Customer Reviews

Nicholas Nickleby (Penguin Classics)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read criticisms of this book that it is not one of Dickens' best. For me, it is up there with Great Expectations and David Copperfield as one of his most enjoyable novels (A Christmas Carol is a short story).

The social axe that Dickens had to grind in this story is man's injustice to children. Modern readers my feel that his depiction of Dotheboys Academy is too melodramatic. Alas, unfortunately, it was all too real. Charles Dickens helped create a world where we can't believe that such things happen. Dickens even tell us in an introduction that several Yorkshire schoolmasters were sure that Wackford Squeers was based on them and threatened legal action.

The plot of Nicholas Nickleby is a miracle of invention. It is nothing more than a series of adventures, in which Nicholas tries to make his way in the world, separate himself from his evil uncle, and try to provide for his mother and sister.

There are no unintersting characters in Dickens. Each one is almost a charicature. This book contains some of his funniest characters.

To say this is a melodrama is not an insult. This is melodrama at its best. Its a long book, but a fast read.

Fresh from his success on "Oliver Twist" as a political satirist of note, Dickens turns his sights toward the abuse of Yorkshire schools - a national disgrace - in which children were effectively abandoned for a fee. Neglect, physical abuse, malnourishment, cold, and ill health were endemic. This political attack becomes the setting for an expansive tale of the Nickleby family and their ongoing struggle against the evil of their uncle Ralph. The usual collection of sub-plots, comedy and Dickensian characters rounds out a lengthy but fulfilling read that nobody will be sorry they started.

Paul Weiss

Dickens is as much a social critic as a storyteller in "Nicholas Nickleby," which basically pits the noble young man who gives the novel its title against his wickedly scheming rich uncle Ralph in a grand canvas of London and English society. At the beginning of the novel, Nicholas's father has just died, leaving his family destitute, and Uncle Ralph, a moneylender (specifically, a usurer) and a venture capitalist of sorts, greedy and callous by the requirements of the story, reluctantly feels obligated to help them, and does so by securing for Nicholas a position as headmaster's assistant at a school for boys in Yorkshire, and for Nicholas's sister Kate a job as a dressmaker for a foppish clown named Mr. Mantalini, while Nicholas and Kate's scatterbrained mother is left in her room to mutter incoherent reminiscences about random events in her life.

This Yorkshire school, called Dotheboys Hall, turns out to be little more than a prison in the way it is run by its headmaster, an improbably cruel cyclops named Wackford Squeers who badly mistreats and miseducates the students. Now, historical records indicate that while Squeers may be an exaggeration, his school is definitely not, Dickens intending to warn his readers of the day that some such places were indeed that bad. The duration at Dotheboys Hall constitutes only a small portion of the novel, but Squeers and his grotesque family reappear throughout the rest of the story like gremlins who are always causing bad things to happen to our hero.

Nicholas's fortunes after escaping from Dotheboys Hall with Smike, a particularly abused older boy whom Squeers had worked like a slave, revolve largely around the circumstances of Kate and Uncle Ralph, who is starting to view the young man as a nuisance inclined to interfere in his machinations. Having been vilified by Squeers for his brash conduct at the Hall, Nicholas takes to the road with Smike in tow, where in Portsmouth they meet a thespian named Vincent Crummles who persuades the fugitives to become actors in his theatrical troupe; this episode, the strangest of Nicholas's adventures, seems more than anything else to reflect Dickens's own interest in the theater. Eventually Nicholas returns to London and gets a job as a clerk at a counting-house owned by a pair of merchants, the cheery Cheeryble brothers, where he encounters a beautiful girl in distress who will become a major factor in the final showdown between Nicholas and his uncle.

The supporting characters are numerous and extremely colorful to the point of cartoonishness, such as Miss La Creevy, a talkative spinster and amateur painter; John Browdie, the gruff Yorkshireman whose dialect is so severe he needs a translator; Sir Mulberry Hawk, the arrogant suitor whom Kates tries to rebuff; Newman Noggs, Uncle Ralph's benevolent clerk who helps our hero when he can. In fact, the most curious thing about the characterization in this novel is that its main characters are almost completely devoid of personality; Nicholas and Kate, perhaps being by necessity innocuous paragons of virtue, are practically mere mannequins to whom people talk and things happen. Even the sickly and wretchedly humble Smike, the mystery of whose parentage becomes a part of the plot, does not induce as much pity as Dickens probably intended because he seems trapped in a story that doesn't really want him except as a device to expose even more of Uncle Ralph's villainy.

There is much to like in "Nicholas Nickleby": The prose is finely detailed, the satire of various types of characters is on target, the humor is sharp -- there is a particularly funny and suspenseful scene with an unexpected outcome in which Nicholas dispatches Newman to discover the identity of the mysterious beautiful girl. And there is much not to like: The plot coincidences are ridiculously contrived in typical Dickensian fashion; the drama is manipulative, designed to cheer the reader all the more when the author comes to rescue the heroes from their despair and hopelessness; the sentimentality is overwhelming -- by the end "Nicholas Nickleby" becomes so saccharine it makes "David Copperfield" look like "Blood Meridian." But Dickens remains eminently readable because of his flair for portraying and celebrating human oddity in all its varieties, his knowledge that life is all about taking the bad with the good, and his sense that fiction is all about maximizing the contrast.

This is a good introduction to Dickens for those who haven't yet read any. The plot is interesting, the characters memorable, and the twists and turns are less convoluted than of some of his other works, such as Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations. Nicholas is a bit too good to be true, but he does have a quick temper that gets the best of him at times. Descriptions of a Yorkshire boarding school are rather grim, but the author's comments indicate that it is a fairly accurate representation. This book has it all, good guys in tough circumstances, bad guys of various sorts, social and political commentary, and a love story or two.

My first taste of Dickens was the appalingly long David Copperfield as a freshman in high school. I detested it, swore I would never read Dickens again, only to find that my junior year held in store for me what would become one of my favorite novels, Great Expectations, a book heinously bastardized years later by a 'modernized' film adaptation, with Anne Bancroft being the only redeeming feature.

Through the years since high school, I have begun to read Dickens of my own free will, and have greatly enjoyed his works.

Nicholas Nickelby, one of my all time favorites, is a wonderful novel, typical Dickens, chock full of characters, plots, satire, and story. Nicholas and his immediate family are the 'black sheep' of the Nickelby name. Humble, gentle, and common in the eyes of their well-to-do relative, Uncle Ralph Nickelby, who denounces Nicholas as a boy, and man, who will never amount to anything.

In typical Dickens fashion, Nicholas encounters adversity first at a boarding school, then in society, as he forges a name for himself. Along the way he befriends many, enrages some, and invokes the wrath of his Uncle Ralph, determined to prove himself right in bemoaning the shortcomings of his nephew.

One point of interest in this novel for me is the major revelation that comes toward the end involving the character of Smike. Throughout the novel he is loveable, pitiable, and utterly realistic, and his significance to the life of Nicholas, as revealed in the final chapters, is a true plot twist, and a charming, if not bittersweet, realization.

For anyone forced to read Dickens early in life, if you appreciate quality satire and an engaging look at the London society of more than 125 years ago, visit this novel sometime, it is one of Dicken's finest.

I would say this is "David Copperfield"'s B-side. It is a typical Dickensian book: the life of the Nickleby family from the death of the father until they are rich and happy. One of the most important parts of the book is the study of the horrible boarding schools of Yorkshire, where Nicholas is sent. We can read the dirty intrigues of Uncle Ralph, the adventures of Nicholas and Smikes as travelling actors (a world Dickens came to know very well), the kindness of the brethren Cheeryble.

Definitely, this is not one of Dickens's best novels, but nevertheless it is fun to read. The characters are good to sanctity or bad to abjection. The managing of the plot is masterful and the dramatic effects wonderful. It includes, as usual with Dickens, an acute criticism of social vices of his time (and ours): greed, corruption, the bad state of education. In spite of everything, this is a novel very much worth reading, since it leaves the reader a good aftertaste: to humanism, to goodness.

Dickens' ability to write outrageously hilarious scenes consistently leaves me floored (and fangirling!) and /Nicholas Nickleby/ is no exception in this respect. Dickens is also tremendously skilled at rendering poetic, heartbreakingly beautiful sentimental scenes, and those also find their place in the plot of /NN/.

This is definitely earlier Dickens - he hasn't quite attained the writing maturity that characterizes what I consider his masterpieces (David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, Bleak House, Great Expectations) but it is nevertheless a wonderful read. Early Dickens is still masterful writing.

My only qualm with the text is a qualm I have with Dickens in general, his female leads are so bland. Kate Nickleby is basically another Agnes -- too passive and good for me to like. The rest of the characters, however, are wonderfully rendered (Newman Noggs! Smike (sob)! and of course, the Squeers!).

The Kindle edition was relatively free of typos (at least, I don't remember too many of them marring my reading).

Nicholas Nickleby is a marvelous novel. It is the young Dickens at his best. I almost feel guilty for giving it four stars, but giving it five would be unfair, I think, because his later works, such as Great Expectations, are bettter. The novel is written enthusiastically and contains some of Dickens' best humor. I especially found funny the character Mr.Lillyvick, the revered and dignified water clerk. And I will never forget Ralph Nickleby. Mr.Squeers and Arthur Gride were detestable and colorful villains, but they pale before Ralph Nickleby. He is such a cold and heartless character that he steals nearly every scene he is in. He has a certain magnetism that most of Dickens' good characters lack. And his suicide at the novel's end is so perfectly written that I read over it several times before I finished the novel. My only problem with the book was Nicholas's lack of psychology, but let us remember that this was written by a young man, not the mature artist of Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend. The novel's strengths easily make up for its weaknesses. Nicholas Nickleby will be enjoyed by fans of Dickens and all other readers for centuries to come.

"Nicholas Nickleby" was Dickens' third serialized novel and was complete by the time he was 27 years old. It is a spacious and interesting coming-of-age tale, but really tells the story of the Nickleby family as a whole rather than just the honorable young gentleman. Once his father dies of a "broken heart" after going bankrupt in the stock market, Nicholas must find a way to provide for his beautiful and virtuous sister Kate, and his kind-hearted, self-absorbed martyr of a mother (think a less outrageous version of Elizabeth Bennett's mother in Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice"). Their lives could all be made comfortable instantly if the dead Mr. Nickleby's brother Ralph weren't such a bitter, pitiless and hatefully cruel creature, but then Nicholas wouldn't have such a strong nemesis.

Nicholas takes jobs as an assistant schoolmaster, a traveling actor and a bookkeeper, all the while looking out for the honor of his family: biting his tongue when he has to and kicking some ungentlemanly derriere when he feels he absolutely must. The speeches Dickens gives his characters when they have to stick up for themselves are particularly moving, even gripping, even if the circumstances are sometimes too melodramatic for the modern taste. I didn't mind the melodrama myself, but rather enjoyed the way Dickens moves from sentence to long sentence as he was still developing his style which would reach greater heights in books like "Great Expectations," one of only three other Dickens novels I have read. As long and relaxingly enjoyable as it is, "Nicholas Nickleby" becomes something of a living, breathing friend to the reader, guaranteeing it won't be the last of what Dickens called his "children" that I will come to know.

A handsome young man who finds himself the sole support of his mother and sister after his father's death, Nicholas Nickleby is hopeful that his uncle, Ralph Nickleby, a weathy speculator in London, will assist the unfortunate family in its hour of need. Ralph's cruel response, however, is to make Nicholas the assistant headmaster at a notoriously abusive school in northern England and to make his beautiful sister a seamstress and part-time hostess at his own parties. There she is subjected to innuendo and to the drunken intentions of men whose accounts help keep Ralph a wealthy man.

This early novel is pure melodrama, with the good characters being unbelievably good, and the evil being unbelievably bad. The multiple adventures of Nicholas through a variety of settings, both in the city and in the countryside, create a broad picture of life in England in the 1830s. Nicholas's job as assistant headmaster exposes him to the horrors of so-called boarding schools for young boys, which were essentially warehouses for young children where they were forced into physical labor, kept malnourished, and beaten regularly. These abuses, based on Dickens's personal observations, so horrified his readers that major reforms of these schools eventually resulted. When Nicholas, in frustration, finally beats headmaster Wackford Squeers for his abuse of the children, Nicholas and Smike, a crippled boy who has been the headmaster's slave, escape together.

Their interlude with a traveling theatrical company, led by friendly Vincent Crummles, gives Nicholas much needed emotional support and provides Smike with a temporary home--until Nicholas is called to return to England to rescue his sister from unwanted attentions fostered by her uncle. Eventually Nicholas works in London for the saintly Cheeryble brothers and meets Madeline Bray, the love of his life.

Long recognized as one of Dickens's best novels for its wide assortment of characters, the novel mixes delightful humor with the pathos. The complex plot employs coincidence and miraculous interventions to save the day for the good characters while well-deserved disasters befall the evil ones. Dickens's vibrant descriptions bring people, places, and scenes fully to life, and the realistically described social conditions provide a clear vision of life's travails.

Despite its great length, the novel is a fast read--and fun--but it is soap opera-like in its ups and downs, and the main characters are not fully developed. One knows little about Nicholas except what one "sees"--that he has a kind heart and acts on it--but we know little about his inner life. (David Copperfield and Pip in Great Expectations are still ten and twenty years away.) Sentimental and occasionally bathetic, the novel involves the reader in the social abuses, some of which were improved as a direct result of this book's publication. n Mary Whipple