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Chapter 4
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 cry as Nicholas packs to leave for Yorkshire. For dinner that night, Kate and Mrs. Nickleby find a delicacy for Nicholas to eat and pretend that they have already eaten when they give it to him. The morning of Nicholas’s departure, he talks with Miss La Creevy. He asks her to look out for his mother and sister while he’s gone. Miss La Creevy, who is generally good-natured, says she will. Nicholas then goes to meet Squeers at the inn so they can leave for Yorkshire. At the inn, the five pupils ravenously eat the morsels that Squeers gives them.
Nicholas’s concern for his family is reciprocated, as Mrs. Nickleby and Kate sacrifice their own interests and their own dinner to look out for Nicholas. Kate and Mrs. Nickleby’s generosity is juxtaposed with Squeers’s stinginess. Though Squeers is in charge of looking after students’ well-being, he deprives them of food to the point that they are ravenously hungry.
Themes
Mrs. Nickleby and Kate arrive at the inn in a hired carriage to see Nicholas off. Ralph has come too, and he wonders aloud whether Mrs. Nickleby can afford to hire carriages. Newman surreptitiously presses a letter into Nicholas’s hand. He says he hasn’t told anyone what’s in it. Nicholas asks him what he means, but Newman walks away without responding. Kate thinks that Squeers is a vulgar man. When Squeers remarks on Kate’s beauty, Nicholas feels like punching him. Nicholas, Squeers, and the five pupils get into the coach bound for Yorkshire. Another man gets in. When Squeers learns the man’s brother has six children, he talks about the school’s edifying effects on students and hands the man his card. It begins snowing on the trip. Nicholas falls asleep and is woken up by a sharp jolt. The coach overturns halfway, flinging Nicholas onto the road.
Squeers has already been shown to be abusive to the students at the school. However, when he attempts to act as a salesman for the school to the man in the carriage, he points out the positive impact the school has on students. By doing that, Squeers again shows his tendency to loudly proclaim how he helps others, while he is actually only interested in earning profits for himself by securing more pupils for the school. Once those pupils are in his care, it’s evident that his talking points fly out the window, and he abuses and mistreats students.
Themes
