18TH CENTURY

Daniel Defoe (1660 - 1731) Robinson Crusoe (1719)

Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745) Gullivers Travels (1726)
ROMANTIC PERIOD
Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832) Ivanhoe (1820)
Jane Austen (1775 - 1817) Pride and Prejudice (1813)
VICTORIAN ERA
Charles Dickens (1812 - 70) Great Expectations (1860 - 1)
William Makepeace Thackeray (1811 - 63) Vanity Fair (1847 - 8)
Charlotte Bronte (1816 - 55) Jane Eyre (1847)
Emily Bronte (1818 - 48) Wuthering Heights (1847)

1.

Daniel Defoe Biography

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) is the earliest literary journalist in the English language. He wrote
on all sorts of subjectssocial, political, literary. As a journalist he was fond of writing about the
lives of famous people who had just died, and of notorious adventurers and criminals. At the age
of sixty he turned his attention to the writing of prose fiction, and published his first novel
Robinson Cruse (1719). It was followed by other works of fictionThe Memoirs of a Cavalier
(1724), Captain Singleton (1720), Moll Flanders (1722), Colonel Jack (1722), and Roxana (1724)
and Journal of the Plague Year (1722). In these works of fiction Defoe gave his stories an air of
reality and convinced his readers of their authenticity. All Defoe's fictions are written in the
biographical form. They follow no system and are narrated in a haphazard manner which gave
them a semblance of reality and truth. His stories, told in the plain, matter-of-fact, business-like
way, appropriate to stories of actual life, hence they possess extraordinary minute realism which
is their distinct feature. Here his homely and colloquial style came to his help. On account of all
these qualities Defoe is credited with being the originator of the English novel. As a writer of
prose his gift of narrative and description is masterly. As he never wrote with any deliberate
artistic intention, he developed a natural style which made him one of the masters of English
prose.

2.

Why is Robinson Crusoe revolutionary?

This novel is revolutionary because Daniel Defoe combines the heroic with the ordinary; the main
character Robinson Crusoe is not a romantic hero he is an ordinary man. He breaks away the
annex associated with the higher class and writes about realistic, objective, fact oriented, fact
based fiction which is appealing to the middle class so that the people in the middle class
become the main characters of the fiction. He gave a major contribution to the modern writing
by introducing the theme of colonialism. Before this novel appeared, writers werent interested in
the daily routine and the ordinary men, so thats the reason why he is revolutionary. He
introduces the everydayness, the theme of alienation, changeable identity, the question of
identity, the theme of colonialism. He shifts the focus into the private experience of an individual.
Robinson Crusoe is a male-centered novel, realistic fiction, the private experience of one ordinary
man. It is regarded as the first English novel and Defoe is considered to be the first true master
of the British novel.

3.

Why is Daniel Defoe considered to be the first true master of the

British novel?

Defoes prose fiction, produced in his late middle ages, sprang from an experimental involvement
in other literary forms, most notably the polemic pamphlet, the history, the biography, and the
travel-book. His novels include elements of all these forms. Nor was he the only begetter of a
form which it is now recognized had a long succession of both male and female progenitors. He

may, in Robinson Crusoe, have perfected an impression of realism by adapting Puritan selfconfession narratives to suit the mode of a fictional moral tract, but he would in no sense have
seen that he was pioneering a new art form. Defoe was merely mastering and exploiting a
literary form of various and uncertain origins.
As he never wrote with any deliberate artistic intention, he developed a natural style which made
him one of the masters of English prose.

4.

Identity the targets of Swifts satire?

Gulliver's Travels (1726) is Swift's most enduring satire. Its objects are human failings and the
defective political, economic, and social institutions that they call into being. Swift said that he
wrote it to vex the world rather than to divert it. Lemuel Gulliver, the narrator, is a ship's surgeon
who undertakes 4 voyages, all of which end disastrously among 'several remote nations in the
world'.
In the first book Gulliver is in Lilliput, a where he finds himself a giant among diminutive
people. The nation of Lilliput has been at war with their neighbours from Blefuscu since a quarrel
broke out about which is the proper way to crack eggs. To Swift these two nations symbolize
England and France and hence satirizes the needless fighting between the two nations. Swift also
pokes fun at the political parties in England when he speaks of the two factions in Lilliput being
distinguished by their high heels and low heels (Whigs and Tories).
In the second voyage, Gulliver is in Brobdingnag, a land of giants. Swift here criticizes the
national ego through Gullivers exaggerations about England and the English society (everything
is the best, the House of Lords persons of the noblest blood, the Bishops are distinguished by
their sanctity and their erudition ). There he finds himself a Lilliputian, his pride humbled by his
helpless state and his human vanity diminished by the realization that his body must have
seemed as disgusting to the Lilliputans as do the bodies of the Brobdingnagians to him.
In the third voyage to Laputa, Swift is chiefly concerned with attacking extremes of theoretical
and speculative reasoning, whether in science, politics, or economics. Much of the voyage is an
allegory of political life under the administration of the Whig minister, Sir Robert Walpole.
The final voyage sets Gulliver between the race of horses, Houyhnhnms, who live entirely by
reason except for a few well-controlled and muted social affections, and their slaves, the Yahoos,
whose bodies obscene caricatures of the human body and who have no glimmer of reason but
are mere creatures of appetite and passion.

5.

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was the most powerful and original genius of his age. His writings
characterized throughout by a subtle ambiguity, by a troubled delight in oppositions and
reversals, and by a play with alternative voices, personae, and perspectives are intimately
related to the deeply riven political, religious, and national issues of the Britain and Ireland of his
time. About 1696-97 he wrote his powerful satires on corruptions in religion and learning, A Tale
of a Tub and The Battle of the Books, which were published in 1704 and reached their final form
only in the 5th edition of 1710. In Meditation on a Broomstick (1710), he imitates the solemn style
and manner of a primly pious moral essayist, but effectively undermines the tone of seriousness
by the patent ridiculousness of the chosen subject. The extraordinary force of A Modest Proposal
(1729) stems, however, from the very reasonableness, arithmetical orderliness, and modesty of
expression of what is effectively a monstrous proposal for the human consumption of the surplus
infant population. The Drapiers Letters (1724) stem from a more obviously public and popular
indignation at English indifference to Ireland. Swifts skill in selecting a voice appropriate to the
form in which he is working is nowhere more evident than in his masterpiece Gullivers Travels
(1726). Clear, simple, concrete diction, uncomplicated syntax, and economy and conciseness of
language mark all his writings.

6.

Epistolary novel (novel in letters)

Letters can be shaped to form the matter of an extended fiction, as the eighteenth-century
epistolary novel. Such an example is Samuel Richardsons Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740),
conceived while compiling a little book of model letters. The letters grew into a story about a
captivating young servant who resists her master's base designs on her virtue until he gives up
and marries her. Pamela was not the first epistolary novel, there seem to have been some
hundred earlier novels and stories told in the form of letters, but it proved the most influential.
Richardson topped Pamela's success with Clarissa (1747-48) (also an epistolary novel), a middleclass paragon who struggles to stay pure.
The novel has four major letter-writers, and, beyond these four, a host of minor correspondents
or note-writers.

7.

What is a Gothic novel?

The Gothic novel had been inaugurated in 1764 by Horace Walpoles The Castle of Otranto, and
continued by Clara Reeve in The Champion of Virtue (1777). The term derives from the frequent
setting of these tales in a gloomy castle of the Middle Ages, but it has been extended to a larger
group of novels, set somewhere in the past, that exploit the possibilities of mystery and terror in
sullen, craggy landscapes; decaying mansions with dank dungeons, secret passages, and
stealthy ghosts; chilling supernatural phenomena; and often, sexual persecution of a beautiful
maiden by an obsessed and haggard villain. These novels opened up to later fiction the dark,
irrational side of human nature. Some of the most powerful and influential writings in the mode
were by women.

8.

Gothic elements in Victorian fiction?

Whether written by women or men, the Victorian novel was extraordinarily various. Gothic
flourished in the closing years of the 18th century, but ripples of its impact, and significant
aspects of its sensationalism, have continued to be felt in English literature from the time of the
Brontes and Dickens until the present day. Emily Bront's Wuthering Heights (1847) transports
the Gothic to the forbidding Yorkshire Moors and features ghostly apparitions and a Byronic hero
in the person of the demonic Heathcliff. Nature, and phenomena within and beyond nature,
remain wuthering and turbulent throughout the narrative. Charlotte Bront's Jane Eyre (1847)
adds the madwoman in the attic to the cast of Gothic fiction. The Bronts' fiction is seen by some
feminist critics as prime examples of Female Gothic. The genre was also a heavy influence on
more mainstream writers, such as Charles Dickens, who read Gothic novels as a teenager and
incorporated their gloomy atmosphere and melodrama into his own works, shifting them to a
more modern period and an urban setting, including Oliver Twist (1837-8), Bleak House (1852-3)
and Great Expectations (186061). His most explicitly Gothic work is his last novel (unfinished)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870).

9.

The elements of Gothic novel?

The Gothic novel had been inaugurated in 1764 by Horace Walpoles The Castle of Otranto, and
continued by Clara Reeve in The Champion of Virtue (1777). It was bred amid historic ruins and
in historical settings. The sublime could be experienced in the contemplation of nature,
especially wild and mountainous scenery, or in the study of architecture, notably in the
appreciation of soaring medieval cathedrals and rugged castle. It prospered by means of steady
reference to crags and chasms, to torture and terror, to necromancy, necrophilia, and the
uneasily numinous. It rejoiced in hauntings, sudden death, dungeons, dreams, diablerie,
phantasms, and prophecies. Forbidden themes - incest, murder, necrophilia, atheism and the
torments of sexual desire - are allowed free play. Gothic fiction was, and is, essentially a reaction
against comfort and security, against political stability and commercial progress. Above all, it
resists the rule of reason.

10. The Age of Reason

The most striking quality of the 18th century was its optimism. It was a time that celebrated the
excellence of the human mind. All creation was believed open to scrutiny. Even the descriptive
historical titles of the period express the spirit of improvement and progress. Many people of the
time thought they were passing through a golden period similar to that of the Roman emperor
Augustus. For this reason the name Augustan was given to the early 18th century. The century
has also been called the Age of Enlightenment. Many writers of the era used ancient Greek and
Roman authors as models of style. Hence the period in literature is often described as neoclassic.
Merchants and tradesmen achieved tremendous economic power at this time. Scientific
discoveries were encouraged. Many important inventionsfor example, the spinning jenny, the
power loom, and the steam enginebrought about an industrial society. Cities grew in size, and
London began to assume its present position as a great industrial and commercial center. In
addition to a comfortable life, the members of the middle class demanded a respectable,
moralistic art that was controlled by common sense. They reacted in protest to the aristocratic
immoralities in much of the Restoration literature

11. Contribution of Henry Fielding

No prose form better united availability to the common reader and seriousness of artistic
purpose than the novel in the hands of two of its early masters, Samuel Richardson and Henry
Fielding. Henry Fielding was amused by Richardsons Pamela and parodied it in Joseph
Andrews (1742), which purports to be the story of Pamela's brother. The ambition of writing what
Fielding called 'a comic epic-poem in prose' went still further in The History of Tom Jones, A
Foundling (1749), his most meticulous response to the challenge of classical epic and his most
considered comic redefinition of the role of the epic hero. His ambitions for prose romance were
comprehensive; he proposed to take the wide range of character, incident, diction, and reference
from the epic and to remould this material according to comic rather than serious principles.
He introduces realistic, objective narrative. His novels reveal a grasp of idiomatic speech and
dialogue, a sound understanding of the patterning of incident and a relish for a well-established
denouement. It was to Allen, his friend, that he dedicated his most sombre novel, Amelia, in
1752, announcing that the book was sincerely designed to promote the cause of virtue, and to
expose some of the most glaring evils, as well public as private, which at present infest the
country. Fieldings great contribution to the English novel is that he put it on a stable footing. It
became free from its slavery to fact, conscious of its power and possibilities, and firmly
established as an independent literary form. It was through his efforts that the novel became
immensely popular with the reading public.

12.

Contribution of Samuel Richardson

No prose form better united availability to the common reader and seriousness of artistic
purpose than the novel in the hands of two of its early masters, Samuel Richardson and Henry
Fielding. Richardson initially did not set out to entertain the public with an avowedly invented
tale: he conceived Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) while compiling a little book of model
letters. The letters grew into a story about a captivating young servant who resists her master's
base designs on her virtue until he gives up and marries her. Pamela was not the first epistolary
novel (there seem to have been some hundred earlier novels and stories told in the form of
letters) but it proved the most influential. Richardson topped Pamela's success with Clarissa
(1747-48), a middle-class paragon who struggles to stay pure. She is the first great bourgeois
heroine and the first female Protestant saint of fiction. Richardsons third epistolary novel, The
History of Sir Charles Grandison (1754), tells the story of an aristocrat of ideal manners and
virtues. In all his novels Richardsons purpose was didactic, but he achieved something more. He
probed into the inner working of the human mind. Richardsons main contribution to the English
novel was that for the first time he told stories of human life from within, depending for their
interest not on incidents or adventures but on their truth to human nature.

13. Tobias Smollett

Tobias Smollett (1721-1771) followed the example of Fielding in writing picaresque novels, which
are full of intrigue and adventure. But he lacks the genius of Fielding, for his novels are just a
jumble of adventures and incidents without any artistic unity. Instead of Fieldings broad humour
and his inherent kindness, we find horrors and brutalities in the novels of Smollett, which are
mistaken for realism. Smolletts best-known novels are Roderick Random (1748) in which the
hero relates a series of adventures: Peregrine Pickle (1751) in which are related the worst
experiences at sea; and Humphrey Clinker (1771) in which is related the journey of a Welsh
family through England and Scotland. Smolletts main contribution is the narrative technique
the novel is written in letters; there are different events or episodes, presented from a different
point of view.

14. Laurence Sterne

Lawrence Sterne (1713-1768) was the opposite of Smollet in the sense that whereas we find
horrors and brutalities in the novels of Smollett, in Sternes we find whims, vagaries and
sentimental tears. His best-known novels are Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey
through France and Italy. The former was started in 1760; its ninth volume appeared in 1767, but
the book was never finished. In it are recorded in a most digressive and aimless manner the
experiences of the eccentric Shandy family. The main achievements of this book lie in the
brilliancy of its style and the creation of eccentric characters like Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim.
The Sentimental Journey, which is a strange mixture of fiction, descriptions of travel, and a
number of essays on all sorts of subjects, is also written in a brilliant style, and is stamped with
Sternes false and sentimental attitude to life. The main contribution of Sterne to the English
novel was his discovery of the delights of sensibility, the pleasures of the feeling heart, which
opened up a vast field of experience, and which was followed by many eighteenth century
writers.

15. Oliver Goldsmith

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) wrote only one novelThe Vicar of Wakefield (1766). This is the
best novel in the English language in which domestic life has been given an enduring romantic
interest. In it domestic virtues and purity of character are elevated. It is the story of Dr. Primrose,
a simple English clergyman, who passes through various misfortunes, but ultimately comes out
triumphant, with his faith in God and man reaffirmed. An effect of comedy is presented in his
fiction, as well as the naturalistic element and sentimentalism. Goldsmith unites all the
mainstream contributions of the previous century and the novel took a definite shape and came
to be recognized as an important literary form with vast possibilities of further development.

16. Sir Walter Scott

As a child, Scott listened to stories about old events and battles as well as accounts of their
experiences. He early acquired what he exploited in his prose fiction a sense of the past that is
kept alive in the oral traditions of the present. During his first five or six years of novel-writing
Scott (1771-1832) confined himself to familiar scenes and characters. The novels which have a
local colour and are based on personal observations are Guy Mannering (1815), Old Mortality
(1816) and The Heart of Midlothian (1818). His first attempt at a historical novel was Ivanhoe
(1820) followed by Kenilworth(1821), Quentin Durward (1823), and The Talisman (1825). In all
these novels Scott reveals himself as a consummate storyteller. His leisurely unfolding of the
story allows of digression particularly in the descriptions of natural scenes or of interiors. Without
being historical in the strict sense he conveys a sense of the past age by means of a wealth of
colourful descriptions, boundless vitality and with much humour and sympathy. He was the most
prolific writer of his day.

17. Merry Wollstonecraft Shelley

The glorious parents were William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. At the age of 16 she
encountered the 21- year old poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the young people fell in love. Soon
they ran off to Europe. Mar described their happy wanderings in her first book, History of a Six
Weeks Tour, published anonymously in 1817. Encouraged and assisted by Shelley, she wrote
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and published it anonymously in 1818. The last 6 years
of Marys life with her husband, were filled with disasters. An impoverished widow of 24 she
returned to England. In the remaining quarter of her life Mary Shelley became a notable success
as a professional woman of letters. She wrote 5 more novels, of which the first two are the best:
The Last Man (1826) and Valpegra (1823). She wrote also some 25 short tales and left in
manuscript a novella, Mathilda (written in 1819 but not published until 1859). In 1835-39 she
contributed to the Cabinet Cyclopedia five volumes of admirable biographical and critical studies
of Continental authors.

18. Jane Austins contribution to the British novel

Jane Austen (1775-1817) is the only major author who seems to be untouched by the political
intellectual and artistic revolution of her age. She brought good sense and balance to the English
novel which during the Romantic age had become too emotional and undisciplined. She refined
and simplified the English novel, making it a true reflection of English life. In her first novel
Pride and Prejudice, she had in her mind the idea of presenting English country society exactly as
it In all Jane Austen wrote six novelsPride and Prejudice (1813), Sense and Sensibility (1811),
Emma (1816), Mansfield Park (1814), Northanger Abbey (1818) and Persuasion (1818). As a
novelist Jane Austen worked in a narrow field. She lived a static life but she had such a keen
power of observation that the simple country people became the characters of her novels. The
chief duties of these people were of the household, their chief pleasures were in country
gatherings and their chief interest was in matrimony. It is the small, quiet world of these people
that Jane Austin depicts in her novels. She has achieved wonderful perfection in that narrow field
on account of her acute power of observation, her fine impartiality and self-detachment, and her
quiet, delicate and ironical humour. Among her contemporaries only Scott, realized the greatness
and permanent worth of her work.

19. Why was the first title of Pride and Prejudice First Impressions?
Pride and Prejudice was first written in 1797 under the title First Impressions. It was later
revised and published under the title Pride and Prejudice in 1813. In the novel, first impressions
do play an important part: Elizabeth is misled in her judgment and estimation of both Darcy and
Wickham. Her regard and sympathy for Wickham and her hostility and prejudice against Darcy
are due to the first impressions. But when we study the novel deeply we can easily see that the
title Pride and Prejudice is more apt and more befitting to it. The first impressions which the
character gets of each other take up only the first few chapters. The novel is more about the
pride of Darcy and the prejudice of Elizabeth and the change of attitude in Darcy and Elizabeths
correction of her first impression. To say that Darcy is proud and Elizabeth is prejudiced is to tell
but half the story. The fact is both Darcy and Elizabeth are proud as well as prejudiced. The novel
makes clear the fact that Darcys pride leads to prejudice and Elizabeths prejudice stems
superiority and refinement and this leads him to have a general prejudice against people
beneath him in the social hierarchy. Elizabeths prejudice on the other hand stems from his pride.
Both suffer from the faults of pride and prejudice, but they are also the necessary defects of
desirable merits: self-respect and intelligence.

20. Social status in Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austens novel evolves more than the conclusion of a simple love story. There is a depth,
variety and seriousness in Janes treatment of the topic of social status, materialism and
economic concern of society. The lines of class are strictly drawn. The Bennets, who are middle

class, may socialize with the upper-class Bingleys and Darcys, they are clearly their social
inferiors and are treated as such. Austen satirizes this kind of class-consciousness, particularly in
the character of Mr. Collins, who spends most of his time toadying to his upper-class patron, Lady
Catherine de Bourgh. His conception of the importance of class is shared, among others, by Mr.
Darcy, who believes in the dignity of his lineage; Miss Bingley, who dislikes anyone not as socially
accepted as she is; and Wickham, who will do anything he can to get enough money to raise
himself into a higher station (elopes with Lydia to do so). Through the Darcy - Elizabeth and
Bingley - Jane marriages, Austen shows the power of love and happiness to overcome class
boundaries and prejudices, thereby implying that such prejudices are hollow, unfeeling, and
unproductive.

21. The implication of the title and subtitle of the novel Vanity Fair?
Thackerays final title and subtitle offer a revealing key to some of the novels central
preoccupations and energies. The main title -- Vanity Fair derives from John Bunyans The
Pilgrims Progress (1678; 1684), a religious allegory. The subtitle A Novel without a Hero has
other anticipatory functions. It warns the reader that, unlike many typical Victorian novels, Vanity
Fair is not centered upon the developing history of a single central character, but, more
disconcertingly, rotates between multiple classes, groups and individuals in such a way as both
to unsettle simple responses to the meaning of heroism and to draw attention to the economic
imperatives at work in their society as a whole. The subtitle is apt because the characters are all
flawed to a greater or lesser degree; even the most sympathetic have weaknesses, everyone is
sinful. The human weaknesses Thackeray illustrates are mostly to do with greed, idleness, and
snobbery, and the scheming, deceit and hypocrisy which mask them.

22. Discuss the settings in Vanity Fair.

John Bunyans perception that Vanity Fair represents an inescapable and permanent temptation
during the pilgrimage of life is echoed but deepened in Thackerays re-creation. Thackerays
secular wanderers remain permanently trapped within the confines of Vanity Fair: whether they
travel from London to Brighton, Hampshire, Ostend, Brussels or Paris they are always imagined
as moving within a known and time-bound worldly fair. Vanity Fair represents a particular place,
and all the places (microcosms and macrocosm). It is everywhere, in every period of the worlds
existence, it is happening all the time.

23. State briefly the main topics of the Victorian fiction / writers /
characteristics of fiction
The novel was the dominant form in Victorian literature. Initially published in serial form, novels
subsequently appeared in three-volume editions, or three-deckers. Victorian novels seek to
represent a large and comprehensive social world, with the variety of classes and social settings
that constitute a community. They contain a multitude of characters and a number of plots,
setting in motion the kinds of patterns that reveal the authors vision of the deep structures of
the social world. The experience that Victorian novelists most frequently depict is the set of
social relationships in the middle-class society developing around them. Most Victorian novels
focus on a protagonist whose effort to define his or her place in society is the main concern of
the plot. Women writers were, for the first time, not figures on the margins but major authors.
Jane Austen, the Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Elliot all helped define the genre.

24. Romantic period

The British Romantic period is at least as complex and diverse as any other period in literary
history. The Romantic period is the age of unfettered free enterprise, industrial expansion, and
boundless revolutionary hope. Tw new types of fiction were prominent in the late 18 th century.
One was the Gothic novel, which had been inaugurated in 1764 by Horace Walpoles The
Castle of Otranto, and continued by Clara Reeve in The Champion of Virtue (1777). The term
derives from the frequent setting of these tales in a gloomy castle that exploit the possibilities of

mystery and terror in sullen, craggy landscapes; decaying mansions with dank dungeons, secret
passages, and stealthy ghosts; chilling supernatural phenomena. The second fictional mode
popular at the turn of the century was the novel of purpose, often written to propagate the
new social and political theories current in the period of the French revolution. The best examples
combine didactic intention with elements of Gothic terror. William Godwin wrote Caleb Williams
(1794), Merry Shelly wrote Frankenstein (1818). The Romantic period produced two novelists
whose renown is worldwide, Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott.

25. Charles Dickens

Dickens (1812 70) is the chief among the early Victorian novelists and is in fact the most
popular of all English novelists so far. In 1836, on his 24 th birthday, he published the collection
Sketches by Boz. The publication of Pickwick Papers brought Dickens fame and prosperity.
Success followed quickly: Oliver Twist (1838), Nickolas Nickleby (1838-9) and The Old Curiosity
Shop (1840-1). Through the 1840s and 1850s Dickens continued to write novels at an intense
pace, producing Barnaby Rudge (1841), Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4), Dombey and Son (1846-8),
David Copperfield (1849-50), Bleak House (1852-3), Hard Times (1854), Little Dorrit (1855-57),
and A Tale of Two Cities (1859). He slowed the pace of his writing, publishing only two novels in
the 1860s: Great Expectations (1860-1) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-5). He died suddenly in
1870, leaving his last novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), unfinished. Dickenss early
fiction is remarkable for its extravagance and comedy of humors. In his later fiction, that comedy
becomes grotesque, as the distortions of caricature reflect failures of humanity in his increasingly
dark social vision.

26. William

Makepeace Thackeray

Thackeray (1811-1863) who was Dickenss contemporary and great rival for popular favour,
lacked his weaknesses and his genius. He was more interested in the manners and morals of the
aristocracy than in the great upheavals of the age. Thackeray was born of rich parents, inherited
a comfortable fortune, and spent his young days in comfort. He was more concerned with high
society. Thackeray was the realist and moralist and judged solely by observation and reflection.
He gives in his novels accurate and true picture especially of the vicious elements of society. The
result is that he satirizes them. But his satire is always tempered by kindness and humour. With
the publication of Vanity Fair in 1846 the English reading public began to understand what a star
had risen in English letters. Vanity Fair was succeeded in 1849 by Pendennis, an autobiography.
In 1852 appeared the historical novel of Henry Esmond. In it Thackeray depicted the true picture
of the Queen Anne period and showed his remarkable grasp of character and story. In his next
novel Newcomes (1853-8) he returned to modern times, and displayed his great skill in painting
contemporary manners. His next novel, The Virginians, a sequal of Esmond, deals with the third
quarter of the eighteenth century. In all these novels Thackeray has presented life in a most
realistic manner. Every act, every scene, every person in his novels is real with a reality which
has been idealised up to, and not beyond, the necessities of literature.

27. Why is the novel called Great Expectations?

The title refers to Pips great expectations which are many dimensional and ever-evolving. His
great expectations arrive in the form of his fortune and are embodied in his dream of becoming a
gentleman. Pips desire for self-improvement is the main source of the novels title, because he
believes in the possibility of advancement, he has great expectations. These expectations also
take the shape of his longing for a certain cold star named Estella. Each of the three parts of the
novel treat a different expectation, and we watch how Pip changes in the face of his changing
expectations. Pip is manipulated and gentrified and left empty. Pip is of a lower social class and
lacks his ebullience and resilience and his final reward consists merely of a muted semifulfillment. To many readers, however, it remains the most completely satisfying and haunting of
Dickenss works.

28. The implication of setting in Great Expectations?

The setting is very important in Great Expectations. The Kent marshes are the birthplace of
Charles Dickens. The setting almost always symbolizes a theme in Great Expectations, and
always sets a tone that is perfectly matched to the novels dramatic action. The misty marshes
near Pips childhood home in Kent, one of the most evocative of the books settings, are used
several times to symbolize danger and uncertainty, indicate that something dangerous will
happen. As a child, Pip meets Magwitch there, and later he brings him a file and food in these
mists. Later he is kidnapped by Orlick and nearly murdered in them. Whenever Pip goes into the
mists, something dangerous is likely to happen. Significantly, Pip must go through the mists
when he travels to London shortly after receiving his fortune, alerting the reader that this
apparently positive development in his life may have dangerous consequences.

29. Gothic elements in Wuthering Heights

The great Emily Brontes novel Wuthering Heights is often considered a gothic-romantic story for
it is abounds with some of the typical aspects of the Gothicism. Its great theme is the finite and
tragically self-consuming nature of passion. A doomed love and a desolate landscape can also be
highlighted in Brontes novel. Examples are the terrifying dreams, the appearances of Cathy as a
ghost, her haunting of Heathcliff after her death, the suggestion of Heathcliff as a diabolic figure
in possession of black magic, the frequent occurrences of bad weather, and visits to the
graveyard, all connected to a doomed love theme. The frequent hallucinations of Catherine and
Heathcliff occur at moments of great emotion, passion and suffering. Both of them develop
illness and starvation due to psychological disturbances. Heathcliff believes in evil spirits to
which he is constantly compared. Then there are the houses, Wuthering Heights is set in the
moorlands and is most likely setting of all sorts of misfortunes, whereas Thrushcross Grange is
set in a green valley and is the land of peace and calm.

30. Byronic hero in Wuthering Heights

"The Satanic and Byronic Hero," considers a cast of characters whose titanic ambition and
outcast state made them important to the Romantic Age's thinking about individualism,
revolution, the relationship of the author to society, and the relationship of poetical power to
political power. A theme of the Byronic hero proved prominent in Emily Brontes novel Wuthering
Heights. The main character, Heathcliff, is a perfect example of a Byronic hero because he is
introverted and dark, and he exudes a deep passion for many things only masked by the hatred
he feels he must show. As a deep and cynical character, Heathcliff is crazed in his actions and
keeps to himself quite well, but underneath all of the bitterness lies a man who just wants to be
loved. This theme is prominent in the novel and also refers back to the era because the novel
was written during the period that modeling writing with a Byronic hero was very popular.

31. Byronic hero in Jane Eyre

"The Satanic and Byronic Hero," considers a cast of characters whose titanic ambition and
outcast state made them important to the Romantic Age's thinking about individualism,
revolution, the relationship of the author to society, and the relationship of poetical power to
political power. A theme of the Byronic hero proved prominent in Charlotte Brontes character of
Edward Rochester. He is capable of loving an outspoken feminist like Jane Eyre, because his
imperfect attributes make the two equal. Rochester imperfections that make him a Byronic hero
primarily revolves around his troubled past, outcast like personality, and complexity as a
character. It is his past that pushed him toward the lonely life of a Byronic hero and sets the basis
of his imperfect life. He is prone to moodiness and often snappy or terse with Jane, but is also
capable of great affection and physical tenderness. Rochesters past also hides a dark secret: the

existence of a mad wife, Bertha Mason, he married, and who now lives in the attic of Thornfield.
Rochester is certainly not possessed of traditional good looks, yet he has an immense charisma.

32. The Bronte sisters

The Bronte Sisters who made their mark as novelists were Charlotte Bronte (1816-55), Anne
Bronte (1820-49) and Emily Bronte (1818-48). Charlotte Bronte depicted in her novels those
strong romantic passions which were generally avoided by Dickens and Thackeray. She brought
lyrical warmth and the play of strong feeling into the novel. In her masterpiece, Jane Eyre (1847),
her dreams and resentments kindle every page. Her other novels are The Professor (1846),
Villette (1853) and Shirley (1949). In all of them we find her as a mistress of wit, irony, accurate
observation, and a style full of impassioned eloquence. Anne Brontes Agnes Grey was copublished with her sister Emilys Wuthering Heights in 1847. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848),
her second novel, describes the events surrounding a drastically unhappy marriage and the
escape from that marriage by its heroine, Helen Graham. Emily Bronte was more original than
her sister. Though she died at the age of thirty, she wrote a strange novel, Wuthering Heights,
which contains so many of the troubled, tumultuous and rebellious elements of romanticism. It is
a tragedy of love at once fantastic and powerful, savage and moving, which is considered now as
one of the masterpieces of world fiction. They all published under the pseudonyms Currier, Ellis
and Acton Bell.

33. Contribution of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) who worked in collaboration
were the originators of the periodical essay. Steele who was more original led the way by
founding The Tatler, the first of the long line of eighteenth century periodical essays. This was
followed by the most famous of them The Spectator, is which Addison, who had formerly
contributed to Steeles Tatler, now became the chief partner. In its complete form it contains 635
essays. Of these Addison wrote 274 and Steele 240; the remaining 121 were contributed by
various friends. The purpose of the writings of Steele and Addison was ethical. They tried to
reform society through the medium of the periodical essay. They were, to a great extent,
responsible for reforming the conduct of their contemporaries in social and domestic fields. Their
aim was moral as well as educational. Thus they discussed in a light-hearted and attractive
manner art, philosophy, drama, poetry, and in so doing guided and developed the taste of the
people. Both Steele and Addison were great masters of prose. Their essays are remarkable as
showing the growing perfection of the English language. Of the two, Addison was a greater
master of the language. He cultivated a highly cultured and graceful stylea style which can
serve as a model.