards women is always contradictory. Dickens is ambiguous. He is sympathetic as well as biased towards women which are depicted in his novel The Old Curiosity Shop. He is an emotional social critic who shows his deep sympathy towards helpless women in distress which makes him a supporter of women but at the same time, he shows his deep respect to the patriarchal norms and values and become socially biased towards them when he metaphorically represents them as angel and monster in the family. Other female characters like Miss Nell and Miss Quilip have surrendered themselves to the patriarchal ideology who is depicted as an angel in a family where the strong and revolutionary kind of women like Miss Brass who denies herself to follow the patriarchal ideology is occasionally referred to as a female dragon. This paper applies the feminist ideas of Simon De Bevouir, Gilbert and Gubar, Marry Wollstonecraft, and Virginia Woolf in the text The Old Curiosity Shop.