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Chapter 60
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 returns home after Smike dies. Kate, Mrs. Nickleby, Miss La Creevy, and Madeline all grieve deeply. Nicholas asks Kate if the Cheerybles have decided where Madeline will live. Kate says she’s heard no word about it, but she imagines that Nicholas would be happy if Madeline stayed in their home. Nicholas admits to Kate that he is in love with Madeline. But, he says, he can’t pursue a relationship because he is of a lesser station than she is. Kate then tells Nicholas that Frank proposed to her. She declined the proposal, though, for the same reasons. Frank comes from a well-off family, while Kate has no money to offer. Nicholas says that Kate did the right thing.
Kate and Nicholas’s ideas that they must each renounce the people they are in love with due to their lack of money and lower socioeconomic status shows how much money and wealth impact one’s capacity for self-determination in the world that Dickens depicts. In that sense, the novel shows why someone might be tempted to follow Ralph’s path of greed and selfishness as a way to potentially avoid the kind of situation that Kate and Nicholas both find themselves in. However, the novel repeatedly argues that even if Ralph’s temptation might be somewhat understandable, it ultimately leads to a miserable, immoral, and unfulfilling life.
Themes
Nicholas tells Kate that he will go and talk to Charles about Frank’s proposal. Nicholas says he will also tell Charles about his love for Madeline to see if Charles can find a place for her to live so that Nicholas doesn’t fall deeper in love. While talking to Kate, Nicholas also conjures an image of him and Kate living out their days in a house together after they’ve both renounced their true loves. Both Nicholas and Kate are comforted by the thought.
The image that Nicholas draws of himself and Kate living out their days together points to the novel’s ideas about the importance and value of family. The novel suggests that as long as Nicholas and Kate have family and are loyal to that family, then they’ll never be isolated and alone in the way that someone like Ralph is.
Themes
Nicholas goes to talk to Charles. He says that he should have mentioned it earlier, but he developed feelings for Madeline, and those feelings grew deeper by being in regular contact with her. Charles says that Nicholas didn’t violate his duty to the Cheeryble Brothers, and he's glad that Nicholas told him. He says that he will find another place for Madeline to live. Nicholas then talks to Charles about Frank’s proposal to Kate. Frank has already spoken to Charles about it. Charles ensures Nicholas that he will handle things. Charles then asks Nicholas to come back in 30 minutes. He says that he has many things to tell him and that they also have a meeting scheduled with Ralph. Nicholas is shocked. He can’t imagine why Ralph and Charles would have planned to meet.
Nicholas’s conversation with Charles is illustrative of the culture’s ideas of wealth and socioeconomic status. While Charles has been extraordinarily supportive of Nicholas and the Nickleby family, it’s telling that he doesn’t dismiss or disregard Nicholas’s concerns about his family’s lower socioeconomic status. Instead, Charles understands those concerns and doesn’t try to talk Nicholas out of having them. This passage also reveals that, at this point, Nicholas still knows nothing about all of the developments that have recently happened concerning Ralph, Brooker, Newman, and the Cheeryble brothers.
Themes
