This paper discusses the relationship between the ideologies of the secular and the religious in the process of nation-building as presented in Tahmima Anam's The Good Muslim (2011). It centres around the conflicts between the Haque siblings, Maya and Sohail as they navigate their ways in life after the Bangladeshi Liberation War of 1971. The novel portrays how Sohail's submission to extreme dogmatism which has led him to neglecting his son, Zaid, and Maya's inability to tolerate her brother's transformation, result in their estranged relationship, eventually leading to a devastating family tragedy. Using Talal Asad's (2003) definition of the secular as an ideology that brings together different concepts and practices, and which is neither a break from religion nor a continuity of it, this paper suggests that the skirmish between the siblings is a metaphorical representation of a conflict between the secular and the religious in the efforts towards nation-building. This formulation foregrounds the importance of establishing an intricate balance between the secular and the religious, which also has the social implication of destabilizing the binary that is often drawn to differentiate between a 'good' and a 'bad' Muslim.

Our main argument for examining romantic relationships in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations rests on the fact that although thematically it can be said that the novel focuses on class structure, the thrust of the plot centres on a number of relationships. The Victorian era was an age of change. With the expansion of the empire and the progress brought about by the industrial revolution, new ways of thinking started to influence the society and its culture. This included ideals on relationships and marriages. To establish our problem statement, we refer to the work Romance's Rival: Familiar Marriage in Victorian Fiction by Talia Schaffer. According to Schaffer, a Victorian woman may marry for romance or she may marry for practical reasons. Based on long-established Victorian norms, we hypothesise that romantic marriages will result in unmet expectations. To support this hypothesis we adapted Vannier and O'Sullivan's investment model framework to analyse the relationships in Great Expectations. We also widened the scope to include analysis of male characters involved in the relationships. As there was no clear pattern with regards to romantic relationships, we posit that even in the Victorian age, relationship expectations, ideals and success are determined by individual personalities and perceptions and not by social norms or expectations.