The Power of Family
As the original subtitle of the novel - Containing a Faithful Account of the Fortunes, Misfortunes, Uprisings, Downfallings and Complete Career of the Nickleby Family – suggests, Nicholas Nickleby is, in an important sense, a novel about family. Throughout the novel, Nicholas remains loyal and devoted to his mother and sister and his father's memory. In doing so, he is motivated by love, not materialistic concerns.
Throughout the novel, the Nickleby family expands through marriage (Nicholas and Madeline, Kate and Frank), the unofficial adoption of Smike, and friendship ties with figures such as Browdie. For Dickens' characters, belonging to a family or a network of friends is a source of strength and comfort. This immaterial, psychological, and spiritual asset opposes the acquisition of material wealth.
Readers are invited to compare Nicholas' family to that of Ralph. Although Nicholas' father made poor financial choices, his family is loyal and loving to each other and behaves with moral integrity.
By contrast, the more financially savvy Ralph loses his wife and son and dies alone and dejected. The importance of family emerges in the difference between the resilient and resourceful Nicholas and the broken-spirited Smike. Nicholas draws strength and confidence from his loving background, while Smike has no memory of his family and has no such foundations to build on.
The Corrupting Power of Wealth
Throughout Dickens' novel, money is presented as a corrupting force for individuals and society. Due to his father's unwise financial choices, Nicholas finds himself suddenly poor at the beginning of the novel. As he seeks to rebuild a life for himself and his family, he is repeatedly forced to choose between financial and ethical priorities. He consistently maintains his moral integrity instead of compromising for moral gain, contrasting markedly with the money-lender Ralph, who gains wealth from others' financial hardship.
Civil / Natural Justice
Although Dickens presents a bleak picture of a society riddled with injustice and corruption, his novel ultimately suggests that natural justice is at work in the world. Squeers and Ralph are punished for their misdeeds, while Nicholas and Kate thrive. Although Smike dies as a consequence of the abuse and neglect he has suffered throughout his life, he departs peacefully, surrounded by love, while Ralph dies a wretched, lonely death.
Education and Pedagogy
Dickens partly wrote Nicholas Nickleby as an indictment of the abuses rife in fee-charging boarding schools. Dotheboys Hall is run on the sole principle of generating income, and the education of its pupils is utterly neglected. Indeed, the boys are brutalized at the school, and such potential as they might have had is stifled. The contrast between Nicholas and his cousin, the dejected, inarticulate Smike, is illustrative of the terrible damage that can be caused by abuse and neglect at an early age.
The Country and the City
In Nicholas Nickleby, the city is synonymous with the corrupt and materialistic contemporary society, while the countryside offers a refuge of innocence and peace. The Nickleby family's troubles begin when they are forced to leave Devonshire for London, and the family finds peace and happiness when they travel full circle back to their rural origins. Smike finds his final, peaceful resting place in the countryside, which offers him tranquillity and serenity in death, which he never found in life.
School Reform
Ralph Nickleby: A shadowy precursor to the infamous Ebeneezer Scrooge, the archetypal penny-pincher of A Christmas Carol . Dickens, having endured the harsh realities of childhood labor within a shoe blackening factory, became enthralled by the intoxicating power wielded by wealth—a force capable of tainting men beyond redemption. The 19th century was an epoch captivated by the pursuit of riches, as capitalism reached its zenith. Throughout the expanding British Empire, opportunities for...
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investment abounded, both honorable and deceitful. Dickens' narrative captivated a diverse audience, spellbound by the allure of fortune's promise to purchase prestige and authority. Regardless of their own economic circumstances, readers could collectively condemn his greedy antagonists and their voracious methods of defrauding their peers. InNicholas Nickleby, monetary woes are the root of nearly every turmoil, from the Mantalinis' disintegration to Kate's perilous encounters with Sir Mulberry Hawk. Daughters and neglected children, vulnerable in the face of familial financial inadequacy, fall prey to the likes of Ralph, who thrive on exploiting the unsuspecting. Dickens hints that for society to attain moral righteousness, families must surmount the hurdle of poverty.
Champion of the Underdog
Dickens, a reformer who fervently addressed the social injustices of Victorian England, crafted his serialized novel The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838-1839) with the intent of shedding light on the abuses rampant in the Yorkshire boarding schools for abandoned youth. Masquerading as a prospective parent, he delved into these institutions, uncovering the appalling conditions and unchecked liberties taken by the schoolmasters. As Dickens revealed in his 1848 Preface, the characters of Squeers and Dotheboys Hall were mere "faint and feeble pictures of an existing reality, purposely subdued and kept down lest they should be deemed impossible." Bereft of governmental support, these schools subsisted on fees extorted from neglectful parents and sporadic donations from a few concerned benefactors who cared for the unwanted children, many of whom were illegitimate or physically impaired. This bleak cottage industry attracted the most unscrupulous individuals, eager to profit by skimming from the tuition of these forsaken children. A decade after its initial release in monthly installments, Dickens proudly claimed credit for diminishing the number of such Yorkshire schools in his Preface to the 1848 edition of The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.
Education Advocator
Recognizing the dire need for educational opportunities for impoverished children, Dickens championed the creation of a public school system dedicated to this cause. His endeavors bore fruit with the foundation of the Ragged School Union in 1844, a groundbreaking initiative to establish schools for underprivileged children within the bustling confines of London and other densely populated locales. Dickens extolled this program in various editions of his weekly news publication, Household Words, celebrating its mission and impact.
The Change of Heart
The Dickensian Transformation
In the world of Charles Dickens' novels, the journey of a change of heart is a recurrent and powerful narrative arc. When the plot reaches its crescendo, it often does so with the profound metamorphosis of a once-vicious character who suddenly awakens to the darkness of his ways. This metamorphosis is vividly portrayed in Dickens' celebrated work, A Christmas Carol. The transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge unfolds through three pivotal epiphanies: 1) his severed ties with humanity, 2) the pain he inflicts upon others, and 3) the inevitable judgment awaiting his soul beyond the grave.
In A Christmas Carol, the mythical Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future guide Scrooge through his realizations. Memories of his beloved sister and fiancée reignite the extinguished warmth of love in his heart. Witnessing the anguish inflicted upon the Marley family holds a mirror to his mistakes, while the chilling sight of his own tombstone compels a profound reckoning with his fate. Thus, Scrooge's internal winter thaws into the spring of generosity and grace.
Ralph Nickleby's Ephemeral Redemption
Five years before Scrooge's tale, a similar journey is chronicled in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. Ralph Nickleby embarks on a comparable path of realization, although his transformation flickers and fades, extinguished by his own hand. The spark of human connection ignites within Ralph as he gazes into Kate's eyes, seeing the ghost of his departed brother. This connection reveals the hurt he caused by exposing her to Hawk's predatory pursuits.
The weight of his actions bears down further when Ralph learns of Smike's true parentage, realizing the boy he cast away was his own son. This revelation taints the abuse inflicted upon him as a cruel vendetta against his nephew, Nicholas. At this pivotal juncture, Ralph stands on the precipice of self-awareness, no longer able to detach from the pain he has wrought. In solitary reflection, he assesses his life and dreams of the man he could have been, lamenting that his son has been taught to loathe his very existence. Overwhelmed by this condemnation, Ralph sees no path to redemption and tragically ends his life.
Edgar's Adaptation: A Tragic Echo
In Edgar's adaptation of the Dickensian tale, the essence of Ralph's change of heart is retained, yet the poignant scene of a cemetery stroll—a reminder of a fellow who ended his life—is notably absent. This missing piece echoes the spectral visit from the Ghost of Christmas Future in A Christmas Carol. In Dickens' original narrative, Ralph's desperate invocation of the Devil and subsequent suicide act as his final spiteful rebellion against Nicholas and his companions, a deliberate rejection of their mercy and empathy.
Edgar's rendition veers closer to the redemptive arcs that Dickens would become famous for. In this version, Ralph envisions a different destiny, grappling with the realization that he has only fostered hatred in his son. Despite the Cheeryble brothers extending a hand of salvation, Ralph, enveloped in despair, murmurs "Cast out. And homeless. Me," before succumbing to his tragic fate. The audience is left to bear witness to the poignant transformation Ralph is tragically unable to complete.
