Date of Award
5-2007
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
MA English
Department
English
Keywords
Literature, Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens, Women, Victorian England, Marriage, Wealth, Working class, Middle class, Repression of women
Abstract
In early Victorian England, married women were denied the legal right to own property, and social convention remanded them to ostracism if they chose to remain single. Likewise, jobs that were available to women failed to pay a living wage, so women were placed under tremendous economic and social pressure to marry. In Charles Dickens' novel, Nicholas Nickleby, he depicts how marriage becomes manipulated within the working and middle classes as a means to acquire wealth. Dickens also compares the repression of women to the abuse suffered by school children in the Yorkshire schools, which had a reputation for neglecting students and misappropriating tuition. Dickens also attempts to show that the denial of property rights to women also affects the broader society. He presents male characters as feminized and infantilized to show that brutal capitalism stands to emasculate men who are unwilling to stoop to corruption in order to be successful.
Recommended Citation
Redmond, Elizabeth, "Secrets and Hiding Places: the Worth of Women in Nicholas Nickleby" (2007). Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs). 2441.
https://scholarship.shu.edu/dissertations/2441
Included in
Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons
