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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Nicholas Nickleby, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Greed and Selfishness
Power and Abuse
Altruism and Humility
Family and Loyalty
Injustice, Complicity, and Moral Integrity
Summary
Analysis
Kate goes to her first day of work as a dressmaker at Madame Mantalini’s. A clerk shows her to a waiting room when Kate arrives. While Kate sits, she hears Madame Mantalini arguing with Mr. Mantalini. She says that he flirted with another woman all last night. Mr. Mantalini denies it and then tries to resolve the fight by flattering Madame Mantalini. The two are surprised to see Kate when they come out to the waiting room. Mr. Mantalini says it's wrong to keep someone pretty like Kate waiting, and Madame Mantalini reproaches him for flirting again.
Mr. Mantalini is depicted as licentious and untrustworthy. In contemporary terms, he gaslights Madame Mantalini before doing the exact thing he denies doing in front of Madame Mantalini’s face. Mr. Mantalini and Madame Mantalini’s relationship seems toxic at best, and Mr. Mantalini resorts to manipulation and deception to try and get what he wants and avoid facing consequences for his actions.
Themes
Madame Mantalini takes Kate to work for a woman named Miss Knag, who helps customers with fittings. Miss Knag says that she admires Madame Mantalini and Mr. Mantalini greatly and asks Kate what she thinks of them. Kate says she doesn’t know Madame Mantalini well enough to have an opinion and that she doesn’t think highly of Mr. Mantalini. Miss Knag is taken aback. The other women who work in the dress shop ask Kate if she likes dressing all in black. Kate explains that she is in mourning for her father, who died suddenly, which puts an end to any further conversation.
Miss Knag and Kate’s differing opinions about Mr. Mantalini point to the different ways they each judge a person’s character. While Kate, like Nicholas, values integrity and honesty, Miss Knag has presumably been charmed by Mr. Mantalini. Kate also displays her own honesty when she refrains from pronouncing a judgment on Madame Mantalini. While some might be pressured into saying good things about their boss because of the position of power that the boss holds, Kate insists on saying only what she truly believes.
Themes
A wealthy woman and her daughter come into the dress shop. Kate helps Miss Knag attend to the customers. The woman and her daughter think that Kate is haughty and remark on her dirty hands. They say they would much rather be served by someone else if they come back to Madame Mantalini’s. After the shoppers leave, Kate begins to cry. She hadn’t been ready for the kind of humiliation that the job apparently entails. When Kate goes home at 9 at night, Mrs. Nickleby says that hopefully one day, Madame Mantalini will make Kate a partner in the business. Kate thinks that’s unlikely considering how her first day went but doesn’t have the heart to tell her mother. She thinks about Nicholas and is glad he’s doing well at Dotheboys Hall, unaware that Nicholas has left the school.
Kate is humiliated at her new job. The difficulty of that job reinforces the novel’s view about the power imbalance between people who are wealthy, like the two customers, and people with less money, like Kate. The wealthy customers think nothing of humiliating Kate. They seem to believe that it is their right, based on their wealth, to treat those with less power than them as inferior. Because Kate has less power, she has no apparent choice other than to accept the embarrassment.
Themes
