20th Century British Novel

Historical background of the 20th c novel:

The time of confidence in the British Nation, culture, society and political
organization that marked the literary works in the 19th century is over and 20th c
literature is greatly influenced by the two World Wars and the disappearance of the
British Empire and the advent of new technologies. These events led to deep changes
in beliefs and assumptions about society and humanity.
The intention driving many writers of this century has been the wish to describe
things as they really are without being influenced by tradition or convention.

 E. M. Forster: it would be instructive to compare his novel A Passage to

India (1924) to Kim written by Rudyard Kipling in the 19th c. Both lived in
India and wrote about it. Kipling is full of faith in the British culture as
standing as an example of perfection, but Forster shows Englishmen in India
concerned with their traditional manners and appearances but unable to see the
inner truth of events and people as Indians do.
 Somerset Maugham: He wrote realistic novels to satirize the British society.
One of his famous characters is an artist who is fighting against conventional
values.
 D.H. Lawrence:
His most famous novel is Sons and Lovers. He took the form of the traditional
novel and introduced new dimensions to it. His focus is on the individual’s
view of his own personality which is affected by conventions of language,
family and religion. Lawrence shows how his characters’ inner life influences
their relationships and their life. The main character in Sons and Lovers has to
struggle to become free from the influence of his mother in order to make his
own decisions as an independent man and artist.

 James Joyce:
He first wrote Dubliners (1914), a famous collection of short stories, they are
realistic in the surface, but deal with the deep issue of how characters can
break free from cultural and social forces of their environment and follow their
own nature and fate. He wrote Ulysses (1922), regarded as one of the most
important English novels of the century. Joyce created a new style of writing
which allows the reader to move inside the minds of the characters and present
their thoughts and feelings in a continuous stream, breaking all the usual rules
of description, speech and punctuation. This style is known as ‘interior
monologue’ or ‘stream of consciousness’.

 Virginia Woolf:
She was also concerned with explaining the consciousness of her characters
but she was not attempting to deal with so many types of people and situations
 as Joyce was. Her most important novels: Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the
Lighthouse (1927).

 H.G. Wells:
He wrote science-fiction novels. He was interested in the scientific advances
of his age and looked ahead to imagine what the results might be in the future.
 George Orwell:
He wrote his first novels in the 1930s including Burmese Days showing
characters who struggle to cut through lies and pretense to find out the truth
about situations and people. His most important novels are written in the mid-
century.
Animal Farm (1945) a political allegory which shows animals as characters.
The animals on the farm, led by the pigs, drive out their master Jones and take
control of the farm, but the purity of their political ideas is soon destroyed, and
they end by being just as greedy and dishonest as the farmer they drove out.
Nineteen-Eighty Four (1948) is about the future of the British life and society
and dreaming about a fair society.

 William Golding:
His most important novel is Lord of the Flies (1954) tells the story of
schoolboys wrecked on an island, but soon regressing into a state of savagery
in which they try to destroy each other with frightening violence. The novel is
a reflection about the modern world and the essential animalistic nature of
man.