Novels , Society & History

HISTORY PROJECT:

PREPARED BY: Shyma , Surbhi &

Fatma

Changes in Society

• The middle classes became more prosperous during the 18th century.

• Women obtained the comfort to read as well as the freedom to write novels

• As a result of this , experiences and problems of women were made public.

Girl Reading - Painting by Jean Renoir (1841-1919)By the nineteenth century , images of women reading silently , in the privacy of the room ,

became common in European paintings .

The New Woman

• As women began to write novels , it was also feared that that they would neglect their traditional duties as wives and mothers , and their homes would be in disarray .

The home of a Woman author , by George Cruikshank . When women began writing many people feared that they would neglect their role as wives and mothers novels and homes would be in disorder

Themes of Novels• Novels written by female authors were

mostly about domestic lives – the only subject women could speak about freely at the time . they drew upon their experience, wrote about family life and earned public recognition

• Another popular theme among female novelists was ‘rebellion’ – breaking established societal rules and regulations.

• Such novels portrayed women as independent and assertive , while they were expected to be submissive and quiet . In charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1874) , young Jane is shown as independent and assertive while the girls of her time were expected to be quiet and well behaved .

Jane Eyre (1874) by Charlotte Bronte

•

Charlotte Bronte

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans who was a very

popular novelist , she believed that novels gave women a special

opportunity to express their views .

Woman novelists

Case Study – Novels by Jane Austen

• Novels written by Jane Austen give a perspective of the rural British society in the early 19oos.

• In Austen’s society , women were encouraged to settle down quickly , marrying rich or propertied husbands. Her novels are thus a portrayal of such a society.

• Austen's plots are fundamentally about education; her heroines come to see themselves and their conduct more clearly, and become better, more moral people.

Jane Austen

• Her novels highlight how some female characters take charge of their own worlds while others are confined, physically and spiritually.

• Almost all of her works explore the precarious economic situation in which women of the late 18th and early 19th centuries found themselves.

Pride and Prejudice(1813)

Pride and Prejudice

Novels for the youngNovels for young boys idealised a new type of man: someone who was powerful, assertive, independent and daring. Most of these novels were full of adventure set in places remote from Europe. The colonisers appear heroic and honourable – confronting ‘native’ peoples and strange surroundings, adapting to native life as well as changing it, colonising territories and then developing nations there. Books like R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) or Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book (1894) became great hits.

Treasure Island (1883)By Robert Louis Stevenson

(1850-1894)

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Jungle Book (1894)By Rudyard Kipling

(1865-1936)

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

G.A. Henty’s historical adventure novels for boys were also wildly popular during the height of the British empire. They aroused the excitement and adventure of conquering strange lands. They were set in Mexico, Alexandria, Siberia and many other countries. They were always about young boys who witness grand historical events, get involved in some military action and show what they called ‘English’ courage.

G.A Henty (1832-1902)Novels by G.A Henty

Love stories written for adolescent girls also first became popular in this period, especially in the US, notably Ramona (1884) by Helen Hunt Jackson and a series entitled What Katy Did (1872) by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, who wrote under the pen-name Susan Coolidge.

Helen Hunt Jackson

Ramona (1884) by Helen Hunt

Jackson

Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, who wrote under the pen-name

Susan Coolidge.

What Katy Did (1872)

The novel originated in Europe at a time when it was colonising the rest of the world. The early novel contributed to colonialism by making the readers feel they were part of a superior community of fellow colonialists. The hero of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) is an adventurer and slave trader. Shipwrecked on an island, Crusoe treats coloured people not as human beings equal to him, but as inferior creatures. He rescues a ‘native’ and makes him his slave. He does not ask for his name but arrogantly gives him the name Friday. But at the time, Crusoe’s behaviour was not seen as unacceptable or odd, for most writers of the time saw colonialism as natural .

Daniel Defoe

Robinson Crusoe (1719)

By Daniel Defoe

Colonised people were seen as primitive and barbaric, less than human; and colonial rule was considered necessary to civilise them, to make them fully human. It was only later, in the twentieth century, that writers like Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) wrote novels that showed the darker side of colonial occupation.

Joseph Conrad Novels by Joseph Conrad

The Panchatantra ( original Sanskrit work, which is believed to be composed in the 3rd century BC is attributed to

Vishnu Sharma)

The Novel Comes to India

In India, stories were recited in form of prose. Banabhatta’s Kadambari (written in Sanskrit in the 17th century) , Panchtantra , and Dastan (a prose tales of adventures & heroism in Persian & Urdu) are examples

The modern novel form developed in India as Indians became familiar with the western novel . The development of the vernaculars , print and a reading public helped in this process .

Translations of novels into different regional languages helped to spread the popularity of the novel and stimulated the growth of novels in new areas

Kadambari by banabhatta (7th century)

Some of the earliest novels were written in Bengali & Marathi. The earliest novel in Marathi was Baba Padmanji’s ‘ Yamuna Paryatan’(1857) , which used a simple style of story telling to speak about the plight of widows. This was followed by Lakshman Moreshwar Halbe’s ‘Muktamala’ (1861) presenting an imaginary romance with a moral purpose.

The Novel in South India

Novels in South Indian languages started appearing during the period of colonial rule . Most of these early novels came out of attempts to translate English novels into Indian languages.For example O.Chandu menon , a sub judge from Malabar , tried to translate an English novel ‘Henrietta Temple’ by Benjamin Disraeli into Malayalam .But he quickly realized that the readers were not familiar with the English lifestyle : their clothes , ways of speaking , manners e.t.c , thus they would find the direct translation of an english novel dreadfully boring .

Benjamin Disraeli (author of ‘Henrietta Temple’)

So he gave up this idea and instead wrote a novel in malayalam in the manner of english novels . This novel called the ‘Indulekha’ , published in 1889 , was the first modern novel in Malayalam

O. Chandu Menon(sub judge in Malabar and

author of ‘Indulekha’)

Indulekha (1889) was the first modern novel in

Malayalam

Indulekha in malayalam

The case in Andhra Pradesh was similar to that in Kerala . Kandukuri Viresalingam (1848-1919) tried translating Oliver Goldsmith ‘s Vicar of Wakefield into Telugu . He abandoned this plan due to reasons similar to that prevailing in Kerala and instead wrote an original Telugu novel called ‘rajasekhara caritamu’ in the year 1878

Kandukuri viresalingam

Kandukuri Viresalingam (1848-1919)

Prepared By :

Shyma ThanzySurbhi

Pradhan &Fatma

Rahman

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