Evaluation requirements for “The English Novel in the 18th century”

Write on one, and only one, question from each section (8 questions in all). Each answer
should range between one and two paragraphs (300-400 words). Feel free to introduce
additional knowledge and examples relevant to the question. Use the Author-Date
(Harvard) style for referencing sources. (8 q. x 1p. = 8 p.)

Section A

To what extent can the 18th century novel be considered a “feminine” genre?

Section B

Should Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels be considered a novel, or not? Argument.

Section C

How does Pamela contribute to eighteenth-century perceptions of love?

Section D

Discuss the organization of Fielding’s novels in terms of the common journey-motif in literature.

Section E

Is Tristram Shandy a sentimental novel? Argument.

Section F

Which is Ann Radcliffe’s contribution to the Gothic genre?

Section G

What does Burney suggest is the nature of a woman's role in society?

Section H

Why is Austen’s fiction labelled as “novels of manners”?

(8 questions x 1 p = 8 p.)
NB

 1 p. is granted for the overall quality of discourse

 1 p. is granted ex officio

The evaluation tasks will be sent via Microsoft Teams Assignments

Deadline: 22nd January 2023.

Section A.

To what extent can the 18th century novel be considered a “feminine” genre?

The novel is any relatively long, work of narrative fiction, normally in prose, and
typically.

published as a book, representing character and action with some degree of

realism and complexity.

Romanticism left its mark on numerous fields of research, but also on the individuality of man.

In fact, for the romantics, beauty meant knowledge, it meant the expression of
intelligence, it meant harmonizing with the force of divinity. The works of the romantic authors
represented sources of inspiration in art, in painting, the creators of the works in images trying to
reproduce as expressively as possible what the poets expressed in words.

From here we can realize that the 18th century novel can be considered a feminine genre.

For example, we can talk about Jane Austen, who was an English novelist known
primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British
landed gentry at the end of the 18th century.

Austen’s novels portray small groups of people in a limited, environment. Her characters,
who are middle-class and provincial, have as their most urgent preoccupations courtship, while
their greatest ambition proves to be marriage.

Austen’s novels are interesting on how she managed to show us the human motivation
and character, turning her fictions into representations of universal patterns of behaviour, which
display the vision of man as a social animal, as well as the ironic awareness of the tensions
between spontaneity and convention.

The first significant characteristic of the feminine ideal, worthy of discussion is that of
restraint and modesty, as this trait necessitated an alienation of women from the social sphere,
and even themselves. Proper ladies were expected to avoid public attention, and conversation in
a social setting.

Finally, the most important feminine asset was that of chastity. The particular
significance of this virtue was grounded in the fad that men were considered naturally un- chaste,
and unable to control their passions. Women were thus, responsible for the preservation of their
innocence, and the upholding of moral values. Additionally, the social consequence incurred by a
loss of honor was often drastic. A woman who has lost her honor imagines that she cannot fall
lower, and as for recovering her former station, it is impossible.

Section B

Should Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels be considered a novel, or not? Argument.

Gulliver’s Travels is a novel published anonymously in 1726 as Travels into Several

Remote Nations of the World. A keystone of English literature, it is one of the books that
contributed to the emergence of the novel as a literary form in English. A parody of the then
popular travel narrative, Gulliver’s Travels combines adventure with savage satire, mocking
English customs and the politics of the day.

The novel is an extended fictional prose narrative, often including the psychological
development of the central characters and of their relationship with a broader world.

Narrator is the one who tells or, is assumed to be telling the story in a given narrative,
i.e., the imagined voice transmitting the story, while narrator is the imagined person whom the
narrator is assumed to be addressing in a given narrative.

Elements of analysis would include plot; setting/space, time, character, point of view and
theme.
 Gulliver’s Travels is a first-person narrative that is told from the point of view of Lemuel
Gulliver, a surgeon and sea captain who visits remote regions of the world, and it describes four
adventures. In the first one, Gulliver, the only survivor of a shipwreck, swims to Lilliput, where
he finds people who are less than 6 inches (15 cm) tall, with a small mind. After a few incidents
in the small world, he finds a normal-size boat and is thus able to return to England.

In the second adventure, Gulliver arrives into a world of giants. There, he meets the king
and his daughter, to whom he tells how England is. They are not delighted, and they don't
necessarily like him, in the end he is picked up by an eagle and then saved at sea by people of his
size.

On Gulliver’s third voyage he is set by pirates and eventually ends up on the flying island
of Laputa, with all the weird people. From Luggnagg, a land near Laputa, he can sail to Japan
and thence back to England.

In the fourth part, Gulliver visits the land of the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses
who are cleaner and more, and meets humanoid race called Yahoos. Gulliver returns to England,
so disgusted with humanity that he avoids his family and buys horses and converses with them
instead.

So, Gulliver’s Travels is a dystopian novel because Gulliver faces the same ups and
downs, witnesses certain human follies as Swift had endured in England. Through some utopian
elements, Gulliver finds some dystopian. We can say that this writing is a novel, because Guliver
meets many people, with different behaviours, in many different worlds.

Section C

How does Pamela contribute to eighteenth-century perceptions of love?

“Pamela”, or “Virtute Rewarded”, is written by the novelist Samuel Richardson, in 1740.

During eighteen century, and medieval times, the importance of love in a relationship
emerged as a reaction to arranged marriages but was still not considered a prerequisite in
matrimonial decisions. Suitors wooed their intended with serenades and flowery poetry,
following the lead of lovelorn characters on stage and in verse.
“Pamela” is an epistolary novel. ‘Epistolary’ means a story written in the form of letters,
sometimes with diary entries. Through an exchange of letters, we follow 15-year-old
Pamela, a maidservant, as she is terrorised and imprisoned by Mr B, a nobleman, libertine
and by the son of his recently deceased mistress. It ends, however, with them falling in
love and marrying.
Much ridicule arose from the implausible trajectory of the novel, in which Pamela’s terror
of Mr B is swiftly transformed into love upon the proposal of marriage. Contemporary
writers published satirical responses that called into question the reliability of Pamela’s
account of events. Two of the most popular parodies – Henry Fielding’s Shamela (1741)
and Eliza Heywood’s Anti-Pamela (1741) – portray Pamela as an experienced girl
prepared to trade her feigned innocence for wealth and an elevated social position.
Furthermore, Pamela was an early commentary on domestic violence and brought into
question the dynamic line between male aggression and a contemporary view of love.
The story that Richardson used in Pamela or Virtue Rewarded was told him by some
acquaintance of his youth of a Mr. B., the owner of a great house who married a beautiful
and virtuous young lady, one of his mother's maids. After the mother's death, the young
squire had tried by all manner of temptations to seduce the girl and she had recourse to as
many innocent stratagems to save herself.
With little modification this is the story Richardson wrote in Pamela. Pamela is a virtuous
maid servant who resists the attempts at seduction of the son of her late mistress. Pamela
in a series of letters inform her parents of her condition. Pamela gives way to despair, and,
like her original, tries to drown herself. During her confinement when she can no longer
communicate with her parents, she records her experiences in a journal. This falls into the
hands of the squire whose sensibilities are touched by her piety, her courage, and her
virtue. He offers her marriage which Pamela gladly accepts.
Even though Pamela is truly in love with the male counterpart, she resists his seductions
and requests marriage. At the end the male character gives in to marrying the woman he
loves, and this love causes a gradual and positive change in the male character.
The moral of this story is the triumph of patience, virtue and modesty over despotism and
hedonism.
 We can say that Pamela contributes to eighteen perceptions of love with demnity. She
found the secret of a successful marriage. It was one of the most hotly-debated topics in
the salons and coffee-houses of 18th-century England and the outcome of this febrile
discourse set the tone for our modern-day Western approach to marriage based on the
ideal of a harmonious, companionable partnership founded in mutual love.

Section D

Discuss the organization of Fielding’s novels in terms of the common journey-motif in

literature.

Henry Fielding was born into the country- side, landed gentry. He was trained in law
(barrister, Justice of the Peace), a playwright, journalist, novelist and travel writer
Some of the famous novels are:
“Shamela” (1741), “Joseph Andrews” (1742), “Jonathan Wild the Great” (1743),
“The History of Tom Jones”, “A Foundling” (1749), “Amelia”(1751).

A journey, in a work of literature, is a quest or trek towards a goal, destination, or

understanding that serves the progression of the plot. A motif, in a work of literature, is a
recurring theme, object, or idea that is notable and distinctive. The journey motif in epics of
World Literature is a consistent, fundamental, and revealing aspect. The journey itself serves as a
symbol and is used to represent an epic hero’s adventure which ultimately leads to an epiphany,
or some self-realization, or self-discovery that solidifies the work as a whole.

The journey motif is one of many commonalities among epics of World Literature.

Fielding considers the novel to be “a comic romance” or “a comic epic poem in

prose”, with a “more extended and comprehensive” action, which includes “a much larger circle
of incidents” and introduces “a greater variety of characters”.

His subjects are taken from life, he follows the “Nature”, the events and characters are presented
as comments on life, in order to provide the readers with models of ethical behaviour.

The journey motif in epics stands as a symbolic enlightenment for the character.
“A Journey from This World to the Next”, this unique double edition brings together Henry
Fielding's two voyage narratives. “A Journey from this World to the Next” (1743) and “The
Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon” (1755) belong, in different ways, to the travel-writing tradition,
and show Fielding standing in ironic relation to the genre.

Tom Jones is the most famous novel of Fielding. A bildungsroman (novel about the
coming of age, or maturation, of the main character), Tom Jones undergoes character
development while growing up in the country, experiencing adventures while traveling, and
searching in London for the young lady he loves  panorama of English life and character in the
mid-18th century.

In Tom Jones, Fielding dramatized the positive values of the good man in a carefully
structured narrative held together by the guiding voice of the narrator.

Tom must journey from his equivocal position as foundling on the country estate of Squire
Allworth (Paradise Hall) to moral independence in the hellish city of London. He must learn to
understand and control his life.

Within this pattern (the journey), Fielding demonstrates his moral thesis, the education of
a “good man,” in several ways: through the narrative (Tom’s behaviour continually lowers his
moral worth in society); through characters (the contrasting pairs of Tom and Blifil, Allworth
and Western, Square and Thwacked, Molly and Lady Ballston); and through the voice of the
narrator.

To remind his readers that the purpose of fiction is aesthetic as well as moral, the narrator
often comments on literary topics: “Of the Serious in Writing, and for What Purpose it is
introduced”; “A wonderful long chapter concerning the Marvelous”.

Section E

Is Tristram Shandy a sentimental novel? Argument.

“Tristam Shandy” is a novel written by Laurence Sterne. In “Tristram Shandy”, the

conventions of the Novel are exploded before the novel has had a chance to become a settled
form.
 An issue related to this was that of moral purpose. The eighteenth-century novel often
appears torn between the demand not to offend, to teach, and yet to be realistic. Novel writing is
thus tied to the moral demands of a middle-class readership, with is need for pleasurable
instruction, evident in the way in which these early novelists deal with sex, adultery, passion and
desire.

One of the greatest comic novels in English, the basic plot framework is subordinated by
weaving together several author's birth: Tristram’s father, Walter Shandy, and his obsession
with the influence of the proper name on a man's character, Tristram’s mother, Mrs Shandy, and
her domestic upsets. One day, turning over his parishes to a curate, the author began “Tristram
Shandy”.

In this mood, he softened the satire and talked about Tristram’s opinions, his eccentric
family, and ill-fated childhood with a sympathetic humor, sometimes hilarious, sometimes
sweetly melancholic—a comedy skirting tragedy.

The sentimentality of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is present from the beginning and persists
throughout the narrative as a complex relationship of mind and body. The text includes an early
definition of their relationship by means of Tristram himself who states, “--- I tremble to think
what a foundation had been laid for a thousand weaknesses both of body and mind, which no
skill of the physician or the philosopher could ever afterwards have set thoroughly to rights”. In
effect, the body and mind are like the middle section of a venn diagram, where it is impossible to
set them “to rights” or “into a proper condition or order”.

Furthermore, when there is change in one it effects the other and they share the entirety
of their elements, like their weaknesses. This idea is present within an essay on characterization
and body in Tristram Shandy, by Juliet McMaster who states, “mind and body—with the
indissoluble links between them, and their simultaneous tragic and comic discontinuity—are
surly the major overarching subject of “Tristram Shandy”.

Section F

Which is Ann Radcliffe’s contribution to the Gothic genre?

 Gothic novel is the European Romantic pseudo medieval fiction having a prevailing
atmosphere of mystery and terror. Its heyday was the 1790s, but it underwent frequent revivals in
subsequent centuries.

The "Gothic novel" emerged as a literary form which appealed to the readers’ appetite for
the sensational and their desire for emotional thrills.

Typically, is set in Gothic-styled architecture: ruins, abbeys, old castles with labyrinthine cellars,
secret passages, dungeons, and winding stairways.

Called Gothic because its imaginative impulse was drawn from medieval buildings and
ruins, such novels commonly used such settings as castles or monasteries equipped with
subterranean passages, dark battlements, hidden panels, and trapdoors. The vogue was initiated
in England by Horace Walpole’s immensely successful Castle of Otranto (1765).

His most respectable follower was Ann Radcliffe, whose Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
and Italian (1797) are among the best examples of the genre. Ann Radcliffe was a novelist who
legitimized Gothic literature.

Radcliffe is considered one of the key figures in the development of the Gothic genre in
literature. She helped to define many of the conventions that would come to be associated with
the genre, including the use of suspense, the focus on the supernatural, and the exploration of
dark, haunted settings.

Radcliffe is one of the first true gothic authors. Her work was highly influential on
subsequent gothic writers, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker. Her novels are still widely
read and studied today and are considered classics of the genre.

Mysteries of Udolpho - takes place in a medieval Southern European setting (southern

France and northern Italy) with remote and mysterious castles that suggest Catholic superstition,
where a villainous aristocrat (Count Montoni) pursues a virtuous innocent girl (Emily St.
Aubert).

The way Ann Radcliffe stands out in gothic genre is through her writings about the
supernatural elements which are resolved in the narrative. Affiliates the Gothic with - the
dominant rationalist mode, the cult of sentimentality, Emphasis on ‘chastity’ – assigns a ‘moral’
content to the Gothic.

This novel is written from the perspective of the victim: an oversensitive woman who must go
through several painful experiences and surpass obstacles by relying on her own self. This is
another belonging to the gothic genre.

Section G

37. What does Burney suggest is the nature of a woman's role in society?

Frances Burney (13 June 1752 – 6 January 1840), also known as Fanny Burney and later
Madame d'Arblay, was an English satirical novelist, diarist, and playwright. In 1786–1790 she
held the post as "Keeper of the Robes" to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, George III's queen.

In 1793, aged 41, she married a French exile, General Alexandre d'Arblay. After a long
writing career and wartime travels that stranded her in France for over a decade, she settled in
Bath, England, where she died on 6 January 1840.

Burney suggests that a woman is limited to existing under the protection of a man. Her
agency is meant for no more than navigating the pitfalls of social events and maintaining her
reputation. Evelina moves from one protector to another; she never truly achieves autonomy or
self-definition.

The first of her four novels, Evelina (1778), was the most successful and remains her most
highly regarded. Most of her plays were not performed in her lifetime.

Eveline is the first female protagonist that Joyce introduces in Dubliners, and many of her
thoughts and desires are influenced by her role as a woman in 20th Century Dublin. Whether or
not she is aware of it, her decisions are greatly affected by outside social forces.

Eveline’s indecisiveness and resulting inaction is largely a result of women’s roles in

society at the time. Society has told her she is powerless, and so she feels powerless. This sense
of powerlessness is partially why Eveline is unable to make a decision and she feels she needs a
male figure, either God or Frank, to “save” her from her present situation. Eveline sees marrying
Frank as a way to gain respect, so she is aware that she is somewhat helpless without a husband.
As a woman, she does not have a lot of mobility when it comes to her status.

Eveline’s role as a woman also affects her views and experiences with violence. As
Eveline’s father begins to threaten her more, he also justifies it by threatening her “for her dead
mother’s sake.” Eveline feels like she is becoming her mother and thus the new outlet for her
father’s violence. However, since she grew up in this environment, she has been exposed to
violence and is somewhat used to it.

Eveline is motivated by what marrying Frank could give her – respect, more freedom, an
escape – but at the final moment she comes to the realization that she does not really love Frank,
and regardless of what changes would result from marriage, she will always be trapped in her
role as a caretaker and rendered powerless by society.

I think that this is the way that Burney sees the women’s role in society. This is the best
ilustraded in the novel “Eveline”.

Section H

Why is Austen’s fiction labelled as “novels of manners”?

The late eighteenth-century author Jane Austen is best known for popularizing the
“comedy of manners”. Austen presents the reader with several motifs for the expectations of
both sexes—expectations of manners, taste, belonging, and sociability.

Novel of manners, work of fiction that re-creates a social world, conveying with finely
detailed observation the customs, values, and mores of a highly developed and complex society.

Jane Austen contributed to what has been called as the “novel of manners”, a kind of
fiction focused on everyday routine life and events. Her novels are based on the premise that
there is a vital relationship between manners, social behavior, and character.

Austen Reworks the domestic novel into a novel of manners (a kind of fiction focused on
everyday routine life and events). It explores character, personal relationships, class distinctions
and their effect on character and behavior; the role of money and property in the way people treat
each other; the complications of love and friendship within this social world.
 Conversation plays a central role and passions, and emotions are not expressed directly
but more subtly and obliquely. The most famous novel written by jane Austen is “Pride and
Prejudice”.

The action is set in Longbourn, a small country village in Hertfordshire, where Mr and
Mrs Bennet live with their five daughters: Jane, Elisabeth,Mary, Lydia and Kitty. The conflict
arises when members of the lower gentry (the Bennets) mingle socially with members of the
upper classes (Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley). The title is representative, suggesting the main
characters: Mr. Darcy = Pride; Elizabeth = Prejudice.

Main theme is the journey towards self-awareness and self-knowledge, complemented

by other themes (love, marriage, social status and wealth).

In 19th century England, manners played a big role. In her book” Pride and Prejudice”,
Jane Austen portrays many different aspects of English social manners in the 1800s, and these
facets of English etiquette, including traveling etiquette, social propriety, and dancing, greatly
affect the plot of the book.

The women we see portrayed in “Pride and Prejudice “range from the upper-middle and
gentry classes to aristocrats like Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Elizabeth defends herself to Lady de
Bourgh as a gentleman's daughter, and we note that her father owns an estate big enough to
support different values, like hunting.