In dress, the fashion appears to be “set” by a few foreign designers and a handful of affluent individuals who purchase these designs. The fashion industry is cognizant of the fact that fashions must change rapidly and often or their economy would become stagnant. For this industry it would prove fatal if it were not …
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The Enigma of Fashion
Of all the pressure young people face, the most pernicious is that of fashion. By this is meant the current vogue in dress. The teenagers, who are so glib when they speak of “individuality”, are turned into a homogenous mass by the latest craze in fashion. How can youngster who vehemently resists advice from the …
Amateur Psychologists
The ideas of Freudian psychology have become part of our everyday life. Our language is replete with cliches that have their origin in Fred’s writings. There is a surfeit of amateur psychologists who, with celerity analyze an individual’s problems from the slightest evidence. Despite their dubious education and training in this field, they discuss symptoms …
The Mind’s Secrets
The study of the human mind and behavior has had many prominent practitioners, but no one is more revered than Sigmund Freud. An Austrian physician, he is said to be the father of psychoanalysis. He taught that man has a subconscious mind in which he keeps repugnant memories which come to the surface surreptitiously and …
The Good Life
Thoreau’s book about the austere but happy life at Walden Pond propagated his fame around the world. He built a small hut and began living an ascetic existence. He found it to be a felicitous experience. In this idyllic setting he was able to spend his time reading, studying nature, writing and thinking. Far from …
A Man of Nature
Henry Thoreau attempted to confront the problem and solve the enigma of how one might earn a living and yet not become an ignominious slave to the task. He viewed the industrial revolution with antipathy. Man in a servile role to extraneous possessions was a main target of his writings. He believed that one could …
A Scheeming Heroine
William Makepeace Thackeray was known for his moralistic study of upper and middle class English life. His best known work, VANITY FAIR, has its central character Becky Sharp. She is a perfidious woman who has an insatiable desire to get ahead in the world. She covets the wealth of one man, but when marriage is …
An English Realist
The movement towards realism in the English novel of the nineteenth century reached its acme with the works of Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thakeray. Charles Dicken was a prolific writer. Among his copious works are Oliver Twist, a candid exposure of the poor laws; Nicholas Nicklebery, in which the life of boys in a …
Victor Hugo
The epitome of Frech romantic writers in the nineteenth century was Victor Hugo. With the most utmost dexterity he wrote poetry, novels, and drama. His highly popular novels, NOTREDAME DE PARIS and LES MISERABLES, are replete with melodramatic situations and grotesque characters. He had a profound sense of social justice and a compassion for the …
A Lady Novelist
The nineteenth century saw the woman novelist attain the same prestige as men. England was prolific in producing woman’s writer. One of the in this genre was Charlotte Bronte. In Jane Eyre she presented a portrait of a woman caught up in a clandestine affair with a married man. Miss Bronte’s reader were engrossed in …