The death of the head of the Nickleby family forces his wife and children to go and pay a visit to their uncle Ralph. The uncle turns out to be vile and dishonorable. He separates brother and sister: the young Nicholas is sent to teach at a rural boys’ orphanage, while Kate is set to be married to her business partner. But Nicholas, rebelling against the cruelty of the orphanage’s owner Squire, escapes to the city with a mysterious boy named Smiggy. Enraged, Uncle Ralph vows to destroy his nephew, and Nicholas bravely accepts the challenge…
Dickens couldn’t depict all the “charm” of the morals in these educational institutions—because he was a man of his time. But even now, the most prepared reader is still shaken by scenes of merciless physical punishment and the humiliation of older students by teachers and the older students over younger ones. Closed schools, in which, according to most Victorian writers, the “flower” of the British Empire was forged, for Dickens the humanist became a monstrous prison that shattered children’s destinies and characters.