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Books Movies & Music Staff Recommend... Fiction Nicholas Nickleby
Books Movies & Music Staff Recommend... Fiction Nicholas Nickleby
| 25 Aug 2010 |
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 Nicholas Nickleby is perfectly Dickens through and through. Brutalities and various injustices are heaped upon the helpless innocent by the vilest of cowards and bullies imaginable. Think especially of David Copperfield or Oliver Twist. With Dickens we know that, in the end, the noble and pure of heart will triumph, save for the exceptional tragedy thrown in to promote a touch of uncertainty. Getting from the initial outrages to the satisfying conclusion is the fun of this, or any, Dickens’ novel. In all of the Dickens work the names of the characters are famously farcical, whether they evoke an obvious knave or fool. In Nicholas Nickleby we have the bullying schoolmaster, Wackford Squeers and the predatory Sir Mulberry Hawk. Have we any doubts about Mr. Scaley, Mrs. Curdle, Mr. Snobb or Snittle Timberry? The over-the-top descriptions of many of these characters, both major and minor, are liable to cause you to stop and re-read the paragraph again and maybe again until you can gather yourself together and go on. Perhaps Dickens employs coincidence as a plot device a bit too often here, for negative turns as well as positive. The modern reader is likely to be skeptical, but there is something deeply satisfying, something deep in the heart that is touched by the positive ones. It’s a “cavalry has arrived” moment providing a yearned for closure. I read Dickens, not so much for the plots and subplots, intricate and clever as they are, but to anticipate and relish coming upon a page so full of wit and wisdom as to compel a bond between author and reader, proving people are still people.
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