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Chapter 40
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
Mrs. Nickleby and Kate are outside gardening. Mrs. Nickleby remarks that Smike is an especially gifted gardener, though he sometimes seems to neglect her side of the garden in favor of Kate’s. Kate asks Mrs. Nickleby about her life before marriage and if she had many suitors. Mrs. Nickleby lists the men who were interested in her before she married Nicholas Sr. Just then, a cucumber sails over the wall and lands at their feet. Kate says they must retreat inside at once. Mrs. Nickleby says she’s showing an alarming degree of cowardice. Another cucumber then lands at their feet.
The fact that Smike neglects Mrs. Nickleby’s side of the garden in favor of Kate’s suggests again that Smike has feelings for Kate. The difference between Kate’s reaction to the flying cucumber and Mrs. Nickleby’s calls into question Mrs. Nickleby’s previous descriptions of her interactions with the neighbor. Kate’s reaction implies that perhaps the more reasonable response for Mrs. Nickleby would have been trying to ignore the neighbor rather than entertaining his supposedly romantic entreaties.
Themes
The neighbor next door appears on a ladder. He begins to flirt with Mrs. Nickleby and asks if she’s a princess. Mrs. Nickleby pretends to be annoyed and tells the neighbor to stop intruding on her and her daughter. The neighbor then tells Mrs. Nickleby that he has estates and money, and he asks Mrs. Nickleby to be his. Kate urges her mother to go inside. Mrs. Nickleby says she owes the man a response, and Kate says that’s not at all necessary. Mrs. Nickleby affects a serious attitude and says that while she appreciates the man’s interest, she has chosen to remain a widow and devote herself to her children. She says she would understand if the man were surprised that she is the mother of two children. Plenty of people have been surprised before.
Mrs. Nickleby continues to display her characteristic obliviousness, which also carries a trace of self-centeredness. While Kate thinks that the whole situation is strange and out of the ordinary, Mrs. Nickleby considers it completely natural that a man would throw cucumbers in her direction to express romantic interest. That obliviousness is reminiscent of Mrs. Nickleby’s lack of awareness regarding Mulberry’s villainy. In this case, though, the situation with the neighbor is intended to be comical rather than worrisome, as was the case with Mulberry.
Themes
The neighbor climbs higher on the ladder and throws off his robe, revealing his “small-clothes” (similar to underwear). Kate is shocked. Just then, a second man appears on the other side of the fence. He seizes the neighbor on the ladder and brings him down. He apologizes to Mrs. Nickleby and Kate for the man’s ramblings. Kate says she doesn’t need to ask if the neighbor is “out of his mind,” and the other man, who is the neighbor’s attendant, says that yes, it’s quite obvious that the neighbor is not mentally well. Mrs. Nickleby doesn’t believe it. She says the neighbor expresses himself too well for him to not have command of his mental faculties. It’s not as if he went down to his knees in the street for the first woman he met as a “madman” would, Mrs. Nickleby says.
Dickens reveals that the neighbor is mentally unwell, which reinforces the idea that Mrs. Nickleby is an unreliable narrator whose sense of reality is distorted by a general lack of awareness of social situations and a degree of self-centeredness. While Kate immediately recognizes that something is off in the situation with the neighbor, Mrs. Nickleby refuses to believe the man is mentally unwell, even after the neighbor’s attendant says he is. Mrs. Nickleby’s final statement is meant to be ironic, considering that Dickens implies that the neighbor did exactly what Mrs. Nickleby says he didn’t: express over-the-top affection for the first woman he saw.
Themes
