Nicholas Nickleby

by

Charles Dickens

Nicholas Nickleby: Chapter 34 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Mr. Mantalini visits Ralph in his office, trying to get Ralph to loan him more money. Ralph ultimately agrees but then Madame Mantalini comes into the office. She says that Mr. Mantalini will be the ruin of her, and she can’t believe he’s asking Ralph for more money. She says that she now has to pay Miss Knag a significant amount of money as a partner. Madame Mantalini decides she’s going to put Mr. Mantalini on an allowance. In response, Mr. Mantalini repeatedly threatens to kill himself until Mrs. Mantalini relents and says she won’t put him on an allowance.
When Mr. Mantalini doesn’t get his way, he threatens to kill himself. He did the same thing before when men seized Madame Mantalini’s inventory as a result of his debts. That makes it clear that he threatens suicide as a way to manipulate Madame Mantalini to get her to do what he wants her to. In that way, he uses threats and emotional manipulation in the same way that Ralph does to get what he wants.
Themes
Greed and Selfishness Theme Icon
Power and Abuse Theme Icon
As the Mantalinis turn to leave, Mr. Mantalini says he almost forgot to mention Mulberry. He asks Ralph if he heard what happened. Ralph says he heard that Mulberry fell from his carriage and was injured. Mr. Mantalini tells Ralph that Nicholas was to blame and explains that the two had been fighting about Kate. He says that Mulberry’s injuries are serious. Ralph is shocked. He says that his nephew is again trying to thwart him. He laments that Kate will be taught to hate him, and he wishes he could find a quiet way to get revenge on Nicholas.  
Nicholas breaks from Ralph and escalates the conflict between them because his conscience demands that he can’t be morally complicit in Ralph’s immorality by benefiting from Ralph’s money. Ralph, on the other hand, escalates the conflict with Nicholas because he wants revenge, making clear the different kinds of motivations that animate each person.
Themes
Greed and Selfishness Theme Icon
Power and Abuse Theme Icon
Family and Loyalty Theme Icon
Injustice, Complicity, and Moral Integrity Theme Icon
Mr. Squeers then arrives to see Ralph. He has his son in tow. In the course of their conversation, Squeers tells Ralph that he has just finished recovering from injuries sustained from the fight with Nicholas. He assures Ralph that his family didn’t pay out of pocket for any medical expenses. Instead, they intentionally got one student sick with scarlet fever and then made sure he passed on the illness to four other boys. The Squeerses then added their own medical expenses to the bills they sent to the boys’ parents.
Squeers details the fraudulent scheme he uses to ensure he doesn’t have to pay medical bills. That fraudulence is emblematic of Squeers’s approach to life. He tries to avoid, at all costs, the consequences of his actions and instead tries to make other people pay for those consequences.
Themes
Greed and Selfishness Theme Icon
Power and Abuse Theme Icon
Ralph asks Squeers if he wants revenge against Nicholas, and Squeers says that he very much does. He then asks Mr. Squeers about Smike. Squeers says he knows next to nothing about Smike. He is 25 or 26 years old and was brought to Dotheboys Hall as a young child by a man Smike didn’t know. The man paid for six or eight years before the payments stopped. Mr. Squeers made inquiries but couldn’t track down any relatives of Smike. He kept Smike at the school out of charity, he tells Ralph. When Squeers leaves, Ralph tears up the letter from Nicholas. He knows that some people despise power that comes from money, but he aims to show those people what that kind of power can do.
Ralph’s intention to show Nicholas what power derived from wealth can do further clarifies what is at stake in the main conflict of the novel. Ralph represents the power that one gets from having money. Nicholas doesn’t have money; instead, he has family, virtue, and friendship. The novel pits those two characters against each other not just to see which of them will come out on top, but also to make an argument about which approach to life—virtue and friendship versus money and power—is the better one to pursue.  
Themes
Greed and Selfishness Theme Icon
Power and Abuse Theme Icon
Family and Loyalty Theme Icon
Injustice, Complicity, and Moral Integrity Theme Icon
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