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Chapter 31
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
Nicholas arrives in London. He secures rooms at an inn for himself and Smike before going to find Newman. When he goes to Newman’s apartment, he learns that Newman is away on business and won’t be back until midnight. He goes to Miss La Creevy’s next (as Miss La Creevy anticipated) and learns that she too is out. He considers whether to go to his mother’s (Mrs. Nickleby’s) and risk Ralph’s potential ire and recompense. He decides that Newman wouldn’t have written what he did unless it was an emergency. He goes to see his mother, but his mother is also out. Nicholas continues to walk through the city in a state of anxiety and agitation. Eventually, he decides to get food at an upscale inn.
The novel is full of people who carry out different plans and schemes to varying degrees of success. In this case, Miss La Creevy and Newman’s scheme works to perfection. Notably, their scheme, unlike those previously carried out by characters like Mulberry, is done to help and protect people, rather than harm them. The novel suggests, then, that having good intentions does not mean that one must refrain from thinking and acting strategically. Instead, one can conspire to ensure that one’s good intentions achieve their desired effect, just as more nefarious characters do the same to try and ensure they get what they want.
Themes
Literary Devices
At the inn, Nicholas hears a group of men raise a toast to “Little Kate Nickleby.” Nicholas listens and hears the men say that Kate is playing hard to get. As Nicholas continues to listen, he learns about Ralph’s role in the affair and surmises why Newman told him to return to London. Nicholas confronts the men and says he is Kate’s brother. The group is Mulberry, Frederick, and two other men who speak as if they’re one (presumably Pyke and Pluck). Nicholas tells the men to tell him Mulberry’s address. They refuse. He then asks the waiter for Mulberry’s name and address, and the waiter does not respond. Frederick and the two other men get up to go, leaving Mulberry alone with Nicholas.
While Ralph had opportunity after opportunity to intervene and confront and stop Mulberry, Nicholas seizes his first chance to confront Kate’s tormentor. With that in mind, Nicholas’s confrontation with Mulberry serves as an implicit rejoinder to Ralph and shows just how easily Ralph could have acted if he chose to. Frederick, Pluck, and Pyke’s desertion of Mulberry suggests that even they may recognize that Mulberry is in the wrong. At the very least, their departure signals that they are not willing to put themselves on the line to defend Mulberry.
Themes
Mulberry continues to drink, and Nicholas says that he’ll follow Mulberry home if he has to. When Mulberry gets up to leave, Nicholas follows. Mulberry gets into a carriage. Nicholas grabs the reins of the horse to keep it from moving. Mulberry uses a whip to hit Nicholas, but Nicholas wrestles the whip from Mulberry’s grip and hits Mulberry with the handle. The horse takes off, and the carriage careens behind it out of control with Mulberry still inside. A crowd has gathered and follows the carriage. Nicholas hears a loud cry and glass breaking. He walks down an alley to get away without attracting attention. He realizes he is stumbling badly, and blood trickles down his face onto his chest.
Nicholas’s confrontation with Mulberry and the violent altercation it leads to echoes Nicholas’s earlier confrontation with Squeers at Dotheboys Hall. In both cases, Nicholas decided he needed to act when he became aware of injustice. That reinforces Dickens’s argument that if one witnesses injustice but does nothing to stop it, one becomes complicit in that injustice, even if one doesn’t carry it out oneself. In Nicholas’s case, his moral integrity prevents him from being complicit in injustice, even when he must put himself at risk to try and stop that injustice.
Themes
