In the third novel by Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, readers for the first time glimpsed what would become the traditional Dickens novel, uniting several of the author’s private social concerns as themes and offering myriad characters representative of the cultural ills of his day.

First serialized in 20 parts between April 1838 and October 1839, the novel focused attention on what Dickens believed to be the cause of much of the poverty and crime haunting British culture: the neglect of education for children. While not the novel’s total focus, much emphasis is on the “Yorkshire schools” that had proliferated in England, educational institutions where “inconvenient” children were deposited and often terribly abused.

When the novel’s protagonist suffers the death of his father from grief over lost property, he turns to an uncle for aid for himself, his mother, and his younger sister, Kate. The prosperous and successful, greedy and heartless Ralph Nickleby is the greatest of the novel’s several villains, as his evil grows from jealousy over his dead brother’s success in finding love and happiness with his family. Ralph will help his brother’s family only if Nicholas agrees to work in one of the hateful educational institutions representative of those Dickens hoped to expose for gross mistreatment of students.

Told in episodes, the plot lacks the unity granted by a strong central figure, as both Nicholas and Ralph are so stereotypically drawn as to be near-caricatures of good and evil. However, the characters Nicholas must deal with as he is forced to make important choices in life add depth to the novel. Unlike Dickens’s previous heroes, such as the orphaned boy in Oliver Twist (1838) who need only escape his surroundings to find success and happiness, Nicholas must learn to dwell in his world, choosing a vocation and finding maturity through the exercise of responsible action.

When he rebels against the horrible Wackford Squeers, schoolmaster of Dotheboys Hall, Nicholas must accept the responsibility of his actions. By beating Squeers for his mistreatment of the half-wit boy Smike, Nicholas must become Smike’s caretaker. As it happens, they end up in the company of an acting troupe, led by the agreeable Vincent Crummles, and later in London in the business of the Cheeryble brothers, who live up to the gaiety suggested by their surname. There he can oversee Kate’s treatment, and he eventually ends up thrashing another evil figure, Sir Mulberry Hawke, when he overhears a disrespectful comment regarding his sister.

His choices are also of a moral tenor. Dickens supplies several “dirty old men” that Nicholas must reject as role models, including the slimy and appropriately named Sir Mulberry Hawke, who act as predators in pursuit of Kate’s virginity. An additional figure of female innocence, Madeline Bray, also suffers the desires of the stingy old Gride. She ends up sacrificed to marriage in a clear statement by Dickens on the tenuous position of unprotected women in British culture. Additionally, Dickens creates another type of sexual predator in Mr. Mantalini, husband of the dressmaker to whom Kate apprentices. He uses overt but patently false romantic ploys to distract his wife from the fact that he is leading the family into financial ruin.

The plot runs to an inevitable conclusion as a plan on the part of Ralph and Squeers to use Smike against Nicholas fails, the sickly boy dies, and Ralph discovers that Smike was his own illegitimate child and subsequently commits suicide. While flawed by its overuse of melodrama, the novel retains a happy liveliness that mimics that of youth, one readers may eventually celebrate along with the characters.

Unlike most of Dickens’s other novels, Nicholas Nickleby is no longer much read, despite its early success. However, critics credit it with advancing Dickens’s trademark style, later to make his works some of history’s most enduring.

Bibliography
Smiley, Jane. Charles Dickens. New York: Penguin Putnam, 2002.

Categories: British Literature, Children's Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

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