Chapters 1–3
Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby opens with Nicholas’s grandfather Godfrey Nickleby, who has been driven by poverty almost to the point of suicide, inheriting money from an uncle. He buys a farm and raises two sons, Nicholas and Ralph. Cold and miserly Ralph becomes a rich money-lender, while the kinder Nicholas remains poor, eventually investing badly in the stock market and losing what little he has. He dies a broken man, leaving his wife and two children, Nicholas and Kate, penniless. The scene shifts to the office of the children’s uncle, Ralph Nickleby, in Golden Square, where readers first meet Ralph’s assistant, Newman Noggs, another former gentleman who was ruined through bad investments. Newman is the first of many characters in the novel who is deformed in some way. In Newman’s case, it is due to his ‘‘two goggle eyes, of which one was a fixture’’ [made of glass], his absurdly small clothes, and his incessant knuckle-cracking. Ralph himself is dressed in a manner suggesting financial stability, and there is ‘‘something in his very wrinkles, and in his cold restless eye, which seemed to tell of cunning that would announce itself in spite of him.’’ This chapter also mocks the British Parliament as it debates the merits of the Muffin Trade, Muffin Boys, and the Muffin System, eventually voting in favor of a muffin monopoly. Meanwhile the eponymous hero, Nicholas, his sister Kate, and their mother, Mrs. Nickleby, have come to London from their home in the country and are renting rooms while they wait for an audience with Ralph, who, they hope, will help them. The family’s first meeting with Ralph goes badly. Mrs. Nickleby is weak-minded and easily influenced by anyone with authority. Ralph, while perceiving Kate’s beauty, takes an instant dislike to Nicholas because he resembles his late father (Ralph’s brother), for whom Ralph feels a scornful envy.
Chapters 4–6
In Chapter 4, we are introduced to Mr. Wackford Squeers, headmaster of Dotheboys School for Boys in Yorkshire. Squeers, like Noggs, also has only one eye and is of freakish appearance. Ralph brings Nicholas to the Dotheboys School for Boys in Yorkshire, having learned from a newspaper advertisement that the headmaster is seeking a ‘‘first assistant master.’’ Dotheboys is a fictionalized version of a type of institution infamous in that era as a ‘‘Yorkshire school,’’ the eradication of which was Dickens’s goal in writing the novel. Illegitimate, deformed, or otherwise unwanted boys from poor families were consigned to these places, where insufficient food and harsh treatment led to injuries, as well as many premature deaths. Squeers, a past business associate of Ralph’s, agrees to hire Nicholas, who is overjoyed at what he naively believes is his uncle’s kindness. On the way home, Ralph asks Nicholas to drop off some papers at his office, and Nicholas meets Newman Noggs, who understands Ralph’s true motives and takes pity on Nicholas. Nicholas leaves for Dotheboys the next morning by coach, amid sad farewells from his mother and sister, whom Nicholas believes will be looked after by his uncle. Noggs appears at the leave-taking, pressing a letter into Nicholas’s hand. On the journey Nicholas is shocked by Squeers’s harsh treatment of his young charges, denying them food or a safe place in the coach.
Chapters 7–9
Nicholas arrives at Dotheboys Hall and is horrified by the cruelty Mr. Squeers and his wife exhibit toward the children. He is also astounded by the appearance of Smike, a longtime inmate who acts as an unpaid servant to the Squeers family. Although Smike is clearly at least eighteen years old, he is dressed in a ‘‘skeleton suit’’ usually worn by little boys, and an old, shredded, linen frill around his neck. Smike is also lame, and is so ‘‘dispirited and hopeless’’ that Nicholas can scarcely bear to look at him. Nicholas opens the letter from Newman Noggs, who offers him a place to stay in London if he should ever need one. On Nicholas’s first day at the Dotheboys, he encounters sad, broken boys, prematurely aged and starving. He also discovers that Squeers steals the boys’ letters from home, including any enclosed money or belongings. Nicholas meets Squeers’ daughter Fanny, who resembles her father in both appearance and temperament, and who promptly falls in love with Nicholas. She arranges a tea party for Nicholas, her best friend Tilda, and Tilda’s fiance´, the large and hearty Yorkshireman John Browdie. Tilda flirts with Nicholas to enflame both John and Fanny. Nicholas flirts back, as Tilda is a distraction from his own predicament. John threatens Nicholas, and Fanny is furious. Nicholas, his mind occupied with other matters, is surprised by the vehemence of all parties, and blames himself for not paying attention. ‘‘Well, it is a just punishment,’’ he concludes, ‘‘for having forgotten, even for an hour, what is around me now!’’
Chapters 10–12
Ralph has also procured a job for Kate, at the establishment of a milliner, Madame Mantalini. Kate is to work from nine in the morning until nine at night for five to seven shillings a week. Madame Mantalini has a lewd and flirtatious husband, the first of many such brutes Kate will contend with. Ralph tells Kate he has an empty house she and her mother can live in temporarily until he rents it. Newman Noggs, who Kate recognizes as having a kind spirit, conducts them to their new lodging, an awful place with animal bones on the floor. It stands near a wharf on the Thames River. Kate’s life is now as cheerless and frightening as her brother’s. Nicholas realizes that not only is Fanny in love with him, but she also believes that he is in love with her, a misapprehension he attempts to correct immediately. He believes that his only hope is to leave Dotheboys Hall without looking back. This is one of many times when Nicholas speaks or acts from his emotions, one sign in Dickens of a true hero, and a behavior that differentiates him from Ralph, who acts only from cold calculation. Nicholas confides in Smike and tells him that he plans to leave the school as soon as possible.
Chapters 13–15
Smike escapes from Dotheboys but is soon caught and brought back. As Squeers prepares to beat the feeble boy, Nicholas intercedes for the first time in Squeers’s brutal treatment of his charges, shouting, ‘‘‘Stop!’ in a voice that made the rafters ring.’’ Squeers strikes Nicholas first, and Nicholas, ‘‘concentrating into that one moment all his feelings of rage, scorn, and indignation’’ beats Squeers until ‘‘he roared for mercy.’’ Nicholas then sets out on foot for London. On the road he meets John Browdie, who, hearing of the treatment meted out to the schoolmaster, bellows with approval and presses money on Nicholas, so that he can have lodging for the night. On the second night, Nicholas takes shelter in a barn. On waking he finds Smike, who has followed him and who begs to be allowed to stay with him. Nicholas agrees. The two set out for Newman Noggs’s boardinghouse, arriving there at two in the morning. A jolly party is going on in the lodgings of the Kenwigses, a family with modest means and many daughters. It is a comic scene, and it underscores the importance of girls’ wealth in making good marriages—a theme that will recur later in the romances of both Kate and Nicholas. When two ‘‘queer-looking people, all covered with rain and mud’’ are announced to Noggs, Newman grabs a candle and a cup of hot punch and runs to welcome them. Newman advises Nicholas not to see his mother and sister until he has first seen his uncle, and produces a copy of a letter Ralph has already received from Fanny Squeers. The letter greatly exaggerates her family’s injuries at Nicholas’s hands and accuses him of also stealing their jewelry.
Chapters 16–19
Nicholas visits the General Accounting Office, an employment agency, seeking work. While there he becomes smitten with a beautiful girl who is also looking for work, but he fails to learn her name. The clerk refers Nicholas to the office of a member of Parliament, Mr. Gregsbury, who needs a secretary. Here Dickens has another chance to ridicule the British government, because Gregsbury refuses to do even one of the things he promised to do during his campaign, but also refuses to resign. Gregsbury enumerates the endless responsibilities the secretary’s job entails, which include all the work that would normally be expected of a member of Parliament himself, and names the paltry salary. Nicholas, already less naive than he was when he agreed to work at Dotheboys, declines this job. But the Kenwigses, hearing of his need for work, engage him as a French tutor for their daughters. They believe this nicety will add to the girls’ marriageability. In the meantime, Kate toils through difficult days at Madame Mantalini’s millinery shop. The shop forewoman, the nosy middle-aged spinster Miss Knag, at first champions Kate, then becomes jealous when Kate rather than she is requested as a model. The unemployed Mr. Mantalini makes improper advances to Kate. Kate consoles herself with the thought that at least Nicholas is faring better at his place of employment—or so she imagines. Kate encounters Ralph as she is leaving work one night. He invites her to dinner at his house; there she meets the vile aristocrats Sir Mulberry Hawk and Lord Frederick Verisopht. She is the only female present at the dinner, a situation that invites scandal and could compromise her reputation. The men are vulgar and in debt to her uncle. They bet on whether Kate is wishing one of them will court her. She hurries from the room to hide, crying. Hawk follows her; they are completely alone, a situation that can ruin her chances to make a good marriage. Ralph appears, and Hawk accuses him of using Kate to lure Verisopht, the richer and younger of the two, into greater debt. Ralph acknowledges the truth of the accusation. He then takes Kate home, and seeing her tear-stained face brings back a memory of her father. He ‘‘staggered while he looked and went back into his house, as a man who had seen a spirit from some world beyond the grave.’’ This is the first of several occasions in which Kate’s misery provokes a fleeting feeling of guilt in Ralph.
Chapters 20–22
Nicholas decides to visit the lodgings of his mother and sister. However, Ralph gets there first and recounts Fanny Squeers’s version of Nicholas’s beating of her family and the alleged theft. Nicholas bursts in. He explains the facts of the case, admitting he beat the deserving Squeers and left with Smike. Ralph tells them that neither Nicholas nor anyone who helps him will ever have a penny of Ralph’s money. Nicholas naively leaves his mother and sister again in Ralph’s care, warning him that if any harm should befall them, he will face a heavy reckoning. Nicholas then joins Smike to go seek his fortune outside of London until his name is cleared. Kate loses her job when Madame Mantalini goes bankrupt due to the extravagant behavior of her husband. Kate is set up again by Ralph, this time as companion to a pampered rich woman named Mrs. Wititterly. Nicholas and Smike, meanwhile, head toward the coast to sign on as seamen. Instead they fall in with a theatrical company run by Vincent Crummles, who offers Nicholas and Smike employment as actors and offers Nicholas extra work as a writer of theatrical adaptations of novels. The two gratefully accept.
Chapters 23–25
Nicholas and Smike meet Crummles’s family— his wife, several boys, and the Infant Phenomenon, a girl of perhaps fifteen whose growth has been stunted by an unknown means, possibly alcohol, so that she can continue to play children’s roles. The theater people are kind, but silly; they seem, like children, always to be playing. Nicholas sees their current production the next evening and is very impressed by its quality. The magic of the theater affects him strongly, and he throws himself into writing a new piece for the company. He receives great acclaim from both the company and the audience for this new piece, which we writies and acts in under the name of ‘‘Johnson.’’ This is the alias he has given the Crummleses because he is still in flight from the law. Nicholas helps Smike learn his part as an apothecary (pharmacist) in the play, and after much gentle help, Smike is able to remember his few lines. Chapters 26–30 Kate continues to be harassed by the loathsome boors Sir Mulberry Hawk and Lord Frederick Verisopht. The men go to her residence and meet Mrs. Nickleby, who assumes they are honorable gentlemen vying for Kate’s hand. Meanwhile, Ralph suppresses feelings of remorse for his actions. ‘‘Selling a girl—throwing her in the way of temptation, and insult, and coarse speech…. Pshaw! Match-making mothers do the same thing every day.’’ He arranges a ‘‘chance’’ meeting between the scoundrels and Kate at the theater. Kate narrowly escapes another compromising scene with Sir Mulberry, in which he attempts to touch her. Next, the men hound her at her place of employment, having impressed the status-seeking Mrs. Wititterly with their titles. Kate appeals to her employer for help, but winds up getting fired. Kate next appeals to Ralph for help, but he refuses. Kate says she will ask no more of him and instead will appeal to God for help. Newman Noggs, overhearing, vows that ‘‘someone else’’ shall hear of it soon, too. Nicholas continues to receive rave reviews at the theater. He receives a letter from Newman saying that he may need to return to London. After guessing that Newman’s letter implies further treachery by Ralph, Nicholas has one final triumphant performance and bids adieu to the world of the theater.
Chapters 31–33
Upon arriving in London, Nicholas goes to Noggs’s residence, and, finding Noggs out, goes to a tavern to wait. Nicholas hears Hawk and Verisopht in the tavern discussing his sister in very disrespectful terms and understands at once the breadth of Ralph’s villainy against his family. After giving the men his card, Nicholas demands to know Hawk’s name, but Hawk will not divulge it, nor will Verisopht. Nicholas says he will follow Hawk until he learns it; Hawk gets into his carriage, beating Nicholas away with his whip. Nicholas grabs the whip and strikes Hawk a heavy blow, opening a gash in his face. Nicholas proceeds to remove Kate and his mother from the dismal house in which Ralph has installed them; they all go to live in the friendly lodging house where they had first stayed in London. Nicholas sends a letter to Ralph, stating that the family renounces him and leaves him to his grave.
Chapters 34–36
Ralph reads Nicholas’s letter again and again. He is visited by Squeers, who asks for financial recompense for Nicholas’s beating. Ralph begins to plot revenge against Nicholas, using Smike as a weapon. Ralph recognizes that his hatred for Nicholas is grounded in the boy’s likeness to his dead brother, thinking, ‘‘He was open, liberal, gallant, gay; I a crafty hunks of cold and stagnant blood.’’ Jobless again, Nicholas returns to the General Accounting Office where he saw the mysterious, beautiful girl; this time he has another important encounter. He meets an amiable older gentleman, Charles Cheeryble, who, upon listening sympathetically to Nicholas’s sad story, conducts him immediately to the offices of the Brothers Cheeryble. Here Nicholas meets Charles’s identical twin, Ned, and their clerk, Tim Linkinwater, who has been with them for fortyfour years. The kindly brothers offer Nicholas a job keeping their books at a respectable salary of 120 pounds per year, and install the family in a lovely cottage they own at no charge. The benevolent twin brothers embody a miracle of generosity after the harsh treatment the family has endured.
Chapters 37–39
The Brothers Cheeryble throw a party in honor of Tim Linkinwater’s birthday. All the house staff is invited—porters, warehousemen, cooks, butlers and maids—there is no class discrimination here. In stark contrast to every other servant in the book, the employees of the Brothers Cheeryble almost cry with happiness as they express their gratitude to be working there. Meanwhile Smike is failing in health and feeling deep sorrow. Sir Mulberry Hawk is reported to be in bad condition, bruised and scarred after his encounter with Nicholas. Ralph visits the recuperating scoundrel, and stokes his desire for revenge. When Ralph leaves, Sir Frederick Verisopht, who is now revealed to ‘‘really have a kind heart,’’ comes to Nicholas’s defense, saying Hawk was in the wrong. Smike, out for a walk, is accidentally discovered by Squeers, who captures him. The genial farmer John Browdie, who is visiting London with his new bride, Tilda, subsequently rescues him.
Chapters 40–42
Smike returns to Newman’s home, where he cries to hear that the Nickleby family, especially Kate, have been worried about him. Meanwhile, Nicholas is amazed to discover the beautiful girl from the General Accounting Office meeting with the Brothers Cheeryble at his place of work. She is crying, and upon seeing a stranger enter the room immediately faints. The brothers Cheeryble refuse to tell Nicholas who she is, and he becomes unable to think about anything else. He enlists Newman to discover her name and address. Newman follows her, reporting her name is Cecilia Bobster. After swallowing his surprise at her lack of a genteel name, Nicholas attends a secret meeting set up for him by Newman and discovers that Miss Bobster is in fact the wrong girl. Mrs. Nickleby, in another comic scene, is being pursued romantically by a mysterious older gentleman over the garden wall, who throws cucumbers and turnips as a way to court her. Squeers confronts John Browdie, and John and Nicholas threaten Squeers with legal action should he ever harass Smike again.
Chapters 43–45
Nicholas meets Frank Cheeryble, a nephew of the Cheeryble brothers. Frank is a younger version of his amiable uncles, and Nicholas is immediately worried that the mysterious girl may be intended for him in marriage. The brothers bring the young Frank along when they pay a visit on the Nicklebys. Frank is immediately smitten with Kate. Ralph is approached by a man named Brooker, who, professing to know some secret about Ralph, tries to bribe him. Brooker asks, ‘‘Are those of your own name dear to you?’’ and Ralph answers, ‘‘They are not,’’ assuming Brooker refers to Nicholas and Kate. Newman Noggs follows Brooker and listens closely to Mr. Brooker’s story. The Nickleby household hosts a tea party for John Browdie, Smike’s savior on two occasions, and his new wife Tilda. Ralph suddenly appears, accompanied by Squeers and another scoundrel, Snawley, who has brought what Ralph says are documents proving that Smike is actually Snawley’s son. Nicholas and John refuse to give Smike up, although Ralph threatens Nicholas with legal proceedings that will ruin his future prospects and ‘‘make this house a hell.’’
Chapters 46–49
The Cheeryble brothers tell Nicholas that Ralph has been to see them regarding Smike, and that they told Ralph to leave. They also relate the story of the beautiful girl, whose name is Madeline Bray. She is the daughter of the woman Charles Cheeryble himself hoped to marry in his youth, but who instead had married a scoundrel and soon died. The girl works night and day to support her sick father. The Cheerybles enlist Nicholas in their plan to help her. He agrees to participate, although he worries that his own interest in the girl may cloud his abilities. He goes to her house, pretending to be interested in buying her paintings, but blurts out that he would die to serve her. Madeline weeps with gratitude. Ralph, it turns out, has plans to marry Madeline off to an old miser named Arthur Gride in return for money he needs to pay off an old debt of Madeline’s father. Gride and Ralph also know that Madeline will inherit property when she marries and plan to trick her out of it. Kate, meanwhile, has romantic feelings for Frank Cheeryble, who has become a regular visitor to the cottage. Smike sits alone in his room and continues to seem very melancholy, although he will not tell Nicholas the cause. Smike is diagnosed with consumption, a disease that ‘‘so prepares its victim, as it were, for death.’’
Chapters 50–53
Sir Mulberry Hawk, mostly healed, swears to murder Nicholas. Lord Frederick Verisopht vows to prevent this. The two duel; Verisopht dies and Hawk flees to France. Meanwhile, Nicholas learns from Newman about Madeline’s upcoming marriage to Gride and bolts from the house with Newman chasing him. Nicholas begs Madeline to postpone the marriage for one week, in which time the Cheerybles will have returned from abroad. She protests that she cannot delay, for her father will surely die if not restored to affluence by this marriage. Nicholas staggers to the home of Arthur Gride, offering him money to put off the wedding and hinting that he knows of the plot to defraud Madeline of her inheritance. Gride, assuming he is bluffing, refuses.
Chapters 54–56
Ralph and Arthur go to the Bray home on the wedding morning. Walter Bray, feeling guilty for what he is about to do to his daughter, tells Ralph of a dream he had: ‘‘The floor sank with me. . . . I alighted in a grave.’’ Nicholas and Kate barge in, intending to prevent the marriage by any means possible. Nicholas threatens Ralph with what he knows of the plot. The three hear a crash. Bray’s premonition has been realized; he has died just in time to spare his daughter from her awful fate. Nicholas carries Madeline out to a waiting coach. Madeline subsequently falls ill, but Kate lovingly nurses her back to health. Mrs. Nickleby tells Nicholas that Frank Cheeryble and Kate are in love. Nicholas declares that a marriage between them would be impossible due to Kate’s poverty and the appearance it would create of the penniless Nicklebys taking advantage of the wealthy Cheerybles. Smike grows alarmingly sicker, and he and Nicholas leave for a stay in the peaceful country environs where Nicholas and Kate grew up. Arthur Gride, meanwhile, discovers he has been robbed by his maid, Peg Sliderskew, of papers relating to Madeline’s inheritance that he and Ralph had themselves previously stolen. Ralph discovers that Nicholas has told certain important persons about Ralph’s plot to ensnare and defraud Madeline Bray. This has caused Ralph’s stocks to collapse. Ralph, swearing revenge against Nicholas, hires Squeers to recover the papers stolen from Gride.
Chapters 57–59
Squeers does his dirty work with Peg Sliderskew, getting her drunk so that she will reveal the papers she has stolen. As she at last produces the right one, Newman Noggs emerges from the shadows and knocks Squeers senseless. Smike and Nicholas, meanwhile, revisit many beloved places of Nicholas’s and Kate’s childhoods. Smike asks to be buried under a tree where Kate napped as a girl. Finally at peace— having now known real love with the Nickleby family, and admitting he loves Kate—Smike dies. Ralph, anxious and unable to sleep, worries about Noggs’s absence, little suspecting that his own servant is in on Nicholas’s plot to destroy him. He is surprised by a visit from Charles Cheeryble, who urges Ralph to ask Nicholas’s mercy. Ralph scoffs at the idea. Ralph visits Snawley’s home. His wife informs Ralph that Snawley is now being pursued by the law for pretending to be Smike’s father at Ralph’s request. Ralph next looks for Gride, who hides from him. Ralph finally visits the Cheerybles, because no one else will talk to him. He finds to his astonishment that Newman is there. Newman and the Cheerybles explain how they uncovered Ralph’s plots and reveal that Gride, Snawley, and Squeers had all confessed their parts in Ralph’s schemes. They tell Ralph that the world knows what he has done, and that he ought to go away from London to hide and ‘‘become a better man.’’ Ralph again ignores their advice.
Chapters 60–62
Ralph visits Squeers in jail. Squeers has told the authorities that Ralph had hired him. He, like all of Ralph’s former accomplices, has no respect or even interest in Ralph anymore. Ralph returns home and is summoned by Tim Linkinwater to the Cheeryble house. Once there, the brothers reveal the man Brooker, who tells Ralph that his only son, whom Ralph believed died as a child, had indeed lived a starved and wretched life and died in the arms of his cousin Nicholas. In other words, Smike was in fact Ralph’s son. Ralph smashes a lamp to the ground and disappears without a word. Kate, meanwhile, refuses the marriage proposal of Frank Cheeryble because of her poverty. Nicholas resolves to move Madeline to some other lodgings so that he is not tormented by his own romantic feelings for her. Nicholas and Kate imagine a chaste future together, growing old and kindly like the Brothers Cheeryble. After telling all this to Charles, Charles tells Nicholas that Ralph wants them to both visit him that afternoon. Ralph, meanwhile, alone in his house, imagines the happy life he might have had with his son; the thought that his son died in Nicholas’s arms tortures him. Ralph realizes he has lost his fortune and can never ply his trade again. Thinking of a final way to hurt his family, Ralph hangs himself, crying as he does so, ‘‘Throw me on a dunghill and let me rot there to infect the air!’’
Chapters 63–65
The Brothers Cheeryble convene a meeting. Charles tells Kate and Nicholas that they are the children of a worthy gentleman, whereas the Cheerybles themselves were once only ‘‘two poor simple-hearted boys, wandering, almost barefoot, to seek our fortunes.’’ He insists that Madeline loves Nicholas and the two must marry; their nephew, Frank, can marry Kate. Nicholas travels to John Browdie’s house to tell him the great news. While there he learns that Dotheboys Hall broke up after news of Squeers’s imprisonment. Nicholas buys his childhood home when he becomes a prosperous partner in the firm of Cheeryble and Nickleby, and he and Madeline have many lovely children. Kate and Frank live in a house nearby, and Mrs. Nickleby divides her time between her two sets of grandchildren. The book’s last words are devoted to Smike, buried beneath a nearby tree. His grave is ringed by garlands of flowers made by the children, who ‘‘spoke low and softly of their poor, dead cousin.’’
Source Credits:
Sara Constantakis, Novels for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context & Criticism on Commonly Studied Novels, Volume 33, Gale-Cengage Learning, 2010