THE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE EXAMINATION IN THE HISTORYOF THE ENGLISH LITERATURE Semester VII Specialty-Romanian/Russian and English

Faculty ofPhilology 1. Origins and evolution of the English novel andsocio-cultural context of the first half of the XVIIIth century. 2. Periods and particularities in Daniel Defoescreation. 3. The eclectical nature of Moll Flanders. 4. Themes in Moll Flanders. 5. Samuel Richardson and the beginnings ofpsychological prose in the English literature. 6. Clarissa - an epistolarynovel (Social context and plot). 7. Themes in Clarissa. 8. Characters in Clarissa. 9. Henry Fielding and the adventure novel. 10. Characters in Tom Jones. 11. Themes in TomJones. 12. Laurence Sterne and English sentimentalliterature. 13. Tristram Shandy-a parody of contemporary tradition and forerunnerof pre-modern tradition (Social context and plot). 14. Englishliterature at the end of the XVIIIth century-the beginning ofthe XIXth one. The origins and particularities of the EnglishRomanticism. 15. William Blake a representative of the EarlyEnglish Romanticism. 16. The literary and critical contribution of LakePoets- William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge 17. Periods and particularities in George Gordon,Lord Byrons, creation. 18. Style and symbols in Childe Harold's Pilgrimmages. 19. Late English Romanticism: Percy Bysshe Shelley. John Keats. 20. The socio-cultural context of the Victorianperiod. The particularities of the Victorian novel and the English Realism inthe XIXth century. 21. Charles Dickens and Bildungsromanstradition in the English literature. 22. Caracters and narrativestructures in Greal Expectations. 23. William Makepeace Thackerays contributionto the evolution of English Realistic novel. 24. Vanity Fair a socio-cultural panorama of the Victorian period. 25. Periods and particularities in CharlotteBrontes creation. 26. Womens socio-cultural status in JaneEyre. 27. Themes in Jane Eyre. 28. Periods and particularities in EmilyBrontes creation. 29. Characters in Wuthering Heights. 30. Themes in WutheingHeights. 31. Thomas Hardy and the traditionof tragedy in the Victorian prose. 32. Characters inTess of the D 'Urberville 33. Themes in Tess of the D 'Urberville

1.Historical Context
After the turbulent years of the 16th and 17th century, 18th century came as a relief. After the Stuarts, a succession of Protestant kings rules Britain. However, a monarch would never again influence arts and culture in manner of Elizabeth I. The power in the state shifts towards Pariliament, and the social standards and taste are dictated by the middle class. This literary period was influenced by the neoclassical trends from the continent, and the translations of classic Greek and Roman poets. The 18th century is often called The Age of Reason. Literature was dealing with reason, not feelings, and a comfortable town life was preferred to the wild nature. A shift from poetry and drama towards the novel. According to the taste of the constantly rising middle class. Background 18th century

Neoclassical period(1660----1798) In short, it was an age full of conflicts and divergence of values The eighteenth-century England is also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. Its purpose was to enlighten the whole world with the light of modern philosophical and artistic ideas The age of enlightenment:

Enlighteners held that rationality or reason should be the only, the final cause of any human thought and activities. They called for a reference to order, reason and rules. As a matter of fact, literature at the time, heavily didactic and moralizing, became a very popular means of public education. The age of enlightenment----Famous people John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift ,Daniel Defoe ,Henry Fielding, Joseph Addison Enlightenment Literature

British novel - realistic - designed for literate British society - providing greater understanding of human nature Henry Fielding - Tom Jones Daniel Defoe - She Stoops to Conquer Women write also - only form of expression Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice

a newly rising literary form ----the modern English novel ,mid-century of 18th contrary to the traditional romance of aristocrats, gives a realistic presentation of life of the common English people. pioneers : Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith. The Rise of the English Novel

The Restoration of the monarchy (1660) in England after the Puritan Commonwealth (1649-1660) encouraged an outpouring of secular literature Appearance of periodical literature: journals and newspapers

Increased leisure time for middle class: Coffee House and Salon society
Literary Criticism

Character Sketches

Growing audience of literate women

Fathers of the English Novel Samuel Richardson 1689-1761 Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747-48) Epistolary Sentimental Morality tale: Servant resisting seduction by her employer

Henry Fielding 1707-1754,,,,,, Shamela (1741) Joseph Andrews (1742), and Tom Jones (1749) Picaresque protagonists comic epic in prose Parody of Richardson

Historical and social Background The 18th century is a period of comparatively peaceful development in England. After the Glorious Revolution, England entered the Golden Age. The state power passed from the king gradually to the Parliament and the cabinet ministers; therefore, capitalist system was established in England. A vast expansion abroad of British colonies in Asia, Africa and North America and Acts of Enclosure at home caused the Industrial Revolution

The 18th Century English Literature The development of the literature in this period can be summarized as: the predominance of neoclassical poetry and prose in the early decades of the 18th century; the rise and flourish of modern realistic novel in the middle years of the 18th century; and the appearance of gothic novel and the sentimental and pre-romantic poetry and fiction in the last few decades of the 18th century Types of NovelsPicaresque Epistolary, Sentimental , Gothic, Historical ..Psychological Realistic/Naturalistic . Regional.Social , Adventure, Mystery, Science Fiction, Magical Realism

3.Character AnalysisMoll Flanders

Moll, the heroine of the book, was born in Newgate Prison and abandoned at about a year-and-a-half. She was a forceful, persistent, resolute young girl who obtained her way in most things. She was attractive and so vain about her appearance that she was easily convinced men were in love with her. Moll often moralized about her fear of poverty, her greed, her increasing hardness of heart, her criminal activities, her numerous husbands and lovers. Her evolving theory was that if England had provided properly for orphans she would not have fallen into bad hands and thus needed to fend for herself before she could be trained to make her way honestly in the world. According to her theory, a young girl in poor circumstances had the right to find support as best she could. Moll, vain and fearful of poverty, pursued her goal of obtaining security in life. One aspect of this determination was Moll's drive to marry a rich man. A second aspect was her ruthless pursuit of money. The result of the acts she performed to achieve these goals was the transformation of a beautiful innocent young girl into a hardened middle-aged criminal who was finally captured and sent to Newgate Prison. Her resourcefulness and conniving brought her release from prison and her transportation to Virginia. There, with Jemmy, her favorite husband, she was able to become, in a year's time, a wealthy plantationowner. Throughout the novel we see Moll's dual nature a penitent woman reproaching herself for her misdeeds, and a ruthless pursuer of ill-gotten wealth. 4.Themes of Moll Flanders Greed The major recurrent theme in the novel is that of greed a greed which leads Moll to prostitution, thievery, and moral disintegration. Moll sees people as commodities her relationships with them as business transactions. Although she is in love with the eldest brother, she has few qualms about taking money from him. She then accepts a bribe from him to marry his brother Robin. She easily consigns her children to the care of their grandparents and considers herself lucky. "My two children were, indeed, taken happily off of my hands by my husband's father and mother, . . ." She chooses husbands on the basis of their affluence or social class. When the first one dies she muses, "I had preserved the elder brother's bonds to me to pay me 500, which he offered me for my consent to marry his brother; and this, with what I saved of the money he formerly gave me and about as much more by my husband, left me a widow with about 1200 in my pocket." She takes money for prostitution. She steals from children and from people in distress. And only when she is too old to do otherwise does she repent.

It appears that Defoe consciously manipulates the reader to view Moll as a covetous individual. The terms he uses in the novel are very often economic, with direct recordings of Moll's business and criminal transactions. In journalistic fashion, Defoe itemizes the booty of Moll's first criminal venture: " . . . I found there was a suit of childbed-linen in it, very good and almost new, the lace very fine; there was a silvery porringer of a pint, a small silver mug and six spoons, with some other linen, a good smock, and three silk handkerchiefs, and in the mug, in a paper, 18s.6d, in money." In fact, at nearly any point in the book, the reader is able to approximate what is Moll's economic standing. Unfortunately, our knowledge of her inner life suffers. Kenneth Rexroth notes, "Moll Flanders has no interior life at all, and the material facts with which her character is constructed do not increase her individuality. They are chosen as facets of her typicality." Defoe, in the Preface, insists that he is writing the book as a moral lesson to "give the history of a moral life repented...." But Moll seems to flourish in her life of crime and actually the lesson we learn is that to survive one must fight with the weapons one has. Defoe was writing in a new, capitalistically oriented England. To have played the genteel lady would have meant a life of poverty for Moll. This was a decision which the social environment of the day forced on many people; Moll Flanders can be considered a good example of the criminal of that time who is forced into a life of crime by social conditions which leave few other alternatives. We cannot, thus, consider them too harshly for they are protagonists in the constant battle for survival which society imposes on the poor. Vanity An important theme of Moll Flanders is that vanity is the force that prevails over virtue. It is vanity that determines Moll's behavior in the first part of the book. Moll's vanity facilitates her seduction by the elder brother. It is also a strong motif which runs through Moll's five marriages and numerous lovers. It is a factor which precipitates her decision to steal rather than remain poor and exist only by the honest labor of her needle. In fact all her actions are in some way linked to her vanity. Repentance The theme of repentance is a recurring one in Moll Flanders. She constantly entertains the desire to repent. Lacking true moral persuasion these repentances are, until the end, half-hearted and insincere. She lacks moral strength; her moral fiber is quickly overcome on several occasions by the slightest pressures or inducements. Her will at times seems to be completely enslaved. Her first repentance comes when Robin asks her to marry him: "I was now in a dreadful condition indeed, and now I repented heartily my easiness with the eldest brother; not from any reflection of conscience, for I was a stranger to those things, but I could not think of being a whore to one brother and a wife to the other." Actually, Moll's repentance seems more like regret for having underestimated her chances for a better arrangement. It is evident as the book unfolds that Moll has not been "led astray." She has very shrewdly calculated the course of her life. Throughout the story Moll considers or reflects on the path her life is taking. The occasion of Robin's marriage proposal causes Moll to say to the elder brother, "Upon serious consideration, for indeed now I began to consider things very seriously, and never till now I resolved to tell him of it." Again Moll considers what to do when she realizes she is not as bad as the people living in the Mint. She says, "I was not wicked enough for such fellows as these yet. On the contrary, I began to consider here very seriously what I had to do; how things stood with me, and what course I ought to take."

When the gentleman at Bath rejects any further contact with Moll, she reports "I cast about innumerable ways for my future state of life, and began to consider very seriously what I should do, but nothing offered." After her Lancashire husband leaves and Moll is back in London alone she says that "here being perfectly alone, I had leisure to sit down and reflect seriously upon the last seven months' ramble I had made, . . ." After she is delivered of another baby and receives a letter from her London bank clerk saying he wants to see her again Moll is "exceedingly surprised at the news, and began now seriously to reflect on my present circumstances, . . ." She appears to reproach herself just before she marries him: "Then it occurred to me, 'What an abominable creature am I! and how is this innocent gentleman going to be abused by me!' How little does he think, that having divorced a whore, he is throwing himself into the arms of another!" Nevertheless, she marries him and after his death begins her criminal career. As can be noted, many of her partial repentances dissipate into further scheming. Ironically Moll's energies are too consumed in maneuvering herself out of a bad situation to worry seriously about saving her soul. When Moll is first committed to Newgate she makes the following statement: "Then I repented heartily of all my life past, but that repentance yielded me no satisfaction, no peace, no, not in the least, because, as I said to myself, it was repenting after the power of further sinning was taken away. I seemed not to mourn that I had committed such crimes, and for the fact, as it was an offense against God and my neighbour, but that I was to be punished for it. I was penitent, as I thought, not that I had sinned, but that I was to suffer and this took away all the comforts of my repentance in my own thoughts." This passage clearly shows another shallow repentance by Moll. She fears not for her spiritual state but for her physical being. Even during her stay in Newgate, Moll does not appear to really repent until quite some time after her talk with the pastor. And perhaps even then Moll is really worried about being hanged. The very fact that she insists on securing her inheritance shows how the possession of earthly goods has much deeper meaning for Moll than does the acquisition of spiritual well-being. In fact, we see a meaningful contrast between Moll's character and that of the governess, a former crook who seemingly has truly repented. Note that the tears Moll weeps from time to time are merely an emotional release rather than a sign of true repentance, for even after the shedding her heart quickly hardens against her victims and she continues their victimization. This is shown, for example, when she steals the bundle from the burning house. Whatever regret Moll has is weak indeed: "with all my sense of its being cruel and inhuman, I could never find in my heart to make any restitution." Hardening The question as to whether Moll ever really becomes a hardened criminal is an interesting one. We have seen that, motivated by greed, she has been able to commit the crassest of criminal acts. But Defoe still reveals to us sentimental aspects of Moll's personality that we cannot ignore. To say that she is a thief with a soul is to credit her with more depth than Defoe really shows us. We never really see Moll's inner life that completely. Yet it is evident that Defoe meant us to sympathize with Moll; and we are able to sympathize with her because he portrays her as a very likeable woman, who, despite her thieving and prostitution, is well-liked by her contemporaries, and seems to like them as well. Defoe uses irony ingeniously in the passages telling us of Moll's thoughts during her various crimes. He often portrays her as moralistic; for example, when she steals the necklace from the child in Aldersgate Street, she feels she is actually doing the child a favor: "The thought of this booty put out all the thoughts of the first, and the reflections I had made wore quickly off; poverty, as I have said, hardened my heart,

and my own necessities made me regardless of anything. The last affair left no great concern upon me, for as I did the poor child no harm, I only said to myself, I had given the parents a reproof for their negligence in leaving the poor little lamb to come home by itself, and it would teach them to take more care of it another time." Defoe didn't want us to condone the action and condemn the parents. Through ironic humor he gives us insight into Moll's attempts to rationalize her felonies. Frequently Moll feels remorse but it is a hollow remorse, for it neither leads her to curtail the particular crime she is bemoaning, nor does it prompt her to offer restitution. This is shown in her robbery of a woman whose house is on fire: "This was the greatest and the worst prize that ever I was concerned in; for indeed, though, as I have said above, I was hardened now beyond the power of all reflection in other cases, yet it really touched me to the very soul when I looked into this treasure, to think of the poor disconsolate gentlewoman who had lost so much by the fire. . . ." Moll is shown as most compassionate in her relationships with her various lovers and husbands. She seems to truly love the elder brother. And when she marries his brother Robin, poor Robin never learns of the affair. Her second spouse is a rake, but she treats him well and helps him escape from his creditors. She nurses her men when they are sick and loves them when they are well. Her relationship with Jemmy seems to be full of love and compassion. Moll is in Newgate, under sentence of death, but when she learns Jemmy is there too her remorse and sense of guilt are genuine. "I was overwhelmed with grief for him; my own case gave me no disturbance compared to this, and I loaded myself with reproaches on his account." Moll is an ambivalent character. She is a criminal but a sympathetic one. Her life of crime is constantly colored by her good humor, compassion and sense of loyalty.

5.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761

A professional printer who took to novel-writing when he was fifty. He liked to help women with the composition to their love letters and was asked by a publisher to write a volume of model letters for use on various occasions. He was inspired to write a novel in the form of a series of letters (epistolary novel), a novel which should implant a moral lesson in the mind of his readers (he thought of these reader primarily as women). This novel was Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, which describes the assaults made on the honour of a virtuous housemaid by an unscrupulous young man. Pamela resists clinging tightly to her code of honour and her reward is, ultimately, marriage to her would-be seducer. Criticism: virtue = commodity to be sold to the highest bidder. He printed several periodicals, most of which were political in nature, such as the Tory publication the True Britain, newspapers the Daily Gazeteer and the Daily Journals, as well as the House of Commons Journals. Richardsons first novel was written almost by accident. As a printer, Richardson was asked to construct a set of familiar letters, models to help country people write to their families. Some of these letters were supposedly from a servant girl to her parents, asking what she should do when faced with her masters sexual advances. Richardsons friends enjoyed this plot and asked for more of it, and he published Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded in 1740. Richardsons works, along with those of Defoe and Fielding, are widely considered to have helped legitimize novels as serious literature. The rise of the mercantile class of the eighteenth century contributed to increased reading among women and servants, who tended to favor novels more than men did. Novels had a bad reputation at the beginning of the century; they were considered feminine ephemera, silly if not dangerous. Countering this, Richardsons novels claimed that they entertained in order to instruct and were realistic and decent rather than scandalous fantasies.

6.Clarissa
Context
Born in 1689 in Mackworth, Derbyshire, Samuel Richardson was the son of a carpenter and had little formal education. Although his parents hoped he would enter the priesthood, financial troubles forced him to find paid work in the printing business. Richardson joined the trade as an apprentice in 1706, and set up his own printing shop thirteen years later. He printed several periodicals, most of which were political in nature, such as the Tory publication the True Britain, newspapers the Daily Gazeteer and the Daily Journals, as well as the House of Commons Journals. Around this time, coffeehouses were becoming popular, and they served as places where men of different professions gathered to read, talk, and argue. Some historians have located the rise of a democratic public sphere in these coffeehouses and in the periodicals that were read in them. Richardson married in 1721 and, after the deaths of five children, lost his wife ten years later. In 1733, he remarried and had four surviving children with his second wife. That same year, he published The Apprentices Vade Mecum, a guide to moral behavior for men who worked as apprentices. Major issues addressed in Richardsons first writing venture would infuse the rest of his work as an authornamely, the importance of morality in an increasingly debauched society and the new complications of a rising middle class. Richardsons first novel was written almost by accident. As a printer, Richardson was asked to construct a set of familiar letters, models to help country people write to their families. Some of these letters were supposedly from a servant girl to her parents, asking what she should do when faced with her masters sexual advances. Richardsons friends enjoyed this plot and asked for more of it, and he published Pamela, or, Virtue Rewarded in 1740. According to Richardson, Pamela was a new form of fiction writing altogether, an exercise in instruction through entertainment. The novel was an instant sensation. Its moral precepts formed the themes of church sermons as well as newspaper debates, while its plot and characters inspired musical adaptations, continuations, operas, and even waxworks. Pamela also received its share of criticism and parodies, most notably Fieldings Shamelaand Haywoods Anti-Pamela. Following this success, Richardson undertook a more ambitious project when he began Clarissa. While almost all of the letters in Pamela are written by Pamela, there are four principal writers in Clarissa, resulting in a more complex plot as well as a much longer novel. Richardson also set out to raise the social level of his story. Instead of the voice of a spunky servant girl, he adopts the language of the upper classes and sprinkles the novel with members of the peerage. He takes his goal of moralizing through entertainment further than he had in Pamela, writing a story that is less of a conduct book and more of a Christian parable. Richardsons works, along with those of Defoe and Fielding, are widely considered to have helped legitimize novels as serious literature. The rise of the mercantile class of the eighteenth century contributed to increased reading among women and servants, who tended to favor novels more than men did. Novels had a bad reputation at the beginning of the century; they were considered feminine ephemera, silly if not dangerous. Countering this, Richardsons novels claimed that they entertained in order to instruct and were realistic and decent rather than scandalous fantasies. Released in serialized form, Clarissas first two volumes were published in 1747, and all seven were in print by the end of 1748. The novel won much admiration, but Richardson was disappointed with some aspects of its reception. Before the last volumes were published readers besieged him with letters begging for a happy ending, and after Richardson stuck to his tragic plan, at least one woman, Lady Bradshaigh, wrote a replacement ending. To Richardson, the demand that the story end with a wedding signified that his readers were blind to the novels moral structure, and he almost immediately began revising in an effort to control this response. Some readers thought Clarissa was too prudish; others, that she was a tease. Worst of all, readers adored Lovelace, the villainous rake. The third edition ofClarissa,published in 1751, is two hundred pages longer than the first, including editorial footnotes that interpret the characters actions and motivations. Lovelaces character is also much nastier in the third edition, while Clarissas is even purer. Richardson also added a table of contents that summarizes each letter and compiled a Collection of Moral Sentiments to add to the final volume. Organized by category, this lengthy index includes extracts and paraphrases of moralistic sayings on topics like repentance and adversity. Samuel Johnson included many quotations from Clarissa in his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, but all of these come from the Collection rather than the text. Johnson called Clarissa the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart, but he also noted that if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. For Johnson and many other contemporary readers, the value of Clarissa lay much less in its plot and characters than in the moral sentiments it encoded. Along with revising Clarissa, Richardson rounded out his novelists career by publishing a book with a male protagonist, Sir Charles Grandison, in 17531754. This book was admired by such readers as Jane Austen, but it has proved much less influential over time than either Pamela or Clarissa. Richardson died in 1761 in London, leaving a bold mark on the British novel and on European culture as well. In the year of Richardsons death, Jean-Jacques Rousseau published Julie, ou la Nouvelle Heloise, explicitly modeled on Clarissa, and Diderot an Eloge de Richardson. In Germany, Goethe and Lessing claimed Richardson as an influence, while in America John Adams declared in 1804 that democracy is Lovelace and the people is Clarissa. To this date, Clarissa is believed to be the longest novel written in the English language (internationally, it comes in below Prousts In Search of Lost Time but well above Tolstoys War and Peace).

Plot Overview
Clarissa tells the story of a virtuous, beautiful young woman who is brought to tragedy by the wickedness of her world. The eighteen-year-old Clarissa Harlowe is universally loved and admired, considered an exemplary woman by everyone around her. The Harlowes are an up-and-coming family, possessing great wealth but little status. The other members of the family are avaricious and eager to improve their standing in the world, and Clarissa becomes the victim of their greed. The trouble starts when Richard Lovelace, a dashing libertine, comes to pay court to Clarissas sister, Arabella, but is attracted by Clarissa instead. Arabellas jealousy combines with the resentment of their brother, James, who holds a grudge against Lovelace from college days, and sets the family against him. A duel between the two, in which Lovelace wounds James but spares his life, crystallizes their hatred. The family becomes suspicious of Clarissa, forbids her from corresponding with Lovelace, and commands her to marry a horrible rich man named Roger Solmes. Clarissa refuses to consider marrying Solmes and carries on a clandestine correspondence with Lovelace. She also continues to secretly correspond with her best friend, Anna Howe. As she continues to resist marriage to Solmes, Clarissa is increasingly confined, until she is barely able to leave her room. Finally Lovelace takes advantage of Clarissas fear of a forced marriage by tricking her into running away with him. Once Clarissa has run away, she is in Lovelaces power. Her reputation is ruined and her family refuses to forgive her. Lovelace is an adept manipulator, enjoying the contrivances he invents to keep Clarissa in his web. He is in love with her, but he hates the idea of marriage, so his goal is to force her into cohabitation, rather than marriage. Clarissa is innocent and virtuous and does not see through Lovelaces tricks. Furthermore, she refuses to compromise any of her strict tenets of behavior, even to save herself. Lovelace repeatedly tests Clarissas virtue as a means of testing the character of the entire sex: if Clarissa is truly an exemplary woman, she will withstand his contrivances and remain a model of goodness. His intention, however, is to force Clarissa to compromise her strict morals, sully her reputation, and gain full control over her. Without suspecting that she is playing into his hands, she goes with him to London, where he secures lodgings at Mrs. Sinclairs house. Clarissa is unaware that this is a brothel and the women she meets there are whores. Having been involved with (and ruined by) Lovelace in the past, these women are jealous of Clarissa and encourage Lovelace to rape her. At the same time, Clarissas virtue has a powerful effect on Lovelace and sometimes sways him away from his bad intentions. After several battles between his wicked heart and his protesting conscience, Lovelaces joy in intrigue and the whores instigations seal Clarissas doom. Finally suspecting Lovelaces vileness, Clarissa escapes, but Lovelace finds her and tricks her back to Mrs. Sinclairs brothel. There, Mrs. Sinclair drugs Clarissa and Lovelace rapes her while she is unconscious. When she awakes, Clarissa goes temporarily mad, and Lovelace regrets his action. The rape has failed to put Clarissa fully in his power because she has never compromised her virtue. He begins to talk with more seriousness about marrying her, but also thinks he will try to rape her again and see if he can get her consent, thus abandoning her principles. Clarissa, sensing the danger, runs away, this time successfully. Once Clarissa has been raped, she stops eating and no longer worries about worldly problems like reputation. She continues to seek reconciliation with her family, but they remain adamant. One of Lovelaces plots gone wrong allows him to accidentally discover Clarissas location, but at the same time it damages her health and cements her conviction of his wickedness. Lovelaces friend Belford becomes Clarissas protector, keeping Lovelace away but mediating between him and Clarissa. Lovelace is now truly determined to marry Clarissa, but she prefers the idea of death to that of marrying such a criminal. Her health steadily worsens, and she begins to prepare for death. With remarkable equanimity, Clarissa makes her will, appoints Belford her executor, puts her affairs in order, and even orders a coffin. She finally dies, expressing forgiveness for everyone in her life and joyful anticipation of heaven. The Harlowes finally see how wrong their treatment of Clarissa has been. Mr. and Mrs. Harlowe die soon after, and James and Arabella marry badly and are miserable for the rest of their lives. Lovelace fails to reform and is killed by Clarissas cousin Morden in a duel. Anna, Hickman, Belford, and the other good characters are rewarded with happy marriages. Belford takes on the project of collecting the letters that tell Clarissas story so that it can be an example to protect other women from similar fates.

7.Themes
The immoral rake versus the innocent heroine Richardson identifies the moral of his novel as a contradiction of the precept that a reformed rake makes the best husband. This misconception, he says, leads young women to prefer libertines to sober, respectable men. The contrast between the dashing and wicked Lovelace and the boring but good Hickman exemplifies the ease with which this mistake can be made. Clarissa blames her pride, in thinking she could reform Lovelace, for leading her into disaster. Her parents are also to blame, as their autocratic measures push her right into Lovelaces web; the implication is that parents need to shepherd their daughters away from danger, because young girls are unlikely to escape it on their own.

Clarissas innocence is continually contrasted with Lovelaces diabolical talent for manipulation, and several passages discuss the hopeless position of any girl who gives any encouragement to a rake. As a whole, the novel provides a cautionary lesson for young women and their parents and brands rakes as the scourge of society. The individual versus society Clarissas great struggle is for a sense of autonomy in a society that prohibits women from wielding any power whatsoever. The Harlowes intend to use their daughter to heighten their rank in the bourgeois community; by contrast, all Clarissa desires is the right to personal happiness and her parents consent. At the start of the novel, Clarissas inheritance presents her with an opportunity for independence from both her family and a future husband; however, Clarissa cares more about her familys acceptance than about the property. In this sense, her struggle for autonomy is also a struggle with herself. If she had accepted the estate, Clarissa would have achieved independence from her family and the oppressive society in which she lives; her inherent loyalty to them and to social mores prevents her from doing so. Although at first Lovelace seems a reasonable means of escape for Clarissa, it quickly becomes clear to her that his intentions are even more prohibitory to her independence. Lovelace ensnares her in hopes of conquering such an exemplary woman: all of his machinations further his mission to control her and triumph over her sex. Clarissa is trapped by both factions of society: the fledgling and insecure bourgeois family and her already aristocratic suitor. She also spends most of the novel physically confined by others (locked in her parents house, in Mrs. Sinclairs house, in Lovelaces arms, in jail) and only in planning for death does Clarissa seem to gain complete control over the future. The rewards of virtue and the punishments of evil With the exception of Clarissa, every character in the novel is either rewarded or punished on earth. Good people get married (Anna, Hickman, Belford), while bad people die in misery (Lovelace, Mr. and Mrs. Harlowe, Mrs. Sinclair, Belton) or suffer horrible marriages (James, Arabella). Clarissa dies, too, but her death is happy and she insists that it is actually a reward, because it allows her to go to heaven. Although the other characters do not have to wait for death to provide justice, their fates are delayed, so that at many points it looks as though vice is rewarded while virtue is punished. This, as Richardson tells us, is only realistic. But he assures us that there is always justice in the end. Although Lovelace seems to die honorably in a duel, an old-fashion match marked by chivalry and grace, he has actually been subject to twists of fate that highlight his punishments and his ultimate poetic justice. Lovelaces demise is inadvertently triggered by the actions of friends and accomplices; for instance, Sinclairs prostitutes, his coconspirators, have Clarissa arrested and his spy, Joseph Leman, sends Lovelace a letter about Mordens trip to France. Both are intended to help him but instead provoke his downfall. On the other hand, Belford, a model of character and reform, receives the rewards in the end that were initially intended for Lovelace. That both men reach appropriate ends is evidence that Clarissas sense of justice is truly poetic.

8.Character List
Clarissa Harlowe - A virtuous young woman, the protagonist of the novel. Clarissa is noted for her exceptional beauty, virtue, and accomplishments. She is considered an exemplar, a model of female behavior, by everyone around her. She has very strict ideas of duty and morality, and she particularly enjoys taking care of the neighborhood poor. Although Clarissa is so endearing that most people can tolerate her obvious superiority, her older brother and sister are jealous of her, especially after Clarissa inherits an estate upon her grandfathers death. Robert Lovelace - A dashing rake, the antagonist of the novel. Lovelace is of good family, handsome, brave, intelligent, and highly accomplished. He loves to write and does so with great skill. He has a history of seducing many women, all of whom subsequently either died in childbirth or became whores. He is in love with Clarissa, but he also sees her as a challenge for his powers of seduction. His admiration of her virtue is an additional instigation for him to try to conquer it. Anna Howe - Clarissas best friend, her confidante, and sometimes her foil. Anna is vivacious and flippant in contrast to Clarissas seriousness. She treats everyone, including her mother and her suitor, Hickman, with a freedom that is sometimes offensive or cruel. She sometimes teases Clarissa, especially about her concealed feelings for Lovelace, but she respects and loves her completely. John Belford - Lovelaces best friend, also a rake. Belford and Lovelace have a habit of correspondence that echoes that between Clarissa and Anna, but the two men write to each other in a secret shorthand that only they know. This allows them to freely discuss their libertine activities. Despite his lifestyle, Belford has a conscience, and his exposure to Clarissa gradually puts him on her side and against Lovelace, although he continues to be Lovelaces friend. Mrs. Sinclair - The madam of a London whorehouse. Mrs. Sinclair is a monstrous creature, enormous, masculine, and wicked. Clarissa is repelled by Mrs. Sinclair, even though she believes her to be a respectable widow. An aura of sin surrounds her, such

that as soon as Lovelace enters her house he finds all of his good intentions slipping away, although they return to some extent when he is away. Mrs. Sinclair is instrumental in the ruin of Clarissa. Mr. (James) Harlowe, Sr. - Father of Clarissa, Arabella, and James, authoritarian and unforgiving. Mr. Harlowes bad temper is attributed to his gout, and he most frequently appears off-scene, vexing and incensed outside the main action of the novel. He is anxious about his familys newfound wealth, reputation, and social position and will tolerate no disobedience from his children. James Harlowe, Jr. - Clarissas older brother, proud, ambitious, and resentful. James is neither very brave nor very intelligent, but he is fiercely proud and responds violently to anything that he perceives as threatening to his reputation or prospects. Mrs. (Charlotte) Harlowe - Clarissas mother, loving but passive. Mrs. Harlowe will not defy her husband, even when she disagrees with him. She resents Clarissa for causing trouble in the family, even as she pities her situation. Arabella Harlowe - Clarissas sister, envious and bad tempered. Arabella is inferior to Clarissa in beauty and character and suffers from the shadow of her younger sister. Like her father and brother, Arabella overvalues money and reputation and is therefore doubly resentful of Clarissas inheritance. Mrs. (Judith) Norton - Clarissas nurse, a pious woman. Well educated and well-bred, Mrs. Norton has fallen on hard times, although she was responsible for most of Clarissas education and sense of morality that grow into such impressive virtue. Colonel Morden - Clarissas cousin and a trustee of her estate. Morden is abroad for most of the novel, while the Harlowes wait for him to arbitrate their conflict. He is comparable to Lovelace in bravery and skill and also has somewhat of a shady past. Mr. Hickman - Annas suitor, respectable but unexciting. Anna constantly mocks Hickman for his over-formal manners, but he patiently persists in his suit. When Clarissa leaves home, Hickman offers help, despite the risk of incurring the anger of Mrs. Howe. Uncle (John) Harlowe, Antony Harlowe, Aunt (Dorothy) Hervey - Clarissas uncles and aunts. The all love Clarissa but will not help her against the wishes of Mr. Harlowe. Roger Solmes - A rich, ugly, unappealing man. Except for the money he would bring into the family, Solmes is a completely inappropriate match for Clarissa. He is concerned with money above all else, mistreating his servants and even his family when it helps him advance in the world. Lord M., Lady Betty, Lady Charlotte, and Patty Montague - Lovelaces relatives, well-bred, refined, and respected in society. In addition to their high social position, the family is esteemed for the merit of its individuals. They have heard of Clarissas virtue and would like to include her in their family despite her lower social rank. Captain Tomlinson - The false name of Patrick McDonald, one of Lovelaces accomplices in deceit. Tomlinson is an expert actor and convinces Clarissa of his sincerity. He has qualms about playing the part Lovelace has given him, but he plays it perfectly nevertheless. Sally Martin, Polly Horton, Dorcas Wykes - Whores in Mrs. Sinclairs brothel. Sally and Polly were ruined by Lovelace and want to see Clarissa suffer the same fate. Their mockery helps keep Lovelace on the path of wickedness. Joseph Leman, Betty Barnes, Hannah Burton - Servants of the Harlowes. Joseph also works for Lovelace as a spy, and Betty, his girlfriend, is Arabellas maid and treats Clarissa rudely. Hannah, by contrast, is faithful to Clarissa. Mrs. Moore, Widow Bevis, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Lovick - Keepers and guests of houses where Clarissa stays. All are decent people, although some are deceived by Lovelace and work against Clarissa. Mrs. Howe - Annas mother, courted by Antony Harlowe. Mrs. Howe struggles for control over her daughter and forbids her from helping Clarissa. While not a bad woman, she is a shallow and selfish one.

9.Henry Fielding is the greatest novelist of the 18th century and is one of the most artistic that
English literature has produced. He came from an aristocratic family and was well educated. He spent several years at the famous Eton school and took a degree in letters at the University of Leyden in Holland. Fielding is often
considered one of the most significant contributors to the development of the English novel. His nearly seamless incorporation of drama, satire, romance, and epic into his works helped distinguish the novel as a new and unique genre quite distinct from its early influences. Fielding infused the novel with compassion,

comedy, and a heightened sense of realism. his novelsJoseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia are generally considered his major works.
The adventure novel is a genre of novels that have adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main storyline

10.Character List
Tom Jones % - Tom Jones, a "bastard" raised by the philanthropic Allworthy, is the novel's eponymous hero and protagonist. Although Tom's faults (namely, his imprudence and his lack of chastity) prevent him from being a perfect hero, his good heart and generosity make him Fielding's avatar of Virtue, along with Allworthy. Tom's handsome face and gallantry win him the love and affection of women throughout the countryside. His dignified, though natural air induces characters to assume that he is a gentlemanwhich ultimately turns out to be true. Sophia Western % - Sophia Western is Fielding's beautiful, generous heroine and the daughter of the violent Squire Western. Like Tom, Sophia lavishes gifts on the poor, and she treats people of all classes with such respect that one landlady cannot believe she is a "gentlewoman." Sophia manages to reconcile her love for Tom, her filial duty to her father, and her hatred for Blifil through her courage and patience. Sophia's natural courtesy can be contrasted with her Aunt Western's artificial manners. Mr. Allworthy % - Mr. Allworthy is just what his name implies - all worthy. Allworthy has a reputation throughout England because of his benevolent, altruistic behavior. The moral yardstick of the novel, Allworthy's only fault (which ironically propels much of the plot) is thatdue to his goodnesshe cannot perceive the evil in others. Master Blifil - Blifil is antagonist to Tom Jones and the son of Bridget Allworthy and Captain Blifil. Although he appears at first to be a virtuous character, his hypocrisy soon exposes itselfBlifil pretends to be pious and principled, but greed governs him. The fact that Blifil has few redeeming qualities makes Tom compassion for him at the end of the novelafter the revelation that Blifil kept the secret of Tom's birth to himselfeven more commendable. Blifil's dearth of natural human appetiteshe at first does not desire Sophiadoes not distinguish him as a virtuous character, but rather provides a depressing picture of what humanity would be like if devoid of passion. Squire Western % - Squire Western is a caricature of the rough-and-ready, conservative country gentleman. Affectionate at heart, the Squire nevertheless acts with extreme violence towards his daughter Sophia, by constantly incarcerating her, and even verbally and physically abusing her. However, since the Squire is a caricature, Fielding does not intend for us to judge these actions too harshly. Similarly, the Squire's insistence on Sophia marrying Blifil has less to do with greed than with his stubbornness and adherence to tradition. Squire Western's speaks in West Country dialect, and peppers his speech with curses. Mrs. Western % - Mrs. Western, the foil of her brother Squire Western, is a caricature of the artificial city lady who always acts out of expediency. Mrs. Western prides herself on being adept at all intellectual pursuitsfrom politics to philosophy to feminism to amouryet her ignorance reveals itself on numerous occasions (she thinks that Socrates lectured to students instead of engaging in conversational debate). Mrs. Western's sole aim in the novel is to improve the Western name by marrying off Sophia to the richest, most prosperous man she can find. Partridge - Partridge is the teacher whom Allworthy accuses of being Tom's father. He is a kind of comedic Harlequin character (Fielding even compares him to Harlequin). Although pathetic, bumbling, and cowardly, Partridge remains a loyal servant to Jones and deserves his reward at the end of the novel. Partridge has a passion for speaking in Latin non sequiturs. Although Partridge creates problems for Tom and Sophia by boosting Tom's reputation and defiling Sophia's to all and sundry, Tom cannot help forgiving Partridge, who always has the best of intentions. Jenny Jones % - Jenny Jones (Mrs. Waters) is the student of Partridge whom Allworthy banishes for being Tom's motherat the end of the novel we learn that Jenny is not Tom's mother. Jenny reappears as "Mrs. Waters" at Upton, where Tom saves her from a robbery. Although Jenny does not possess the beauty of a Sophia, her very white breasts attract Tom to her. Although she protests to Mr. Allworthy at the end of the novel that she has led a virtuous life, her seduction of Tom in Upton suggests otherwise. She eventually marries Parson Supple, a friend of Western. Bridget Allworthy % - Bridget Allworthy is the mother of Blifil and Tom. An unattractive lady who resents beautiful women, Bridget marries Captain Blifil because he flatters her religious views. Although Bridget's affection wavers between Blifil and Tom as the boys mature, she becomes devoted to Tom before her deathlargely due to his good looks and gallantry.

Lady Bellaston - Lady Bellaston is a London lady, and a relative of Sophia, whose passionate, lusty personality leads her to dabble in intrigues. The stem of her last name "Bella-", meaning "war" in Latin, points to her malicious natureshe thinks of no one but herself. Lady Bellaston carries out a vengeful battle against Tom and Sophia with the utmost glee. Harriet Fitzpatrick % - Harriet Fitzpatrick is Sophia's cousin and the wife of Mr. Fitzpatrick. Pretty and charming, she is nevertheless selfish and contrives against Sophia in order to improve her relationship with Squire Western and Mrs. Western. Mr. Fitzpatrick % - Mr. Fitzpatrick is a rash Irishman whom Harriet Fitzpatrick casts in the light of an ogre chasing her across the countryside. Fitzpatrick becomes admirable, however, when he admits to initiating the duel with Tom at the end of the novel. Mr. Dowling - Mr. Dowling is a shrewd, shifty lawyer who becomes a friend of Blifil. Always operating out of expediency, when Dowling realizes that Blifil will not be able to reward him for his efforts, he defects to Tom and Allworthy's side. Mrs. Miller - Mrs. Miller is a faithful friend to Tom and the most caring and concerned of mothers to Nancy and Betty. Feisty and active, Mrs. Miller carries through on her promises and becomes Tom's biggest advocate to Allworthy. She is trusting and loyal. Nightingale - Nightingale, although a foppish city gentleman, possesses the laudable traits of loyalty and compassionalthough not always in affairs of love. It takes a little time for Tom to convince Nightingale not to abandon Nancy, since Nightingale is caught up in his image in London. To his credit, Nightingale transforms and follows Tom's principles of Honourthat is, fulfilling verbal commitments. Lord Fellamar - Lord Fellamar is a suitor of Sophia who, though he has a conscience, easily allows himself to be manipulated by Lady Bellaston. Square - Square is a philosopher who lives with Allworthy. He justifies his questionable behavior (such as making love to Molly Seagrim) by contorting his philosophical notions. Square, although a foil to Thwackum, is less sinister than the latter. Indeed, Square's virtuous transformation at the end of the novel allows Allworthy to forgive Tom. Thwackum - Thwackum is the vicious tutor of Blifil and Tom who constantly beats Tom and praises Blifil. Thwackum, who claims to value Religion above all else, seeks only his own good. Molly Seagrim - Molly Seagrim is the rugged, unfeminine daughter of Black George who seduces Tom. Feisty and aggressive, Molly enjoys the company of men, and fights fiercely for her rights. Black George - Black George is the servant who is favored by Tom. Although of dubious moral tincture (Black George steals and lies), Black George's loyalty to and love of Tom nevertheless emerges. Nancy Miller - Nancy Miller is the daughter of Mrs. Miller who becomes Nightingale's wife. Narrator - The ironic, intrusive narrator can be assumed to be Fielding himself since he reflects on his process of creating Tom Jones.

11.Themes
Virtue as action rather than thought Fielding contrasts the concept of Virtue espoused by characters like Square and Thwackum with the Virtue actually practiced by Jones and Allworthy. Tom, as the active hero who saves damsels-in-distress and plans on fighting for his country, is the embodiment of the very active type of Virtue that Fielding esteems. The impossibility of stereotypical categorization Fielding's novel attempts to break down numerous boundaries. In terms of genre, Fielding cannot decide whether his novel is a "philosophical History," a "Romance," or an "epi-comic prosaic poem." Yet, through these confounded musings, Fielding subtly suggests that cataloguing fiction is silly, and that he would rather think of himself as "the founder of a new Province of Writing." In another example of broken stereotypes, Fielding's characters cannot be distinguished by "masculine" or "feminine" traits: in this novel both men and women fight and cry. The tension between Art and Artifice Although the narrator upholds the value of natural art in his characters, he uses artifice himself in the construction of his novel. For example, he often closes chapters by hinting to the reader what is to follow in the next chapter, or he warns the reader that he is

going to omit a scene. In such a way, he prevents us from suspending our disbelief and giving ourselves up to the "art" of the narrativeinstead, Fielding constantly entices us to reflect on and review the process of construction.

12.The sentimental novel or the novel of sensibility is an 18th century literary genre which celebrates the
emotional and intellectual concepts of sentiment, sentimentalism, and sensibility. Sentimentalism, which is to be distinguished from sensibility, was a fashion in both poetry and prose fiction beginning in the eighteenth century in reaction to the rationalism of the Augustan Age. Among the most famous sentimental novels are Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey The novel was extremely popular and influential and helped establish travel writing as the dominant genre of the second half of the 18th century. Unlike prior travel accounts which stressed classical learning and objective nonpersonal points of view, A Sentimental Journey emphasized the subjective discussions of personal taste and sentiments, of manners and morals over classical learning. Throughout the 1770s female travel writers began publishing significant numbers of sentimental travel accounts. Sentiment also became a favorite style among those expressing non-mainstream views including political radicalism. The narrator is the Reverend Mr. Yorick, who is slyly represented to guileless readers as Sterne's barely disguised alter ego. The book recounts his various adventures, usually of the amorous type, in a series of self-contained episodes. The book is less eccentric and more elegant in style thanTristram Shandy and was better received by contemporary critics. A

Sentimental Journey is a novel without a plot, a journey without a destination. It records the adventures of the amiable Parson Yorick, as he sets off on his travels through France and Italy, relishing his encounters with all manner of men and women-particularly the pretty ones. Sterne's tale rapidly moves away from the narrative of travel to become a series of dramatic sketches, ironic incidents, philosophical musings, reminiscences, and anecdotes; sharp wit is mixed with gaiety, irony with tender feeling. With A Sentimental Journey, as well as his masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, Sterne forged a truly original style and established himself as the first of the stream-of-consciousness writers

13.Tristram Shandy Context Laurence Sterne was born in 1713 in Ireland, the son of an army officer. After graduating from Cambridge University, Sterne settled in Yorkshire and remained in England for the remainder of his life. He became a clergyman there, and then married a woman with whom he did not get along. His two major novels, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey, were written near the end of his life. He died in March, 1768, at the age of 55. Sterne wroteTristram Shandybetween 1759 and 1767. The book was published in five separate installments, each containing two volumes except the last, which included only the final Volume 9. The numerous cliffhangers and anticipations Sterne put in the closing chapters of each installment are conventional features of serially published works, meant to arouse curiosity and maintain interest in the volumes to come. Tristram Shandy was enthusiastically received from the beginning, though it was also criticized for being bawdy and indecent in its frank treatment of sexual themes. For its time, the novel is highly unconventional in its narrative technique--even though it also incorporates a vast number of references and allusions to more traditional works. The title itself is a play on a novelistic formula that would have been familiar to Sterne's contemporary readers; instead of giving us the "life and adventures" of his hero, Sterne promises us his "life and opinions." What sounds like a minor difference actually unfolds into a radically new kind of narrative. Tristram Shandy bears little resemblance to the orderly and structurally unified novels (of which Fielding's Tom Jones was considered to be the model) that were popular in Sterne's day. The questions Sterne's novel raises about the nature of fiction and of reading have givenTristram Shandy a particular relevance for twentieth century writers like Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, and James Joyce. Book Summary Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy is narrated by the title character in a series of digressions and interruptions that purportedly show the "life and opinions" part of the novel's full title of Tristram. Composed of nine "Books" originally published between 1759-1767, the novel has more to do with Shandy family members and their foibles and history than it seemingly does with Tristram himself. However, it is through Tristram's relating the actions, beliefs, and opinions of his family members

primarily his father, Walter Shandy, and his paternal Uncle Toby that the reader gets a clearer picture of Tristram's character. Books 1-6 revolve around Tristram's conception (the novel begins the evening of his conception); his birth (with a smashed nose that supposedly bodes ill warnings for his future); his mistaken naming (according to his father prior to Tristram's birth, "Tristram" is the worst possible name for a child); and his circumcision (while urinating out a window, the window falls). However, these events actually take up very little of these first six books' action. Instead, the narration is continuously interrupted by stories, diatribes, and opinions concerning family history, Walter Shandy's hypotheses and theories, and Uncle Toby's penchant for military fortifications to the point that readers today might easily become frustrated with Tristram's inability to get to the point (which, ironically, is the point Tristram is relating his "life and opinions," and they come to him in a disjointed fashion). Book 7 concerns an older Tristram traveling in France for health reasons. The book seems isolated from the story that precedes and follows it. Books 8 and 9 revolve around Uncle Toby's affair with the Widow Wadman, who is concerned about Uncle Toby's supposed groin injury and seeks to find out just how injured his groin is. Again, as in earlier books in the novel, numerous digressions and interruptions are spread throughout these two books, and Tristram through his mother, Mrs. Shandy, finally asks, "What is all this story about?" 14. The Romantic Period . Englishliterature at the end of the XVIIIth century-the beginning ofthe XIXth Time 1798 The publication of Wordsworth and Coleridges Lyrical Ballads 1832 Sir Walter Scotts death and the passage of the first Reform Bill Definition A revival of ancient Greek and Roman classical art Emphasis on the special qualities of each individual A change from outer world of social civilization to the inner world of the human spirit 1. Historical background (1) Romanticism as a literary movement appeared in England from the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 to the death of Sir Walter Scott and the passage of the first reform bill in the Parliament in 1832. (2) The American and French revolutions greatly inspired the English people fighting for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. (3) The Industrial Revolution brought great wealth to the rich but worsened the working and living conditions of the poor, which gave rise to sharp conflicts between capital and labor. (4) In England the primarily agricultural society was replaced by a modern industrialized one. (5) Political reforms and mass demonstrations shook the foundation of aristocratic rule in Britain Characteristics of American Romanticism Values feeling and intuition over reason. Place faith in inner experience and the power of imagination. Shuns the artificiality of civilization and seeks unspoiled nature. Prefers youthful innocence to educated sophistication. Champions individual freedom and the worth of the individual. Reflects on natures beauty as a path to spiritual and moral development. Looks backward to the wisdom of the past and distrusts progress. Finds beauty and truth in exotic locales, the supernatural realm and the inner world of the imagination. Sees poetry as the highest expression of imagination. values feelings over intuition, values the power of the imagination, seeks the beauty of unspoiled nature, values youthful innocence, values individual freedom, values the lessons of the past, finds beauty in exotic locales, the supernatural, and in the imagination, values poetry as the highest expression of the imagination, values myth, legend, and folk culture

I. Historical, social and cultural background

1. Historically
Influences of French Revolution
Rousseaus new ideas about Nature, Society and Education in Du Contract Social and Emile

2. Economically Influences of the Industrial Revolution

Agricultural society replaced by a modern industrial one
The capital class came to control Sharp conflicts between capital and labor

Literary trends Views of Romantics in their creation of literary works Negative attitude toward the existing social and political conditions Individual as the very center of the life and all experience Artistic features (1) Characteristics in the literary works Passive or escapist ramanticists who focus their attention on matters such as love, death. e.g. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southy Active romanticist who try to strengthen mans will to live and raise him against life around him against any yoke or restraints. e.g. Shelly, Byron Great attention to the spiritual and emotional life of man William Blake 1757-1827 Songs of Innocence William Wordsworth 1770-1850 Lyrical Ballads, The Prelude, I wander Lonely as a Cloud S.T. Coleridge 1772-1834 Lyrical Ballads, Kubla Khan George Gordon Byron 1788-1824 Don Juan, Childe Harolds Pilgrimage Percy Bysshe Shelly 1792-1822 Queen Mab, Prometheus Unbound, Ode to the West Wind

15.William Blake is an English poet and artist, born in London in 1757. He exerted a great influence on
English romanticism. Blake defied characterization by school. At the same time no poet has been more sensitive or responsive to the realities of the human condition and of his time. His poetry must be situated in an exceptional place concerning English literature. He is a pre-romantic and also a visionary author. William Blake must be considered as a representative personality of Romanticism, a huge European movement, which is characterized by the exaltation of the artist, always in quest of the absolute . As a supreme creator, he is depicting a mythology of modern world, especially in his work on the marriage of heaven and hell.In Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) the world is seen from a child's point of view, directly and simply but without sentimentality. The poet made his intention clear: showing the two contrary states of human soul. Innocence and experience are symbolised in the tiger and the lamb, which are described poems that reveal a consciousness of cruelty and injustice in the world, for which people are responsible. 16. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH and SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (Lake Poets) William Wordsworth (1770-1850): a turning point in literary history; 1798: the publication of the Lyrical Ballads (a joint project of Wordsworth of Coleridge): revolution in English poetic style; the mimetic and pragmatic element of poetry replaced by the expressive. William Wordsworth started with Samuel Taylor Coleridge the English Romantic movement with their collection Lyrical Ballads ( 1798). When many poets still wrote about ancient heroes in grandiloquent style, Wordsworth focused on the nature, children, the poor, common people, and used ordinary words to express his personal feelings. His definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings arising from "emotion recollected in tranquillity" was shared by a number of his followers. Encouraged by Coleridge and stimulated by the close contact with nature, Wordsworth composed his first masterwork, Lyrical Ballads, which opened with Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner.' Wordsworth and Coleridge both had strong, and sometimes conflicting, opinions about what constituted well-written poetry. Their ideas were centered around the origins of poetry in the poet and the role of poetry in the world, and these theoretical concepts led to the creation of poetry that is sufficiently complex to support a wide variety of critical readings in a modern context. Wordsworth wrote a preface to Lyrical Ballads in which he puts forth his ideas about poetry. His conception of poetry hinges on three major premises. Wordsworth asserts that poetry is the language of the common man: Coleridge and Wordsworth valued artful poetry. are constantly seeking the sublime

17.notorious of the major Romantics, George Gordon, Lord Byron, was likewise the most
fashionable poet of the day. He created an immensely popular Romantic herodefiant, melancholy, haunted by secret guiltfor which, to many, he seemed the model. He is also a Romantic paradox: a leader of the eras poetic revolution, he named Alexander Pope as his master; a worshiper of the ideal, he never lost touch with reality; He created his own cult of personality, the concept of the 'Byronic hero' a defiant, melancholy young man, brooding on some mysterious, unforgivable in his past. Byron's influence on European poetry, music, novel, opera, and painting has been immense, although the poet was widely condemned on moral grounds by his contemporaries. Byron's first collection of poetry, Hours of Idleness (1807) received bad reviews. The poet answered his critics with satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers in 1808. Success came in 1812 when John Murray published Byron's first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; Harold was Byron's alter ego.

18.Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Cantos 1 and 2 (March 1812) Recounting Byron's travels between 1809 and 1811 , they depict an exotic landscape endowed with the interest of recent political and military events; the first representation of Romantic Hero, isolated and melancholic, or cynical and bitter. (Mellown) Canto 3 -- in 1816, Byron resistant and

Canto 4 -- in 1818. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe". The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks for distraction in foreign lands. In a wider sense, it is an expression of the melancholy and disillusionment felt by a generation weary of the wars of the post-Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. The title comes from the term childe, a medieval title for a young man who was a candidate for knighthood. Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Style the Spenserian stanza Although in the first two cantos he followed the consciously archaic style of 18th-century imitators of Spenser such as James Thomson, in the later cantos he endowed the stanza with a new speed and flexibility. E.g. The run-on lines move vigorously,

e.g. the use of apostrophes, exclamations, questions, parallels, and hyperboles themes War, Transience, Injustice, Nature

Description of Waterloo leads Byron to expound on characteristic themes: the vicissitudes of earthly existence, the transiency of joy, the evils of injustice, and the futility of war. But the chief interest lies in the attitude to nature. Through Shelley, Byron had come briefly to adopt a Wordsworthian stance, and here he sees nature not just as a refuge from the cold indifference of society but as a life form which is fused with and a part of his own being. Yet unlike Wordsworth, even now Byron often found in nature not so much a mystical communion as a symbol of his own mind, the ``loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow'' (stanza 45) betokening the grand isolation of the romantic genius. (Mellown
The power of Nature To Byron, Nature was a powerful complement to human emotion and civilization. Unlike Wordsworth, who idealized Nature and essentially deified it, Byron saw Nature more as a companion to humanity. Certainly, natural beauty was often preferable to human evil and the problems attendant upon civilization, but Byron also recognized Natures dangerous and harsh elements. The Prisoner of Chillon connects Nature to freedom, while at the same time showing Natures potentially deadly aspects in the harsh waves that seem to threaten to flood the dungeon. Childe Harolds Pilgrimage looks to Nature as a refuge from human conflict, but sees there, amid the avalanches and volcanoes, the seething fury of the natural world. The folly of "love" Throughout his life, Byron sought the perfect object of his affections, which paradoxically made him a fickle and unstable lover to many women (and men). His poetry reflects this tension, although usually with the weight being on the side of capricious love. He idealizes women he knows in his opening stanzas to the first three cantos ofChilde Harolds Pilgrimage, turning them into muses who inspire their respective narratives.

19. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born at Field Place, Sussex, in 1792, the son of a well-to-do landowner.

The combination of new interests, new attitudes, and fresh forms produced a body of literature that was strikingly different from the literature of the eighteenth century, but that is not to say that the eighteenth century had no influence on the romantic movement. Practically all of the seeds of the new literary crop had been sown in the preceding century. The romantic period includes the work of two generations of writers. The first generation was born during the thirty and twenty years preceding 1800; the second generation was born in the last decade of the 1800s. The chief writers of the first generation were Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Southey, Blake, Lamb, and Hazlitt. The essayist Thomas De Quincey, born in 1785, falls between the two generations. Keats and Shelley belong to the second generation, along with Byron, who was older than they were by a few years. All three were influenced by the work of the writers of the first generation and, ironically, the careers of all three were cut short by death so that the writers of the first generation were still on the literary scene after the writers of the second generation had disappeared. The major writers of the second romantic generation were primarily poets; they produced little prose, outside of their letters. Another striking difference between the two generations is that the writers of the first generation, with the exception of Blake, all gained literary reputations during their lifetime. Of the writers of the second generation, only Byron enjoyed fame while he was alive, more fame than any of the other romantic writers, with perhaps the exception of Scott, but Keats and Shelley had relatively few readers while they were alive. It was not until the Victorian era that Keats and Shelley became recognized as major romantic poets.

Traditionally, the 'second generation' of English Romantic poets consists of Lord Byron, John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley
John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale are among his most well known works. Keats had a very short life, dying when he was 25. Literary critics often see this as a tremendous tragedy given his early potential. Percy Bysshe Shelley also died quite young, at the age of 30. His most celebrated works include Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind

Along with Lord Byron and John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley is among the most respected and admired of the second generation of English Romantic poets. Best known for his extended visionary poems, such as Queen Mab and the Triumph of Life, and his short verse poems (including Ozymandias and Ode to the West Wind), Shelley is also famous for his once controversial and radical political ideals and his often-proclaimed social idealism. He is perhaps best known, though, as the husband of the novelist Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein, a novel which Percy Shelley is himself now credited with coauthoring).
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work only having been in publication for [1] four years before his death. Although his poems were not generally well-received by critics during his life, his reputation grew after his death, so that by the end of the 19th century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets.The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analyzed in English literature.Keats is a poet of ideas .He focuses attention on the

subject of his poetry not on himself as poet

20.

The Victorian Period .

1830-1901

period of stability and prosperity for Britain. British society extremely class conscious. Literature seen as a bridge between Romanticism and Modernism. Generally emphasized realistic portrayals of common people, sometimes to promote social change. It was a time of unprecedented demographic increase in England. The population rose from 13.897 million in 1831 to 32.528 million in 1901.

A Time of Change London becomes most important city in Europe,Population of London expands from two million to six million,Shift from ownership of land to modern urban economy,Impact of industrialism,Increase in wealth.Worlds foremost imperial power,Victorian people suffered from anxiety, a sense of being displaced persons in an age of technological advances.,,,Enormous changes occurred in political and social life in England and the rest of the world,,,The scientific and technical innovations of the Industrial Revolution, the emergence of modern nationalism, and the European colonization of much of Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East changed most of Europe,,,,Far-reaching new ideas created the greatest outpouring of literary production the world has ever seen. Queen Victoria and the Victorian Temper Ruled England from 1837-1901 Exemplifies Victorian qualities: earnestness, moral responsibility, domestic propriety The Victorian Period was an age of transition An age characterized by energy and high moral purpose Novels main characteristics: Published in instalments they were cheaper and also read by the lower classes,episodic structure ,excessive length ,obliged to maintain the interest so the reader went on buying the periodicals ,too many details, coincidence and incidents as the writer could modify the story according to the necessity and success .,the development of SENSATIONAL to catch the attention, to create suspense and expectation Victorian Literature is often divided into 3 stages Early -Victorians Mid-Victorians 1860- 1880 Late-Victorians : last 20 years of Victorian Age and Edwardian Age ---------- the sense of dissatisfaction and rebellion prevailed a new sort of realism which rejected any sentimental and romantic attitude; it focused on the clash between man and environment, his dreams and their fulfilment, illusion and reality the writers were critical and attacked the superficial optimism and self confidence of the age , a more pessimistic view.

21

Charles Dickens 1812-1873) The greatest and most perfect Victorian story-teller. He gave English literature some of its most charming and amusing characters: Oliver Twist; David Copperfield; Nicholas Nickleby; His characters are really humors exaggerations of one human quality to the point of caricature. His novels are all animated by a sense of injustice and personal wrong; he is concerned with the problems of crime and poverty. style Dickens descriptions show a wonderful eye for DETAIL. 2. Dickens style of writing is filled spaces, and included lots of REPETITION and long LISTS. 3. Dickens loved words. He included lots of powerful ADJECTIVES, and is famous for his use of METAPHORS and SIMILES. 4. From the early 1850s, Dickens gave public readings of his novels. His writing is RHYTHMIC and designed to be read out loud. 5. The effect is COMIC or heart-breakingly 6. The tone becomes SENTIMENTAL. 7. D. used DIALECT and brilliant sections of DIALOGUE and EXAGGERATION .in literary criticism, a Bildungsroman is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood and in which character change is thus extremely important.[ The plot of a typical English Bildungsroman can usually be divided into three stages in the heros development: childhood, youth and maturity. Pips three stages The organisation of the novel into three volumes conspicuously indicates the three stages of Pips development. Dickens even explicitly writes at the end of the first and second volume: This is the end of the first [second] stage of Pips development.11 These three stages are presented as follows: Pip lives his childhood with his sister and her husband Joe at the forge in the Kent marshes, experiences the metropolitan life of London during his youth and finally the circle closes with the mature Pip returning home to the forge. However, in respect of Pips moral purification and his catharsis from false and hopeless desires the circle appears to be not as closed or as smoothly rounded as it looks at first reading. I will examine this later when analysing the implications of the two endings to the story. Nothing but disappointments? If young Pip sets out to London as a picaresque adventurer, old Pirrip comes home to the marshes as a defeated hero.12This is Hobsbaums debatable conclusion. The title Great Expectations is perfectly devised. Apart from Joe, who contentedly leads a blacksmiths life at the forge in the marshes, and his second wife Biddy everybody entertains expectations related either to themselves or in part to the main character. Pips four great expectations at the same time correspond to the characteristics of the Bildungsroman: Firstly, lacking a real family, he searches for identity and security. Secondly, he strives for education both in respect of knowledge and manners in order to cover up his commonness and coarseness. Thirdly, he devotes all his energies onto developing into a gentleman. Pips definition of a gentleman is based on social class, prestige and money.

22.

Great Expectations

Character List
Pip - The protagonist and narrator of Great Expectations, Pip begins the story as a young orphan boy being raised by his sister and brother-in-law in the marsh country of Kent, in the southeast of England. Pip is passionate, romantic, and somewhat unrealistic at heart, and he tends to expect more for himself than is reasonable. Pip also has a powerful conscience, and he deeply wants to improve himself, both morally and socially. Estella - Miss Havishams beautiful young ward, Estella is Pips unattainable dream throughout the novel. He loves her passionately, but, though she sometimes seems to consider him a friend, she is usually cold, cruel, and uninterested in him. As they grow up together, she repeatedly warns him that she has no heart. Miss Havisham - Miss Havisham is the wealthy, eccentric old woman who lives in a manor called Satis House near Pips village. She is manic and often seems insane, flitting around her house in a faded wedding dress, keeping a decaying feast on her table, and surrounding herself with clocks stopped at twenty minutes to nine. As a young woman, Miss Havisham was jilted by her fianc minutes before her wedding, and now she has a vendetta against all men. She deliberately raises Estella to be the tool of her revenge, training her beautiful ward to break mens hearts. Abel Magwitch (The Convict) - A fearsome criminal, Magwitch escapes from prison at the beginning of Great Expectations and terrorizes Pip in the cemetery. Pips kindness, however, makes a deep impression on him, and he subsequently devotes himself to making a fortune and using it to elevate Pip into a higher social class. Behind the scenes, he becomes Pips secret benefactor, funding Pips education and opulent lifestyle in London through the lawyer Jaggers. Joe Gargery - Pips brother-in-law, the village blacksmith, Joe stays with his overbearing, abusive wifeknown as Mrs. Joe solely out of love for Pip. Joes quiet goodness makes him one of the few completely sympathetic characters in Great Expectations. Although he is uneducated and unrefined, he consistently acts for the benefit of those he loves and suffers in silence when Pip treats him coldly. Jaggers - The powerful, foreboding lawyer hired by Magwitch to supervise Pips elevation to the upper class. As one of the most important criminal lawyers in London, Jaggers is privy to some dirty business; he consorts with vicious criminals, and even they are terrified of him. But there is more to Jaggers than his impenetrable exterior. He often seems to care for Pip, and before the novel begins he helps Miss Havisham to adopt the orphaned Estella. Jaggers smells strongly of soap: he washes his hands obsessively as a psychological mech-anism to keep the criminal taint from corrupting him. Herbert Pocket - Pip first meets Herbert Pocket in the garden of Satis House, when, as a pale young gentleman, Herbert challenges him to a fight. Years later, they meet again in London, and Herbert becomes Pips best friend and key companion after Pips elevation to the status of gentleman. Herbert nicknames Pip Handel. He is the son of Matthew Pocket, Miss Havishams cousin, and hopes to become a merchant so that he can afford to marry Clara Barley. Wemmick - Jaggerss clerk and Pips friend, Wemmick is one of the strangest characters in Great Expectations. At work, he is hard, cynical, sarcastic, and obsessed with portable property; at home in Walworth, he is jovial, wry, and a tender caretaker of his Aged Parent. Biddy - A simple, kindhearted country girl, Biddy first befriends Pip when they attend school together. After Mrs. Joe is attacked and becomes an invalid, Biddy moves into Pips home to care for her. Throughout most of the novel, Biddy represents the opposite of Estella; she is plain, kind, moral, and of Pips own social class. Dolge Orlick - The day laborer in Joes forge, Orlick is a slouching, oafish embodiment of evil. He is malicious and shrewd, hurting people simply because he enjoys it. He is responsible for the attack on Mrs. Joe, and he later almost succeeds in his attempt to murder Pip. Mrs. Joe - Pips sister and Joes wife, known only as Mrs. Joe throughout the novel. Mrs. Joe is a stern and overbearing figure to both Pip and Joe. She keeps a spotless household and frequently menaces her husband and her brother with her cane, which she calls Tickler. She also forces them to drink a foul-tasting concoction called tar-water. Mrs. Joe is petty and ambitious; her fondest wish is to be something more than what she is, the wife of the village blacksmith. Uncle Pumblechook - Pips pompous, arrogant uncle. (He is actually Joes uncle and, therefore, Pips uncle-in-law, but Pip and his sister both call him Uncle Pumblechook.) A merchant obsessed with money, Pumblechook is responsible for arranging Pips first meeting with Miss Havisham. Throughout the rest of the novel, he will shamelessly take credit for Pips rise in social status, even though he has nothing to do with it, since Magwitch, not Miss Havisham, is Pips secret benefactor.

Compeyson - A criminal and the former partner of Magwitch, Compeyson is an educated, gentlemanly outlaw who contrasts sharply with the coarse and uneducated Magwitch. Compeyson is responsible for Magwitchs capture at the end of the novel. He is also the man who jilted Miss Havisham on her wedding day. Bentley Drummle - An oafish, unpleasant young man who attends tutoring sessions with Pip at the Pockets house, Drummle is a minor member of the nobility, and the sense of superiority this gives him makes him feel justified in acting cruelly and harshly toward everyone around him. Drummle eventually marries Estella, to Pips chagrin; she is miserable in their marriage and reunites with Pip after Drummle dies some eleven years later. Molly - Jaggerss housekeeper. In Chapter 48, Pip realizes that she is Estellas mother. Mr. Wopsle - The church clerk in Pips country town; Mr. Wopsles aunt is the local schoolteacher. Sometime after Pip becomes a gentleman, Mr. Wopsle moves to London and becomes an actor. Startop - A friend of Pips and Herberts. Startop is a delicate young man who, with Pip and Drummle, takes tutelage with Matthew Pocket. Later, Startop helps Pip and Herbert with Magwitchs escape. Miss Skiffins - Wemmicks beloved, and eventual wife. Pip As a bildungsroman, Great Expectations presents the growth and development of a single character, Philip Pirrip, better known to himself and to the world as Pip. As the focus of the bildungsroman, Pip is by far the most important character in Great Expectations: he is both the protagonist, whose actions make up the main plot of the novel, and the narrator, whose thoughts and attitudes shape the readers perception of the story. As a result, developing an understanding of Pips character is perhaps the most important step in understanding Great Expectations. Because Pip is narrating his story many years after the events of the novel take place, there are really two Pips in Great Expectations: Pip the narrator and Pip the characterthe voice telling the story and the person acting it out. Dickens takes great care to distinguish the two Pips, imbuing the voice of Pip the narrator with perspective and maturity while also imparting how Pip the character feels about what is happening to him as it actually happens. This skillfully executed distinction is perhaps best observed early in the book, when Pip the character is a child; here, Pip the narrator gently pokes fun at his younger self, but also enables us to see and feel the story through his eyes. As a character, Pips two most important traits are his immature, romantic idealism and his innately good conscience. On the one hand, Pip has a deep desire to improve himself and attain any possible advancement, whether educational, moral, or social. His longing to marry Estella and join the upper classes stems from the same idealistic desire as his longing to learn to read and his fear of being punished for bad behavior: once he understands ideas like poverty, ignorance, and immorality, Pip does not want to be poor, ignorant, or immoral. Pip the narrator judges his own past actions extremely harshly, rarely giving himself credit for good deeds but angrily castigating himself for bad ones. As a character, however, Pips idealism often leads him to perceive the world rather narrowly, and his tendency to oversimplify situations based on superficial values leads him to behave badly toward the people who care about him. When Pip becomes a gentleman, for example, he immediately begins to act as he thinks a gentleman is supposed to act, which leads him to treat Joe and Biddy snobbishly and coldly. On the other hand, Pip is at heart a very generous and sympathetic young man, a fact that can be witnessed in his numerous acts of kindness throughout the book (helping Magwitch, secretly buying Herberts way into business, etc.) and his essential love for all those who love him. Pips main line of development in the novel may be seen as the process of learning to place his innate sense of kindness and conscience above his immature idealism. Not long after meeting Miss Havisham and Estella, Pips desire for advancement largely overshadows his basic goodness. After receiving his mysterious fortune, his idealistic wishes seem to have been justified, and he gives himself over to a gentlemanly life of idleness. But the discovery that the wretched Magwitch, not the wealthy Miss Havisham, is his secret benefactor shatters Pips oversimplified sense of his worlds hierarchy. The fact that he comes to admire Magwitch while losing Estella to the brutish nobleman Drummle ultimately forces him to realize that ones social position is not the most important quality one possesses, and that his behavior as a gentleman has caused him to hurt the people who care about him most. Once he has learned these lessons, Pip matures into the man who narrates the novel, completing the bildungsroman. Estella Often cited as Dickenss first convincing female character, Estella is a supremely ironic creation, one who darkly undermines the notion of romantic love and serves as a bitter criticism against the class system in which she is mired. Raised from the age of three by Miss Havisham to torment men and break their hearts, Estella wins Pips deepest love by practicing deliberate cruelty. Unlike the warm, winsome, kind heroine of a traditional love story, Estella is cold, cynical, and manipulative. Though she represents Pips

first longed-for ideal of life among the upper classes, Estella is actually even lower-born than Pip; as Pip learns near the end of the novel, she is the daughter of Magwitch, the coarse convict, and thus springs from the very lowest level of society. Ironically, life among the upper classes does not represent salvation for Estella. Instead, she is victimized twice by her adopted class. Rather than being raised by Magwitch, a man of great inner nobility, she is raised by Miss Havisham, who destroys her ability to express emotion and interact normally with the world. And rather than marrying the kindhearted commoner Pip, Estella marries the cruel nobleman Drummle, who treats her harshly and makes her life miserable for many years. In this way, Dickens uses Estellas life to reinforce the idea that ones happiness and well-being are not deeply connected to ones social position: had Estella been poor, she might have been substantially better off. Despite her cold behavior and the damaging influences in her life, Dickens nevertheless ensures that Estella is still a sympathetic character. By giving the reader a sense of her inner struggle to discover and act on her own feelings rather than on the imposed motives of her upbringing, Dickens gives the reader a glimpse of Estellas inner life, which helps to explain what Pip might love about her. Estella does not seem able to stop herself from hurting Pip, but she also seems not to want to hurt him; she repeatedly warns him that she has no heart and seems to urge him as strongly as she can to find happiness by leaving her behind. Finally, Estellas long, painful marriage to Drummle causes her to develop along the same lines as Pipthat is, she learns, through experience, to rely on and trust her inner feelings. In the final scene of the novel, she has become her own woman for the first time in the book. As she says to Pip, Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching. . . . I have been bent and broken, butI hopeinto a better shape. Miss Havisham The mad, vengeful Miss Havisham, a wealthy dowager who lives in a rotting mansion and wears an old wedding dress every day of her life, is not exactly a believable character, but she is certainly one of the most memorable creations in the book. Miss Havishams life is defined by a single tragic event: her jilting by Compeyson on what was to have been their wedding day. From that moment forth, Miss Havisham is determined never to move beyond her heartbreak. She stops all the clocks in Satis House at twenty minutes to nine, the moment when she first learned that Compeyson was gone, and she wears only one shoe, because when she learned of his betrayal, she had not yet put on the other shoe. With a kind of manic, obsessive cruelty, Miss Havisham adopts Estella and raises her as a weapon to achieve her own revenge on men. Miss Havisham is an example of single-minded vengeance pursued destructively: both Miss Havisham and the people in her life suffer greatly because of her quest for revenge. Miss Havisham is completely unable to see that her actions are hurtful to Pip and Estella. She is redeemed at the end of the novel when she realizes that she has caused Pips heart to be broken in the same manner as her own; rather than achieving any kind of personal revenge, she has only caused more pain. Miss Havisham immediately begs Pip for forgiveness, reinforcing the novels theme that bad behavior can be redeemed by contrition and sympathy.

23

William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for

his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society. 1847-1848

the first major work published by Thackeray under his own name appeared in monthly installments. subtitled A Novel without a Hero.

Vanity Fair, a satirical novel of manners, was published (1847-48) in serial form without sufficient time for revisions by Thackeray. Occasionally, time sequences are not clear. Names are not always consistent; for example, Mrs. Bute Crawley is sometimes Martha, sometimes Barbara. Glorvina, sister of Peggy O'Dowd, is also called Glorvina O'Dowd, as if she were Major O'Dowd's sister. Promotion in military status may change titles, and advancement in society may change rank and title. In spite of the confusion, Vanity Fairfascinates the careful reader. Over a hundred years ago when this book was written, readers had time to savor Thackeray's various digressions into morals, psychology, and human foibles. The modern reader may be bewildered by the rambling, and by the vast number of characters, some of whom appear only as names. However, he will have no trouble following the six main characters through changes of fortune and, in some cases, of outlook. Any curiosity aroused concerning a character will be satisfied by the time one has finished the story.

24.

For the purposes of this study, the book has been divided into the original installments as published. This set of notes does not attempt to take the place of reading the book. It would be impossible to catch the sly irony, the tongue-in-cheek humor of Thackeray's remarks on the human race without reading Vanity Fair at sufficient leisure to realize its subtle meanings. Of necessity, because of the length of the book, this condensation must leave out many incidents and commentaries by the author. For this reason, also, the student is urged to read Vanity Fair for himself. William Thackeray (1811-1863)was born in Calcutta (India) bu spent his childhood in Egland where he was educated. After a period working as a journalist in Paris on his stepfather's newspaper he returned to England and began his career as a writer. He had a dark, sarcastic and misanthropic view of life. His gift as caricaturist enabled him to capture th essential features of life and social behaviour. He had a keen eye for things that were pretentious and hypocritical and he believed that his moral duty was to remove the mask that affected people used to conceal the real nature of their thoughts and intentions. He did so in "The Luck of Barry Lyndon" (1844) and "The Book of Snobs" (1848). He was a realist whose aim was to depict things the way they are. This he attempted in "Pendennis" (1848). The object of his attacks were the upper and middle classes. in "Vanity Fair" (1847) he attacked the belief that the meek and the mild receive what they deserve. He shows us the contrary. At the end of the book, however he gives way to the dilemma that many Victorian writers faced-depict life as it really is or as it should be. His story in fact has a happy ending. Thackeray saw the writer as serving a necessary functionto raise the consciousness of his readers. He came to see himself as a Satirical-Moralist, with a responsibility both to amuse and to teach. He aimed not only to expose the false values and practices of society and its institutions and to portray the selfish, callous behavior of individuals, but also to affirm the value of truth, justice, and kindness. This double aim is reflected in his description of himself as satiric and kind: "under the mask satirical there walks about a sentimental gentleman who means not unkindly to any mortal person." Though Thackeray set his novel a generation earlier, Thackeray was really writing about his own society (he even used contemporary clothing in his illustrations for the novel). Thackeray saw how capitalism and imperialism with their emphasis on wealth, material goods, and ostentation had corrupted society and how the inherited social order and institutions, including the aristocracy, the church, the military, and the foreign service, regarded only family, rank, power, and appearance. These values morally crippled and emotionally bankrupted every social class from servants through the middle classes to the aristocracy. High and low, individuals were selfish and incapable of loving. Well aware of himself as flawed, he identified with the self-centered and foolish characters he portrayed in Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair is considered a classic of English literature and one of the great works of satire in all history. The book mainly concerns two young women, Becky and Amelia, who, although friends, are very different from one another. While Amelia is sweet and unimposing, Becky is ambitious and shrewd, and determined to get what she whatever she wants. The story then follows them throughout their lives, and how and with whom they end them.

25
Although Charlotte Bront is one of the most famous Victorian women writers, only two of her poems are widely read today, and these are not her best or most interesting poems. Like her contemporary Elizabeth Barrett Browning, she experimented with the poetic forms that became the characteristic modes of the Victorian periodthe long narrative poem and the dramatic monologuebut unlike Browning, Bront gave up writing poetry at the beginning of her professional career, when she became identified in the public mind as the author of the popular novel Jane Eyre (1847). Included in this novel are the two songs by which most people know her poetry today. Bront's decision to abandon poetry for novel writing exemplifies the dramatic shift in literary tastes and the marketability of literary genresfrom poetry to prose fictionthat occurred in the 1830s and 1840s. Her experience as a poet thus reflects the dominant trends in early Victorian literary culture and demonstrates her centrality to the history of nineteenth-century literature. In the mid-nineteenth century, a woman would have carried the burden of "staying in her place." In other words, she was subject to the generally accepted standards and roles that society had placed upon her, which did not necessarily provide her with liberty, dignity or independence. Yet if Charlotte Bronte's character Jane Eyre had truly existed in that time period, she would have defied most of these cultural standards and proved herself a paradigm for aspiring feminists of her day. Jane's commitment to dignity, independence, freedom of choice, unwillingness to submit to a man's emotional power and willingness to speak her mind were fostered by some female characters in the novel. jane Eyre, of course, did not take to the streets with her feminist ideals, but she expressed her view of women's equality almost subconsciously, through word and deed. She lived in a "world that measured the likelihood of her success by the degree of her marriageability," which would have included her familial connections, economic status and beauty ,,,,, Two of Jane's actions are the most explicit in proving her role as a feminist. The first is her attitude toward Mr. Rochester's attempts to lavish her with jewels and expensive garments for her wedding. In fact, she says that "the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation" ,,,, The second action is Jane's leaving of Mr. Rochester, which exhibits her courage. By this deed, she both defies the Victorian expectation of submitting to a man's will (i.e., acting as Rochester's mistress) and shows that she can break from the emotional power that Rochester wields over her.
27. Themes Love Versus Autonomy Jane Eyre is very much the story of a quest to be loved. Jane searches, not just for romantic love, but also for a sense of being valued, of belonging. Thus Jane says to Helen Burns: to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest (Chapter 8). Yet, over the course of the book, Jane must learn how to gain love without sacrificing and harming herself in the process. Her fear of losing her autonomy motivates her refusal of Rochesters marriage proposal. Jane believes that marrying Rochester while he remains legally tied to Bertha would mean rendering herself a mistress and sacrificing her own integrity for the sake of emotional gratification. On the other hand, her life at Moor House tests her in the opposite manner. There, she enjoys economic independence and engages in worthwhile and useful work, teaching the poor; yet she lacks emotional sustenance. Although St. John proposes marriage, offering her a partnership built around a common purpose, Jane knows their marriage would remain loveless. Nonetheless, the events of Janes stay at Moor House are necessary tests of Janes autonomy. Only after proving her selfsufficiency to herself can she marry Rochester and not be asymmetrically dependent upon him as her master. The marriage can be one between equals. As Jane says: I am my husbands life as fully as he is mine. . . . To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. . . . We are precisely suited in characterperfect concord is the result (Chapter 38).

Religion Throughout the novel, Jane struggles to find the right balance between moral duty and earthly pleasure, between obligation to her spirit and attention to her body. She encounters three main religious figures: Mr. Brocklehurst, Helen Burns, and St. John Rivers. Each represents a model of religion that Jane ultimately rejects as she forms her own ideas about faith and principle, and their practical consequences. Mr. Brocklehurst illustrates the dangers and hypocrisies that Charlotte Bront perceived in the nineteenth-century Evangelical movement. Mr. Brocklehurst adopts the rhetoric of Evangelicalism when he claims to be purging his students of pride, but his method of subjecting them to various privations and humiliations, like when he orders that the naturally curly hair of one of Janes classmates be cut so as to lie straight, is entirely un-Christian. Of course, Brocklehursts proscriptions are difficult to follow, and his hypocritical support of his own luxuriously wealthy family at the expense of the Lowood students shows Bronts wariness of the Evangelical movement. Helen Burnss meek and forbearing mode of Christianity, on the other hand, is too passive for Jane to adopt as her own, although she loves and admires Helen for it. Many chapters later, St. John Rivers provides another model of Christian behavior. His is a Christianity of ambition, glory, and extreme self-importance. St. John urges Jane to sacrifice her emotional deeds for the fulfillment of her moral duty, offering her a way of life that would require her to be disloyal to her own self. Although Jane ends up rejecting all three models of religion, she does not abandon morality, spiritualism, or a belief in a Christian God. When her wedding is interrupted, she prays to God for solace (Chapter 26). As she wanders the heath, poor and starving, she puts her survival in the hands of God (Chapter 28). She strongly objects to Rochesters lustful immorality, and she refuses to consider living with him while church and state still deem him married to another woman. Even so, Jane can barely bring herself to leave the only love she has ever known. She credits God with helping her to escape what she knows would have been an immoral life (Chapter 27). Jane ultimately finds a comfortable middle ground. Her spiritual understanding is not hateful and oppressive like Brocklehursts, nor does it require retreat from the everyday world as Helens and St. Johns religions do. For Jane, religion helps curb immoderate passions, and it spurs one on to worldly efforts and achievements. These achievements include full self-knowledge and complete faith in God. Social Class Jane Eyre is critical of Victorian Englands strict social hierarchy. Bronts exploration of the complicated social position of governesses is perhaps the novels most important treatment of this theme. Like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Jane is a figure of ambiguous class standing and, consequently, a source of extreme tension for the characters around her. Janes manners, sophistication, and education are those of an aristocrat, because Victorian governesses, who tutored children in etiquette as well as academics, were expected to possess the culture of the aristocracy. Yet, as paid employees, they were more or less treated as servants; thus, Jane remains penniless and powerless while at Thornfield. Janes understanding of the double standard crystallizes when she becomes aware of her feelings for Rochester; she is his intellectual, but not his social, equal. Even before the crisis surrounding Bertha Mason, Jane is hesitant to marry Rochester because she senses that she would feel indebted to him for condescending to marry her. Janes distress, which appears most strongly in Chapter 17, seems to be Bronts critique of Victorian class attitudes. Jane herself speaks out against class prejudice at certain moments in the book. For example, in Chapter 23 she chastises Rochester: Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!I have as much soul as youand full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. However, it is also important to note that nowhere in Jane Eyre are societys boundaries bent. Ultimately, Jane is only able to marry Rochester as his equal because she has almost magically come into her own inheritance from her uncle. Gender Relations Jane struggles continually to achieve equality and to overcome oppression. In addition to class hierarchy, she must fight against patriarchal dominationagainst those who believe women to be inferior to men and try to treat them as such. Three central male figures threaten her desire for equality and dignity: Mr. Brocklehurst, Edward Rochester, and St. John Rivers. All three are misogynistic on some level. Each tries to keep Jane in a submissive position, where she is unable to express her own thoughts and feelings. In her quest for independence and self-knowledge, Jane must escape Brocklehurst, reject St. John, and come to Rochester only after ensuring that they may marry as equals. This last condition is met once Jane proves herself able to function, through the time she spends at Moor House, in a community and in a family. She will not depend solely on Rochester for love and she can be financially independent. Furthermore, Rochester is blind at the novels end and thus dependent upon Jane to be his prop and guide. In Chapter 12, Jane articulates what was for her time a radically feminist philosophy: Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would

suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

29. Character List

Heathcliff - An orphan brought to live at Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff falls into an intense, unbreakable love with Mr. Earnshaws daughter Catherine. After Mr. Earnshaw dies, his resentful son Hindley abuses Heathcliff and treats him as a servant. Because of her desire for social prominence, Catherine marries Edgar Linton instead of Heathcliff. Heathcliffs humiliation and misery prompt him to spend most of the rest of his life seeking revenge on Hindley, his beloved Catherine, and their respective children (Hareton and young Catherine). A powerful, fierce, and often cruel man, Heathcliff acquires a fortune and uses his extraordinary powers of will to acquire both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, the estate of Edgar Linton. Catherine - The daughter of Mr. Earnshaw and his wife, Catherine falls powerfully in love with Heathcliff, the orphan Mr. Earnshaw brings home from Liverpool. Catherine loves Heathcliff so intensely that she claims they are the same person. However, her desire for social advancement motivates her to marry Edgar Linton instead. Catherine is free-spirited, beautiful, spoiled, and often arrogant. She is given to fits of temper, and she is torn between her wild passion for Heathcliff and her social ambition. She brings misery to both of the men who love her. Edgar Linton - Well-bred but rather spoiled as a boy, Edgar Linton grows into a tender, constant, but cowardly man. He is almost the ideal gentleman: Catherine accurately describes him as handsome, pleasant to be with, cheerful, and rich. However, this full assortment of gentlemanly characteristics, along with his civilized virtues, proves useless in Edgars clashes with his foil, Heathcliff, who gains power over his wife, sister, and daughter. Nelly Dean - Nelly Dean (known formally as Ellen Dean) serves as the chief narrator of Wuthering Heights. A sensible, intelligent, and compassionate woman, she grew up essentially alongside Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw and is deeply involved in the story she tells. She has strong feelings for the characters in her story, and these feelings complicate her narration. Lockwood - Lockwoods narration forms a frame around Nellys; he serves as an intermediary between Nelly and the reader. A somewhat vain and presumptuous gentleman, he deals very clumsily with the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. Lockwood comes from a more domesticated region of England, and he finds himself at a loss when he witnesses the strange households disregard for the social conventions that have always structured his world. As a narrator, his vanity and unfamiliarity with the story occasionally lead him to misunderstand events. Young Catherine - For claritys sake, this SparkNote refers to the daughter of Edgar Linton and the first Catherine as young Catherine. The first Catherine begins her life as Catherine Earnshaw and ends it as Catherine Linton; her daughter begins as Catherine Linton and, assuming that she marries Hareton after the end of the story, goes on to become Catherine Earnshaw. The mother and the daughter share not only a name, but also a tendency toward headstrong behavior, impetuousness, and occasional arrogance. However, Edgars influence seems to have tempered young Catherines character, and she is a gentler and more compassionate creature than her mother. Hareton Earnshaw - The son of Hindley and Frances Earnshaw, Hareton is Catherines nephew. After Hindleys death, Heathcliff assumes custody of Hareton, and raises him as an uneducated field worker, just as Hindley had done to Heathcliff himself. Thus Heathcliff uses Hareton to seek revenge on Hindley. Illiterate and quick-tempered, Hareton is easily humiliated, but shows a good heart and a deep desire to improve himself. At the end of the novel, he marries young Catherine. Linton Heathcliff - Heathcliffs son by Isabella. Weak, sniveling, demanding, and constantly ill, Linton is raised in London by his mother and does not meet his father until he is thirteen years old, when he goes to live with him after his mothers death. Heathcliff despises Linton, treats him contemptuously, and, by forcing him to marry the young Catherine, uses him to cement his control over Thrushcross Grange after Edgar Lintons death. Linton himself dies not long after this marriage. Hindley Earnshaw - Catherines brother, and Mr. Earnshaws son. Hindley resents it when Heathcliff is brought to live at Wuthering Heights. After his father dies and he inherits the estate, Hindley begins to abuse the young Heathcliff, terminating his education and forcing him to work in the fields. When Hindleys wife Frances dies shortly after giving birth to their son Hareton, he lapses into alcoholism and dissipation. Isabella Linton - Edgar Lintons sister, who falls in love with Heathcliff and marries him. She sees Heathcliff as a romantic figure, like a character in a novel. Ultimately, she ruins her life by falling in love with him. He never returns her feelings and treats her as a mere tool in his quest for revenge on the Linton family.

Mr. Earnshaw - Catherine and Hindleys father. Mr. Earnshaw adopts Heathcliff and brings him to live at Wuthering Heights. Mr. Earnshaw prefers Heathcliff to Hindley but nevertheless bequeaths Wuthering Heights to Hindley when he dies. Mrs. Earnshaw - Catherine and Hindleys mother, who neither likes nor trusts the orphan Heathcliff when he is brought to live at her house. She dies shortly after Heathcliffs arrival at Wuthering Heights. Joseph - A long-winded, fanatically religious, elderly servant at Wuthering Heights. Joseph is strange, stubborn, and unkind, and he speaks with a thick Yorkshire accent. Frances Earnshaw - Hindleys simpering, silly wife, who treats Heathcliff cruelly. She dies shortly after giving birth to Hareton. Mr. Linton - Edgar and Isabellas father and the proprietor of Thrushcross Grange when Heathcliff and Catherine are children. An established member of the gentry, he raises his son and daughter to be well-mannered young people. Mrs. Linton - Mr. Lintons somewhat snobbish wife, who does not like Heathcliff to be allowed near her children, Edgar and Isabella. She teaches Catherine to act like a gentle-woman, thereby instilling her with social ambitions. Zillah - The housekeeper at Wuthering Heights during the latter stages of the narrative.

30.

Themes

-The Destructiveness of a Love That Never Changes Catherine and Heathcliffs passion for one another seems to be the center ofWuthering Heights, given that it is stronger and more lasting than any other emotion displayed in the novel, and that it is the source of most of the major conflicts that structure the novels plot. As she tells Catherine and Heathcliffs story, Nelly criticizes both of them harshly, condemning their passion as immoral, but this passion is obviously one of the most compelling and memorable aspects of the book. It is not easy to decide whether Bront intends the reader to condemn these lovers as blameworthy or to idealize them as romantic heroes whose love transcends social norms and conventional morality. The book is actually structured around two parallel love stories, the first half of the novel centering on the love between Catherine and Heathcliff, while the less dramatic second half features the developing love between young Catherine and Hareton. In contrast to the first, the latter tale ends happily, restoring peace and order to Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The differences between the two love stories contribute to the readers understanding of why each ends the way it does. The most important feature of young Catherine and Haretons love story is that it involves growth and change. Early in the novel Hareton seems irredeemably brutal, savage, and illiterate, but over time he becomes a loyal friend to young Catherine and learns to read. When young Catherine first meets Hareton he seems completely alien to her world, yet her attitude also evolves from contempt to love. Catherine and Heathcliffs love, on the other hand, is rooted in their childhood and is marked by the refusal to change. In choosing to marry Edgar, Catherine seeks a more genteel life, but she refuses to adapt to her role as wife, either by sacrificing Heathcliff or embracing Edgar. In Chapter XII she suggests to Nelly that the years since she was twelve years old and her father died have been like a blank to her, and she longs to return to the moors of her childhood. Heathcliff, for his part, possesses a seemingly superhuman ability to maintain the same attitude and to nurse the same grudges over many years. Moreover, Catherine and Heathcliffs love is based on their shared perception that they are identical. Catherine declares, famously, I am Heathcliff, while Heathcliff, upon Catherines death, wails that he cannot live without his soul, meaning Catherine. Their love denies difference, and is strangely asexual. The two do not kiss in dark corners or arrange secret trysts, as adulterers do. Given that Catherine and Heathcliffs love is based upon their refusal to change over time or embrace difference in others, it is fitting that the disastrous problems of their generation are overcome not by some climactic reversal, but simply by the inexorable passage of time, and the rise of a new and distinct generation. Ultimately, Wuthering Heights presents a vision of life as a process of change, and celebrates this process over and against the romantic intensity of its principal characters. The Precariousness of Social Class As members of the gentry, the Earnshaws and the Lintons occupy a somewhat precarious place within the hierarchy of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British society. At the top of British society was the royalty, followed by the aristocracy, then by the gentry, and then by the lower classes, who made up the vast majority of the population. Although the gentry, or upper middle class, possessed servants and often large estates, they held a nonetheless fragile social position. The social status of aristocrats was a formal and settled matter, because aristocrats had official titles. Members of the gentry, however, held no titles, and their status was thus subject to change. A man might see himself as a gentleman but find, to his embarrassment, that his neighbors did not share this view. A discussion of whether or not a man was really a gentleman would consider such questions as how much land he owned, how many tenants and servants he had, how he spoke, whether he kept horses and a carriage, and whether his money came from land or tradegentlemen scorned banking and commercial activities.

Considerations of class status often crucially inform the characters motivations in Wuthering Heights. Catherines decision to marry Edgar so that she will be the greatest woman of the neighborhood is only the most obvious example. The Lintons are relatively firm in their gentry status but nonetheless take great pains to prove this status through their behaviors. The Earnshaws, on the other hand, rest on much shakier ground socially. They do not have a carriage, they have less land, and their house, as Lockwood remarks with great puzzlement, resembles that of a homely, northern farmer and not that of a gentleman. The shifting nature of social status is demonstrated most strikingly in Heathcliffs trajectory from homeless waif to young gentleman-by-adoption to common laborer to gentleman again (although the status-conscious Lockwood remarks that Heathcliff is only a gentleman in dress and manners).

31. Thomas Hardy; English poet and regional novelist, whose works depict the imaginary county "Wessex" (=Dorset). Hardy's career as writer spanned over fifty years. Hardy's work reflected his stoical pessimism and sense of tragedy in human life TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES (1891) came into conflict with Victorian morality. It explored the dark side of his family connections in Berkshire. In the story the poor villager girl Tess Durbeyfield is seduced by the wealthy Alec D'Uberville. She becomes pregnant but the child dies in infancy. Tess finds work as a dairymaid on a farm and falls in love with Angel Clare, a clergyman's son. They marry but when Tess tells Angel about her past, he hypocritically desert her. Tess becomes Alec's mistress. Angel returns from Brazil, repenting his harshness, but finds her living with Alec. Tess kills Alec in desperation, she is arrested and hanged. Hardy published two more novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895), which were his last long fiction works. The last novels challenged the sensibilities of Victorian readers with situations that ruffled many a Victorian feather: immoral sex, murder, illegitimate children, and the unmarried living together. Heated debate and criticism over these two books helped Hardy decide that he would rather write poetry. In fact, so stung was he by the criticism of his works that Hardy did not write another novel. he built a reputation as a successful novelist, Hardy considered himself first and foremost a poet. To him, novels were primarily a means of earning a living. Like many of his contemporaries, he first published his novels in periodic installments in magazines or serial journals, and his work reflects the conventions of serialization. To ensure that readers would buy a serialized novel, writers often structured each installment to be something of a cliffhanger, which explained the convoluted, often incredible plots of many such Victorian novels. But Hardy cannot solely be labeled a Victorian novelist. Nor can he be categorized simply as a Modernist, in the tradition of writers like Virginia Woolf or D. H. Lawrence, who were determined to explode the conventions of nineteenth-century literature and build a new kind of novel in its place. In many respects, Hardy was trapped in the middle ground between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, between Victorian sensibilities and more modern ones, and between tradition and innovation. Soon after Tess of the dUrbervilles (1891) was published, its sales assured Hardys financial future. But the novel also aroused a substantial amount of controversy. In Tess of the dUrbervilles and other novels, Hardy demonstrates his deep sense of moral sympathy for Englands lower classes, particularly for rural women. He became famous for his compassionate, often controversial portrayal of young women victimized by the self-righteous rigidity of English social morality. Perhaps his most famous depiction of such a young woman is in Tess of the dUrbervilles. This novel and the one that followed it, Jude the Obscure (1895), engendered widespread public scandal with their comparatively frank look at the sexual hypocrisy of English society. Hardy lived and wrote in a time of difficult social change, when England was making its slow and painful transition from an old-fashioned, agricultural nation to a modern, industrial one. Businessmen and entrepreneurs, or new money, joined the ranks of the social elite, as some families of the ancient aristocracy, or old money, faded into obscurity. Tesss family in Tess of the dUrbervilles illustrates this change, as Tesss parents, the Durbeyfields, lose themselves in the fantasy of belonging to an ancient and aristocratic family, the dUrbervilles. Hardys novel strongly suggests that such a family history is not only meaningless but also utterly undesirable. Hardys views on the subject were appalling to

conservative and status-conscious British readers, and Tess of the dUrbervilles was met in England with widespread controversy.

32. Character List

Tess (Teresa) Durbeyfield The main character and heroine of the novel. She is beautiful and irresistible to men. She is also young, innocent, and uneducated unaware that the world is rife with lust, cruelty, and vanity. Alec d'Urberville Heir to d'Urberville fortune who has Tess brought to The Slopes with the hope of seducing her. He is the consummate playboy, who knows no bounds to debauch women. He ruins Tess and does not know that she has had his child until much later. He convinces Tess that Angel, her husband, will not return from Brazil, and he finally pays for his deceit with his life. Angel Clare Youngest son of Parson Clare of Emminster, who becomes Tess' husband. After the wedding, when he finally learns of Tess' past with Alec and her son Sorrow, he leaves her and spends the next year in Brazil. Angel eventually returns to England to reclaim Tess but finds her with Alec. After Alec's murder, Angel remains with Tess until her arrest and agrees to take Liza Lu as his wife after Tess meets her fate on the gallows. John Durbeyfield Tess' father. He is a haggler/higgler, a middleman who buys vegetables and poultry from wholesalers to sell to retailers. Uneducated and poor, he is shiftless, drinks to excess, and is not a good provider for his family, leaving them destitute when he dies. Joan Durbeyfield Tess' mother who does her best to raise her seven children. It is Joan's plan to sent Tess to "claim kin" with the d'Urbervilles. Joan fails to warn Tess of the desires of men and the meaning of love. Eliza-Louise (Liza Lu) Liza Lu is the second Durbeyfield child; she is twelve years old when the novel begins and appears in only a few chapters. In the end, Liza Lu and Angel are united, as Tess had asked, when Tess dies. Abraham, Hope, and Modesty Durbeyfield The other Durbeyfield children; Tess' younger siblings. Sorrow Durbeyfield/d'Urberville Tess' child with Alec d'Urberville, who dies in infancy. Parson and Mrs. Clare Angel's parents. Cuthbert and Felix Clare Angel's brothers. Parson Tringham The minister who tells John Durbeyfield of his lineage. Mrs. d'Urberville Alec's mother, a sixty-year-old widow who owns The Slopes. Mercy Chant The woman Angel's family wanted him to marry; she eventually marries Cuthbert Clare. Mr. Richard Crick Dairy farmer who owns Talbothays Dairy. He is kind to Tess and Angel. Izz Huett, Marian, and Retty Priddle Tess' friends at Talbothays and Flintcomb-Ash. All are also in love with Angel. Farmer Groby Farmer in charge of Flintcomb-Ash, the second farm where Tess works. He is very hard and demanding. Mrs. Brooks Innkeeper at Sandbourne for The Herons, where Alec is murdered. Character AnalysisTeresa "Tess" Durbeyfield -Tess is one of Hardy's most sympathetic protagonists. She is as likeable as a literary character found in all of English literature. Readers come to understand her plight and her acceptance of the seemingly inevitable things that happen to her. Not once during the novel does Tess exhibit any traits that take away from Hardy's portrayal of her as a good person. As a result, by the end of the novel, we wish for a happy ending for Tess and Angel, but we know that not all stories end on a positive note. Throughout the novel, Hardy develops Tess as a character and describes her simple beauty. She is attractive to all men, and even her attempts to change her appearance are not enough to hide her natural beauty. Further in the story, Tess is depicted as a person of near divine qualities when she baptizes

Sorrow before he dies. Hardy calls the effect on her siblings as a "transfiguring effect" and that she looked "with a touch of dignity which was almost regal." Tess' beauty is balanced by her earthy elegance, and this is especially evident when she is being courted by Angel at Talbothays Angel is a good man. He begins his relationship with Tess by offering to tutor her in history or any subject of her choosing, to make up for her lack of higher education. She gently refuses, but he cannot help but fall in love with a gentle girl. His gentlemanly ways also come to the fore when he offers to carry all four dairymaids over a swollen creek when the girls are on their way to church. Angel is Hardy's voice of agnosticism and the views of religious "freethinkers," those who reject of "the tenets and traditions of formal religion as incompatible with reason." The movement looks to associate with religion but without its formal ties to a church per se. Angel could be construed as a deist; that is, he sees God as a creative, living force, but he rejects formal religion.

33.

Themes

The Injustice of Existence Unfairness dominates the lives of Tess and her family to such an extent that it begins to seem like a general aspect of human existence in Tess of the dUrbervilles. Tess does not mean to kill Prince, but she is punished anyway, just as she is unfairly punished for her own rape by Alec. Nor is there justice waiting in heaven. Christianity teaches that there is compensation in the afterlife for unhappiness suffered in this life, but the only devout Christian encountered in the novel may be the reverend, Mr. Clare, who seems more or less content in his life anyway. For others in their misery, Christianity offers little solace of heavenly justice. Mrs. Durbeyfield never mentions otherworldly rewards. The converted Alec preaches heavenly justice for earthly sinners, but his faith seems shallow and insincere. Generally, the moral atmosphere of the novel is not Christian justice at all, but pagan injustice. The forces that rule human life are absolutely unpredictable and not necessarily well-disposed to us. The pre-Christian rituals practiced by the farm workers at the opening of the novel, and Tesss final rest at Stonehenge at the end, remind us of a world where the gods are not just and fair, but whimsical and uncaring. When the narrator concludes the novel with the statement that Justice was done, and the President of the Immortals (in the Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess, we are reminded that justice must be put in ironic quotation marks, since it is not really just at all. What passes for Justice is in fact one of the pagan gods enjoying a bit of sport, or a frivolous game. Changing Ideas of Social Class in Victorian England Tess of the dUrbervilles presents complex pictures of both the importance of social class in nineteenth-century England and the difficulty of defining class in any simple way. Certainly the Durbeyfields are a powerful emblem of the way in which class is no longer evaluated in Victorian times as it would have been in the Middle Agesthat is, by blood alone, with no attention paid to fortune or worldly success. Indubitably the Durbeyfields have purity of blood, yet for the parson and nearly everyone else in the novel, this fact amounts to nothing more than a piece of genealogical trivia. In the Victorian context, cash matters more than lineage, which explains how Simon Stokes, Alecs father, was smoothly able to use his large fortune to purchase a lustrous family name and transform his clan into the Stoke-dUrbervilles. The dUrbervilles pass for what the Durbeyfields truly areauthentic nobilitysimply because definitions of class have changed. The issue of class confusion even affects the Clare clan, whose most promising son, Angel, is intent on becoming a farmer and marrying a milkmaid, thus bypassing the traditional privileges of a Cambridge education and a parsonage. His willingness to work side by side with the farm laborers helps endear him to Tess, and their acquaintance would not have been possible if he were a more traditional and elitist aristocrat. Thus, the three main characters in the Angel-TessAlec triangle are all strongly marked by confusion regarding their respective social classes, an issue that is one of the main concerns of the novel. Men Dominating Women One of the recurrent themes of the novel is the way in which men can dominate women, exerting a power over them linked primarily to their maleness. Sometimes this command is purposeful, in the mans full knowledge of his exploitation, as when Alec acknowledges how bad he is for seducing Tess for his own momentary pleasure. Alecs act of abuse, the most life-altering event that Tess experiences in the novel, is clearly the most serious instance of male domination over a female. But there are other, less blatant examples of womens passivity toward dominant men. When, after Angel reveals that he prefers Tess, Tesss friend Retty attempts suicide and her friend Marian becomes an alcoholic, which makes their earlier schoolgirl-type crushes on Angel seem disturbing. This devotion is not merely fanciful love, but unhealthy obsession. These girls appear utterly dominated by a desire for a man who, we are told explicitly, does not even realize that they are interested in him. This sort of unconscious male domination of women is perhaps even more unsettling than Alecs outward and self-conscious cruelty. Even Angels love for Tess, as pure and gentle as it seems, dominates her in an unhealthy way. Angel substitutes an idealized picture of Tesss country purity for the real-life woman that he continually refuses to get to know. When Angel calls Tess names like Daughter of Nature and Artemis, we feel that he may be denying her true self in favor of a mental image that he prefers. Thus,

her identity and experiences are suppressed, albeit unknowingly. This pattern of male domination is finally reversed with Tesss murder of Alec, in which, for the first time in the novel, a woman takes active steps against a man. Of course, this act only leads to even greater suppression of a woman by men, when the crowd of male police officers arrest Tess at Stonehenge. Nevertheless, for just a moment, the accepted pattern of submissive women bowing to dominant men is interrupted, and Tesss act seems heroic.