Education and Social Mobility Aspects in Dickens's Nicholas Nickelby Essay

Education and Social Mobility Aspects in Dickens's Nicholas Nickelby - Essay Example Dickens obviously was happy that his attack on the kind of schoolmasters of the time typified by Squeers had hit its mark, and here we have an instance of an author who has found social authority. After the success of Pickwick Papers, Dickens was secure in the knowledge that he could become an established writer, but that he wanted to become a novelist was decided at the time of Nicholas Nickleby, as Chesterton so eloquently points out: 'It must be remembered that before this issue of Nicholas Nickleby his work, successful as it was, had not been such as to dedicate him seriously or irrevocably to the writing of novels. He had already written three books; and at least two of them are classed among the novels under his name..... the Sketches by Boz, The Pickwick Papers, and Oliver Twist......Had he continued along this line all his books might very well have been note-books......We might have lost all Dickens's novels; we might have lost altogether Dickens the novelist....All his books might have been Sketches by Boz. But he did turn away from this, and the turning-point is Nicholas Nickleby'. (Chesterton, 1911) Thus, Nicholas Nickleby became the ... struggle he had to make to reach eminence as a writer, his work also became a voice that decried all that was ill with education and the issues involving social mobility during his time, and from his public activities in both these areas, we can see that he realises that power and authority, and wields it consciously in his writing. As Cairns says of Dickens and his contemporaries in his work Figures of Finance Capitalism: Writing, Class, and Capital in the Age of Dickens : 'Professional novelists became not only providers of relatively lucrative cultural products, but also voices of great social authority, and representatives of that middle-class wisdom and success ..... The novel became a locus of middle-class symbolic power....'(Cain, 2003) 2.1 Personal Background To understand Dickens's treatment of the issues involving education and social mobility in Victorian society, one needs to understand the influences on him at various periods of his life, and the environment which made him what he was. Born to a genteel family lineage, Dickens had an early encounter with poverty, and simultaneous fall in social status. In 1824, when barely twelve, he was taken away from school, separated from his family and packed off to labour in a North London shoe-dye factory as a consequence of his father's financial incompetence. Even though he could escape the squalor within a year owing to a windfall inheritance, the experience he went through during this time was to become a life-defining moment for him. The trials he went through at this factory had a profoundly psychological effect on him: 'In the entire district there was not a single boy whom the sensitive Charles could have accepted as a playmate. His own room was a miserable garret overlooking a damp, malodorous court.

Sai.m Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Sai.m - Essay Example h crises; moreover, the fact that the effects of recession on markets that are based on Islamic banking has been limited proves the effectiveness of Islamic banking scheme towards its western rival. Current study focuses on the examination of the solutions that Islamic banking can offer regarding the limitation of losses caused because of the credit crunch. In order to understand the potential solutions of Islamic banking against the credit crunch it would be necessary to refer primarily to the characteristics and the framework of Islamic banking as an alternative scheme of banking compared to the traditional (western) banking system. In accordance with Iqbal et al. (1987, p.29) ‘the central requirement of an Islamic financial system is the replacement of the rate of interest with the rate of return on real activities as a mechanism for allocating financial resources’. On the other hand, Saeed (1996) notes that ‘the investment activities of the Islamic bank would be based on the two legal concepts of Mudaraba and Musharaka, alternatively known as profit and loss sharing (PLS)’ (Saeed, 1996, p.51); in other words, the existing principles and mechanisms of Islamic banking can be used in order to control the pressure of the global market – which is based on the western banking system; in this case, an appr opriate customization of the rules of Islamic banking system would be required in order to suit to the needs and the potentials of customers worldwide (Scharf, 1983, p.18).On the other hand, Islamic banking system has an important weakness: the lack of an appropriate regulatory framework; this means that in case of failure the allocation of risk among the persons that participated in a specific investment initiative may not easy; furthermore, the recovery of damages would also face difficulties (Ledgerwood, 1999, p.56). The above problem is examined in the study of Venardos (2005); in the specific study it is noted that ‘an appropriate regulatory