ASSIGNMENT SOLUTIONS GUIDE (2015-2016)

MEG-03
British Novel
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Answer all the questions.
Q. 1. Trace the development of modern English fiction with specific reference to the major shifts in literary perspective during the nineteenth century.
Ans. While Ian Watt in The Rise of the Novel (1957) suggests that the novel came into being in the early 18th century which witnessed the rise of increasingly realistic fiction, and with a distinction made between fiction and history. This development reduced the importance of works of disreputable fiction. Fiction became valued as a defender of a higher truth, a truth beyond the flat, factual and historical truth of everyday experience.
In the second half of the 18th century theories of aesthetics praised the “imitation of nature” and the artist’s almost divine power to create worlds of a deeper significance. The previous conflict between historians and romancers was thus finally resolved: fictions and true histories became two distinct fields that the modern nations needed.
During the 19th century, romances continued to be written in Britain, and major writers such as Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy were influenced by the tradition. The Brontë sisters are notable mid-19th-century creators of romance. Most 19th-century authors hardly went beyond illustrating and supporting widespread historical views. The more interesting titles won fame by doing what no historian or journalist could do: make the reader experience another life. Émile Zola’s novels depicted the world of the working classes, which Marx and Engels wrote about in a non-fictional mode. Slavery in the United States, abolitionism and racism became topics of far broader public debate thanks to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), which dramatises topics that had previously been discussed mainly in the abstract. Charles Dickens novels led his readers into contemporary workhouses, and provided first hand accounts of child labour. The treatment of the subject of war changed with Leo Tolstoy’s War and
Peace (1868/69), where he questions the facts provided by historians. Similarly the treatment of crime is very different in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), where the point of view is that of a criminal.
Women authors had dominated the production of fiction from the 1640s into the early 18th century, but few before
George Eliot so openly questioned the role, education, and status of women in society.
As the novel became the most interesting platform of modern debate, national literatures were developed, that link the present with the past in the form of the historical novel.
With the new appreciation of history, the future also became a topic for fiction. This had been done earlier in works like Samuel Madden’s Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733) and Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826), a work whose plot culminated in the catastrophic last days of a mankind extinguished by the plague. Edward Bellamy’s
Looking Backward (1887) and H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) were marked by the idea of long term technological and biological developments. Industrialization, Darwin's theory of evolution and Marx's theory of class divisions shaped these works and turned historical processes into a subject matter of wide debate: Bellamy’s

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Looking Backward became the second best-selling book of the 19th century after Harriet Beecher-Stowe's Uncle
Tom's Cabin. These works inspired a whole genre of popular science fiction as the 20th century approached.
Q. 2. Attempt a Marxist reading of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Ans. It was Lord David Cecil who said of Jane Austen “..... her books express a general view of life. It is the view of that eighteenth century civilization of which she was the last exquisite blossom. One might call it the moralrealistic view.”
What is alleged to be a fault in Jane Austen, is in reality a tribute to her stark realism. For instance, Leonard wrote in 1942 (what he called “Economic Determinism of Jane Austen)–(her “social and economic standard ....
(are), except in one important particular (she is against ‘work’ ; her heroes, he says, do not work), those which we associate with a capitalist bourgeosie rather than with country gentlemen and aristocrats ... The social standards are almost entirely those of money and snobbery. It is remarkable to what an extent the plots and characters are dominated by questions of money.”
This money culture is criticized by some other critics also (among them Logan Pearsall Smith being one). But it is to be noted that Jane Austen was describing the life of the upper middle class of her times, and that very faithfully and she could not be faulted on this point if the life, the class she was describing as such. But veiled in this description in the subtle criticism which should not be lost sight of. For example, in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth says to Jane–
“The more I see the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense.”
The words “the little dependence ... sense” should especially be noted.
David Daiches has answers for the critics who complain that money is the supermost point in Jane Austen’s novels. This is what he says in his own scholarly way, calling Jane Austen–“the only English novelist of stature who was in a sense a Marxist before Marx. She exposes the economic basis of social behaviour with an ironic smile ....”
He continues–“Critics have remarked that there is a real delineation of true love in Jane Austen, and that is true enough, for Miss Austen knew only too well that in that kind of society genteel young ladies cannot afford true love
: their objective must be marriage, and marriage with someone eligible. In Jane Austen only the poor can afford passion.” It may be commonplace to say that what the rich classes bother about is only wealth and love without wealth is often inconceivable in them, but that is the truth of life and we have to accept it if we want the plain truth, how many ever times this fact may be repeated.
This also incidentally disposes of the allegation against Jane Austen that she tells the same story again and again and repeats herself. To assert once again, it is because she tells the whole truth which does not change.
Still, it goes to her credit that she is able to create round characters with so little material and variety at her disposal. In Pride and Prejudice, all major characters like Darcy, Elizabeth, Bingley, Jane etc (even while retaining some of their basis traits) evolve, grow and change drastically.
Economic and moral standards are often co-joined and while blaming a writer like Jane Austen to be giving too much importance to money, it is not difficult to allege that her characters lack true moral standards. For example, according to Professor Marvin Mudrick, amorality is central to Jane Austen’s irony.
Even Leonic feels that Jane Austen was a mere observer and not an interpreter of life. He says–“Merely an amused and attentive spectator, Jane Austen does not seek to interpret life, she is content to observe it, but her mind and her sentiments are always in unison with the object of her observation.”
It is true that Jane Austen does not undertake to give any philosophy of life, as George Eliot does, while describing different characters and situations in her novels. But she does describe her characters in such a way that we know a lot about a particular character — his inner and outer life and that is true about so many human beings in the world.
In this context, we may note what she says about Mrs Bennet and about Mr. Collins (in Pride and Prejudice)–
About Mrs Bennet : “Mrs Bennet was a woman of mean understanding, little information and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.”
About Mr. Collins : “Mr. Collins was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society—the greatest part of his life having been spent under the guidance of an illiterate

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and miserly father–and though he belonged to one of the universities he had merely kept the necessary terms, without forming at it any useful acquaintance. The subjection in which his father had brought him up had given him originally great humility of manner, but it was now a good deal counteracted by the self-conceit of a weak head, living in retirement, and the consequential feelings of early and unexpected prosperity. A fortunate chance had recommended him to Lady Catherine de Bourgh when the living of Hunsford was vacant; and the respect which he felt for her high rank and his veneration for her as his patroness mingling with a very good opinion of himself of his authority as a clergyman, and his rights as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, selfimportance and humility.”
It is mainly W.J. Long’s stress on Miss Austen’s realism when he says, interalia–
“Such was her literary field in which the chief duties were of the household, the chief pleasures in country gatherings, and the chief interests in matrimony. Life, with its mighty interests, its passions, ambitions and tragic struggles swept by like a great river; while the secluded interests of a country parish went round and round quietly like an eddy behind a sweltering rock. We can easily understand, therefore, the limitations of Jane Austen; but within her own field she is unequalled. Her characters are absolutely true to life, and all her work has the perfection of a delicate miniature painting.
Q. 3. What is the importance of the Fairytale mode in Great Expectations?
Ans. Great Expectations is like a fairy tale without a fairy tale ending. A poor orphan is granted riches by a secret benefactor. It sounds like the plot of a fairy tale. Great Expectations may start out as a fairy tale, but in the end the poor orphan is left not much better off than he started--except that he's wiser for it. Like most fairy tales, Great
Expectations intends to teach a lesson. You get what you work for. Pip becomes a gentleman almost by accident. He earns the role by being kind to Magwitch in his hour of need. Yet that young Pip who gave the convict a helping hand is not the same one Magwitch returns to in London. The unassuming orphan boy is replaced with an arrogant and selfish "gentleman." Dickens is trying to tell us that being a gentleman comes not from your rank and social status, but from your character. As Herbert Pocket points out, a true gentleman is a gentleman and heart and in manner.
He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood; and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express itself. (Chapter XXII, p. 214)
Pip is the varnished wood. He becomes less and less of a gentleman as he goes on, until he shows himself to be nothing but selfish. When Magwitch returns, Pip is tested. He turns out to have some gentleman in him after all, but he does not find it until he loses everything. Pip finally accepts that true wealth is in friends and loved ones. At the end, he cares about Magwitch-not his money. He is interested only in his safety, and sees him as a father. He is also grateful to Joe and Biddy for bailing him out of trouble, and vows to go overseas and work off the debt. He is a changed man. And Joe and Biddy both, as you have been to church to-day and are in charity and love with all mankind, receive my humble thanks for all you have done for me, and all I have so ill repaid! (Chapter LVIII, p. 322)
Magwitch and Miss Havisham both desired to get revenge on the upper class by taking orphans and turning them into a gentleman and a lady respectively. In the end, both cases where disastrous. They did prove their points though. You cannot make someone a lady or a gentleman with money alone.
Dickens’ great imaginative powers are universally acknowledged. In fact, he was an imaginative genius par excellence and the same genius led him to public readings, not only in England but in America, though the fact remains that he at last succumbed to the overstrain in the long run.
Sanitsbury has much to say about Dickens power of imagination, fantasy and exaggeration when he wedded fantastic imagery to his delectable narration–
“The real, the great, the unique merit of Dickens is that brought to the service of the novel an imagination which thought it was never poetic, was plastic in almost the highest degree; and that he communicated to the results of its a kind of existence which, though distinctly different from that of actual life, has a reality of its own processes the distinguishing mark of genius, so that if it does not exactly force belief in itself, it forces suspension of disbelief.
Walter Allen lays stress on Dickens’ matchless imagination and intensity of feeling and compelling force of his narration and tries to establish his place among the English novelists–
“Any account of Dickens is inadequate. He is the greatest comic novelist in English; he is also the most truly poetic novelist. So far as we can label him at all, he was a fantastic, and he forces us to accept the world he creates by the sheer compelling powers of the intensity of his imagination.

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Q. 4. How is Jameson’s criticism of Conrad’s politics relevant to Heart of Darkness?
Ans. Jameson argued that Conrad's novels mark a strategic fault line in the emergence of the contemporary narrative, "floating uncertainly between Proust and Stevenson." This institutional heterogeneity can be seen in Heart of Darkness. Protagonist is shown as suffering from a lack of motivation evident.
In the very beginning of the novel, there is mention of the British conquest of the Romans. The Romans conquered
Britain for sheer “robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale and men going at it blindly.”
Their aim was nothing but plunder of the subjugated savages and their country.
For that matter, conquest of any nation of another nation is an evil, as it is predominated by the idea of exploitation.
If the aim were humanizing of civilizing, it could be considered excusable at least partially.
Conrad takes his deepest look into the human condition, and comes to perhaps his most pessimistic conclusions on the various and incompatable pressures that can be imposed on the human spirit.
In one of the most important passages in novel, Conrad says—The mind of man is capable of anything—because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all ? Joy, fear sorrow, devotion, valour, rage—who can tell ?—but truth—truth stripped of its cloak time. Let the fool gape and shudder—the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth with his one-true stuff—with his own inborn strength. Principles won’t do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags— rags that would fly off at the first good shake. No, you want a deliberate belief.
Thus says Eloise Knapp Hay,
“The work is not formally tragic, but I think this is for different reasons that those given, says, by Leavis. Conrad makes the story centre in Marlow, who neither acts decisively nor suffers conclusively. Because the story’s important revelation is Kurtz, and Kurtz does drink the whole cup of agony for his crimes, there is a tragic scene within the narrative. But Conrad is more concerned with a member of the audience whom he brings upon the stage in Marlow.
Sophocles might have done the same with a member of his chorus of citizens. All modern tragedy, from at least as early as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, has learnings in this direction, transferring our care from the men who perform the acts of villainy to an innocent bystander who is compromised and then expected to react in a manner appropriate to the evil discovered.
Marlow’s response is superb, once we agree that he is compromised by Kurtz and that he does act appropriately.
His guilt grows with his gradual submission to Kurtz, which is gradual submission to Europe’s atrocious presumptions in “dark” lands. No less than Oedipus, he gouges his eyes out, inflicting the lie upon himself and then crawling back for shelter to the “beautiful world” that must, when the story ends, continue in blissful ignorance of waiting nemesis.
It won’t strike in Marlow’s lifetime or in Conrad’s. There is no single figure—like the “eminent and prosperous”
Greek hero—to bear the whole burden of his society’s crime and to expiate it with his own ruin. The ancient gods were sometimes satisfied with the sacrifie of a single hero, but modern politics is a hungrier despot and more inclined to take its revenges slowly.”
Wayne E. Haskin points out very appty : “Heart of Darkness is one of literature’s most sombre fictions. It explores the fundamental questions about man’s nature : his capacity for evil ; the necessity for restraint ; the effect of physical darkness and isolation on a civilized soul; and the necessity for relinquishing pride for one’s own spiritual salvation. E.M. Forster’s censure of Conrad may be correct in many ways, but it refuses to admit that through such philosophical ruminations Conrad has allowed generations of readers to ponder humanity’s own heart of darkness.”
Q. 5. What do you understand by the term ‘Stream of Consciousness’, explain with reference to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Ans. Perhaps the most famous aspect of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce's innovative use of stream of consciousness, a style in which the author directly transcribes the thoughts and sensations that go through a character's mind, rather than simply describing those sensations from the external standpoint of an observer.
Joyce's use of stream of consciousness makes A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a story of the development of
Stephen's mind. In the first chapter, the very young Stephen is only capable of describing his world in simple words and phrases. The sensations that he experiences are all jumbled together with a child's lack of attention to cause and effect. Later, when Stephen is a teenager obsessed with religion, he is able to think in a clearer, more adult manner.
Paragraphs are more logically ordered than in the opening sections of the novel, and thoughts progress logically.

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Stephen's mind is more mature and he is now more coherently aware of his surroundings. Nonetheless, he still trusts blindly in the church, and his passionate emotions of guilt and religious ecstasy are so strong that they get in the way of rational thought. It is only in the final chapter, when Stephen is in the university, that he seems truly rational. By the end of the novel, Joyce renders a portrait of a mind that has achieved emotional, intellectual, and artistic adulthood.
The development of Stephen's consciousness in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is particularly interesting because, insofar as Stephen is a portrait of Joyce himself, Stephen's development gives us insight into the development of a literary genius. Stephen's experiences hint at the influences that transformed Joyce himself into the great writer he is considered today: Stephen's obsession with language; his strained relations with religion, family, and culture; and his dedication to forging an aesthetic of his own mirror the ways in which Joyce related to the various tensions in his life during his formative years. In the last chapter of the novel, we also learn that genius, though in many ways a calling, also requires great work and considerable sacrifice. Watching Stephen's daily struggle to puzzle out his aesthetic philosophy, we get a sense of the great task that awaits him.
Brought up in a devout Catholic family, Stephen initially ascribes to an absolute belief in the morals of the church. As a teenager, this belief leads him to two opposite extremes, both of which are harmful. At first, he falls into the extreme of sin, repeatedly sleeping with prostitutes and deliberately turning his back on religion. Though Stephen sins willfully, he is always aware that he acts in violation of the church's rules. Then, when Father Arnall's speech prompts him to return to Catholicism, he bounces to the other extreme, becoming a perfect, near fanatical model of religious devotion and obedience. Eventually, however, Stephen realizes that both of these lifestyles-the completely sinful and the completely devout-are extremes that have been false and harmful. He does not want to lead a completely debauched life, but also rejects austere Catholicism because he feels that it does not permit him the full experience of being human. Stephen ultimately reaches a decision to embrace life and celebrate humanity after seeing a young girl wading at a beach. To him, the girl is a symbol of pure goodness and of life lived to the fullest.

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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man explores what it means to become an artist. Stephen's decision at the end of the novel-to leave his family and friends behind and go into exile in order to become an artist-suggests that Joyce sees the artist as a necessarily isolated figure. In his decision, Stephen turns his back on his community, refusing to accept the constraints of political involvement, religious devotion, and family commitment that the community places on its members.
However, though the artist is an isolated figure, Stephen's ultimate goal is to give a voice to the very community that he is leaving. In the last few lines of the novel, Stephen expresses his desire to "forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." He recognizes that his community will always be a part of him, as it has created and shaped his identity. When he creatively expresses his own ideas, he will also convey the voice of his entire community. Even as Stephen turns his back on the traditional forms of participation and membership in a community, he envisions his writing as a service to the community.
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