Smike is a pathetic figure, perpetually ill and a cripple, who has been in Squeers’ care since he was very young. He is arrested. Mr. and Mrs. Mantalini Milliners, Kate’s employers. In the book, Mrs. Nickleby's main character trait is never stopping talking. The talented leading lady of the Crummles troupe. Charles Cheeryble, two benevolent brothers who make Nicholas Nickleby a clerk in their counting house, establish his family in a... Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this Nicholas Nickleby study guide and get instant access to the following: You'll also get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and 300,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts. Characters include Smike, Newman Noggs, Wackford Squeers and more. Newman Noggs: Ralph’s clerk, who becomes Nicholas’s closest friend. Peg Sliderskew is Gride’s aged housekeeper. Nicholas is not a typical hero: he can be violent, naïve, and emotional. An ex-convict, he returns to extort money from Ralph with the information his son is alive. A true comic grotesque, along with the rest of his family. Please enable JavaScript on your browser to best view this site. She is full of bluster and is under severe delusions about her own beauty and station. He pretends to be in love with Madeline, but is only interested in her inheritance. She is in every way a female version of her brother—noble and selfsacrificing, a second moral compass for the reader in the unstable world of the novel. He is an alcoholic, and his general good nature and insight into human nature is hidden under a veneer of irrational tics and erratic behaviour. However, we only recommend products or services we use personally and/or that we believe will add value to our readers. The Squeers' loutish son. Nickleby Family The hero of the novel. Remembering their humble beginnings, they spend much of their time doing charity work and helping those in need. Do you think she’ll miss you? This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nicholas-Nickleby-fictional-character. Mrs. Nickleby Nicholas and Kate’s mother, who provides much of the novel’s comic relief. She marries Frank Cheeryble. Nicholas is honest and steadfast, but his youth and inexperience of the world can lead him to be violent, naïve, and emotional. He gets his comeuppance at the hands of Nicholas when he is beaten in retaliation for the whipping of Smike. When Kate begins her employment with the Mantalinis, Miss Knag is quite kind to her because the younger woman is clumsy, making Miss Knag look more accomplished by comparison. Proud and dutiful to her dying father, she is willing to throw her life away if it means ensuring his comfort. Something of a caricature, given the mixture of air-headedness, wild imagination and frantic patter-song. Later a lost will, concealed by Gride, is recovered, and Madeline becomes an heiress. Hawk's friend and dupe, a rich young nobleman. Mr. Mantalini is seen again at the end of the book living in much reduced circumstances, romantically tied to a washerwoman, but still up to his old tricks. Flogged and starved until he resembles a scarecrow, he runs away from Dotheboys Hall to share the fortunes of Nicholas Nickleby. A wealthy, social-climbing couple who employ Kate as a companion to Mrs Wittiterly. He travels to London after he recovers and partakes in more bad business, fulfilling his grudge against Nicholas by becoming a close partner in Ralph’s schemes to fake Smike’s parentage and later to hide the will of Madeline Bray. Ralph Nickleby – Ralph is the uncle of Nicholas and Kate. Recaptured by Squeers, he escapes with the aid of John Browdie, a stout-hearted Yorkshireman, and finds sanctuary with Nicholas once more. To Kate's distress, Mrs. Nickleby refuses to believe that her suitor is insane until he suddenly switches his attentions to Miss. Eventually he marries Madeline Bray. “You will do him no hurt that he will not repay. A lecherous nobleman who has taken Lord Verisopht under his wing. “You, the disappointed lover–oh dear! Mrs. Crummles' protégée. But when she elopes with another man, he comes back to his family a sadder but wiser man. He falls in love with Kate, but his heart is broken when she falls in love with Frank Cheeryble. When that fails, he goes to Noggs, and eventually brings his story to light. Nickleby, Nicholas –  Nicholas goes to work for Wackford Squeers in order to support his family after the death of his father. Characters featured in Charles Dickens' novel, Nicholas Nickleby. He is prone to hyperbole. She marries Mr Lillyvick after meeting him at the Kenwigs' wedding anniversary party, but leaves him for another man within a few months. She is stubborn, prone to long digressions on irrelevant or unimportant topics and unrealistic fantasies, and displays an often vague grasp of what is going on around her. He shares Nicholas’s streak of anger when his sense of chivalry is roused. he!–but you shan’t have her, nor she you. He falls instantly in love with Mrs. Nickleby, and he repeatedly throws vegetables over the wall in their garden as a token of his affections. Later Nicholas works for the kind-hearted Cheeryble brothers. The "Infant Phenomenon", Miss Ninetta Crummles, Mr. and Mrs. Crummles daughter. He runs Dotheboys Hall, a boarding school for unwanted children. Newman Noggs and Kate Nickleby, illustration by Fred Barnard.