Nicholas Nickleby: Genre 1 key example

Nicholas Nickleby prefaces a specific kind of social commentary novel that would emerge towards the end of the Victorian era, establishing itself in earnest around the turn of the 20th century. As a lead-in to the early modern and modern literary eras, novels like Nicholas Nickleby mirror the rhetoric of "social reformers" with religious or moralistic aims. Jacob Riis, one such social reformer, penned the nonfiction tome How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York in 1880, prompted to action by the horrific living conditions in New York City's tenement housing complexes. Despite good intentions, Riis's tone and descriptions of the tenement residents are dehumanizing at their worst and pitying at their best. Riis and his fellow social reformers became known more for their condescension and less for their efficacy as advocates.

Nicholas Nickleby suffers from this same condescension: many passages penned by Dickens in the novel read like passages from Riis's description of New York City tenements. Dickens's lens is one of pity rather than solidarity with sufferers. Akin to his peers writing in the social commentary genre, Dickens often runs the risk of sounding overly preachy, or high-and-mighty, when he addresses urban poverty.