Chapter 8 Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Nicholas assisted his master to put on an old fustian shooting-
jacket, which he took down from a peg in the passage; and Squeers,
arming himself with his cane, led the way across a yard, to a door
in the rear of the house.
‘There,’ said the schoolmaster as they stepped in together; ‘this is
our shop, Nickleby!’
It was such a crowded scene, and there were so many objects to
attract attention, that, at first, Nicholas stared about him, really
without seeing anything at all. By degrees, however, the place
resolved itself into a bare and dirty room, with a couple of
windows, whereof a tenth part might be of glass, the remainder being
stopped up with old copy-books and paper. There were a couple of
long old rickety desks, cut and notched, and inked, and damaged, in
every possible way; two or three forms; a detached desk for Squeers;
and another for his assistant. The ceiling was supported, like that
of a barn, by cross-beams and rafters; and the walls were so stained
and discoloured, that it was impossible to tell whether they had
ever been touched with paint or whitewash.
But the pupils–the young noblemen! How the last faint traces of
hope, the remotest glimmering of any good to be derived from his
efforts in this den, faded from the mind of Nicholas as he looked in
dismay around! Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures,
children with the countenances of old men, deformities with irons
upon their limbs, boys of stunted growth, and others whose long
meagre legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies, all crowded on
the view together;
(All italics are mine)
This extract from Chapter 8 of Nicholas Nickleby anticipates the unnervingly Gothic first encounter btween Pip and Miss Havisham in Dickens’ later novel, Great Expectations. The short scene before Squeers unveils the teaching room to his new teacher Nicholas Nickleby underlines the heavily conflictual and predatory ‘nature of pedagogy’ at Dothebys’ Hall. Squeers prepares with relish for the uneven battle between himself and the undernourished and systemmatically mistreated boys. They are his prey and the fact that their learning takes place at the ‘rear of the house ‘ emphasises the secrecy and criminality surrounding thus school with its terrrible caricature of education.
When Squeers declaratively unveils ‘ our shop’ to Nicholas, his lexis reveals the proposed collusion and complicity expected of Squeer’s new employee as well as underlining the economic value of the students who have been literally ‘sold’ to Squeers’ hellish academy as commodities.
The initial overwhelm of Nicholas’s viewpoint is very similar to the perceptual bewilderment of Pip when he first tries to make out the ‘objects’ in Miss Havisham’s room…all leading to her of course, who remains a space/place of considerable and notable disquiet and blindness.. Here the eye of the hero is assailed by the horror of this terrible interior so that, like Pip, there is a delay or hesitation before the reality of what the ‘eye/I’ is seeing composes the fragments into a coherent picture. When the picture is composed then the observer ‘s viewpoint begins to register the grim realities of Squeers’ kingdom as a bleak listing of the dehumanised figues before him. Like Mayhew’s scenes of London, this description sickens the reader through the sense of evil’s excess as scripted on the figures of the misshapen revenats who-used-to-be-children.
I looked this up after reading Duffy’s poem and it is a tribute to the power of her writing that Dicken’s came immediately into view.