English Literature Theme Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

English Literature Theme - Essay Example Moreover, his personal circumstances did not afford him university terms. Consequently, most of what he had learned he had had to teach himself. However, it was through his education, both formal and informal, that he was able to rise in life. From being taken out of school because his father could not pay for it, to being courted to take trips across the pond to conduct lectures, speeches and readings, his was a case of remarkable social elevation through letters. Possibly for this reason, education is often found in Dickens’s writings, as he was a firm believer in the ability of proper education to improve lives and â€Å"as a way to avoid social catastrophe† (Schlicke, 1999: 442). In his novel Our Mutual Friend, one can clearly see this association between Dickens and education through the characters of Charley and Lizzie Hexam as they each are profoundly affected by their experience or inexperience with ‘proper’ education. In his portrayal of education in Our Mutual Friend, Dickens describes a prevalent example of a school of his times, to which the poorer classes of society were obliged to send their children. This can be seen in the scathing words he utilises in Chapter 1 â€Å"Of an Educational Character† in Book the Second : The school at which young Charley Hexam had first learned from a book – the streets being, for pupils of his degree, the great Preparatory Establishment in which very much that is never unlearned is learned without and before book – was a miserable loft in an unsavoury yard. Its atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable; it was crowded, noisy, and confusing; half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of waking stupefaction; the other half kept them in either condition by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. The teachers, animated solely by good intentions, had no