ABSTRACT
The chapters of Nicholas Nickleby have rarely won praise, and Squeers’s role in them has been neglected. If Squeers is so independent, and multi-voiced, the part of the self that speaks may not know the other part: that is akin to the Dance of Death: when the self dances with what it does not know but which is within it. The satire against Dotheboys Hall fades from view, but the character of Squeers continues, develops, and takes over others, and Dickens cannot let it alone. The satire may have contributed to the schools’ decay: for in the Cheap Edition of the text, Dickens says that there are few of the Schools left. It seems that, unlike with Oliver Twist, Dickens was working out a private obsession in creating the novel: something gone over for the past fifteen years. It seems that Dickens went north to confront a reality whose fantasy he already knew.
