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From, David Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature, v. 4: The Romantics to the present day, ch. 26
Page 6
This was perhaps a Victorian dilemma; no other age has shown such strange combinations of the critical and the sentimental, though something of the sort can be seen among some of the Deists of the eighteenth century. A moral creed in the process of renouncing supernatural sanctions demands the most rigorous intellectual apparatus if it is not to be forced to ground itself in a naive sentimentality when dealing with the perennial problems of suffering and death. Dickens' intellectual apparatus was not of the strongest-he was in a way the most instinctive of all the great English novelists except Emily Bronte-and sentimentality was often his only way of handling difficult moral problems. This can be seen in Nicholas Nickleby (issued in monthly parts, 1838-39) where the solution to the problems of the hero and his family comes suddenly from the unmotivated benevolence of the Cheeryble brothers, two casually met characters. The novel is rich enough-though not nearly as rich as some others of Dickens' novels-in characters whose portrayal has that fierce individualizing quality that Dickens could achieve so well, from the savagely brilliant picture of Mr. and Mrs. Squeers and the whole atmosphere of Dotheboys Hall to Mr. and Mrs. Crummles and their theatrical environment, the Mantalinis, the Kenwigs, and such transient minor characters as Messrs. Gregsbury and Pugstyles. But Ralph Nickleby is a villain out of melodrama, and Nicholas himself is a conventionally virtuous young man whose real purpose in the novel is to come into contact with other and more interesting characters. The unfortunate Smike is a conventional exercise in the pathetic. Dickens, brilliant in his ability to present the facts of human behavior in all their richness and individuality, is so far incapable of illuminating its sources or motives, especially where the extremes of either malice or humility are concerned. The central vision of human fate in Nicholas Nickleby, if it exists at all, is weak and unconvincing, and certainly incapable of drawing together into a complex artistic whole the various scenes-so many of them magnificent in themselves-in the novel.
