QUESTIONS IN CONNECTION TO THE NOVELS Flashcards
WHICH CURRENT ISSUES ARE ALSO DISCUSSED IN BLEAK HOUSE?
The corruption of the legal system and other institutions, the problem of miserable, abandoned children and working mothers, effects of the class system, women’s role and position in society.
DISCUSS THE NARRATION IN BLEAK HOUSE
The narration in Dickens’ Bleak House is double: there is the omniscient narrator who speaks in the present tense, has an omniscient perspective, gives objective descriptions of the social and public concerns and centers around Chancery, then there is Esther Summerson as a narrator, she speaks in the first person, past tense, is more personal or subjective, focuses on the private, domestic life and centers around the problem od an absent parent.
DESCRIBE ESTHER SUMMERSON
Esther is a typical example of the ‘angel-in-the-house’. She is responsible, loving, caring, motherly, modest, uncomplicated, unreal and too idealised, therefore not so convincing. She was raised as an orphan and throughout the novel we can witness her psychological development as she looks for her own identity and defines herself, which is limited by her social class at first she does succeed in the end and is with that symbolis of how the society should change.
WHAT ARE DICKENS’ 2 MOST FAMOUS BILDUNGSROMANS?
The first, best English bildungsroman is David Copperfield and the 2nd is Great Expectations.
WHICH OF DICKENS’ NOVELS IS HISTORICAL
The Tale of the Two Cities
WHICH NOVEL IS TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES PRIMARILY A REPRESENTATIVE OF? SUBSANTIATE YOUR CLAIMS.
Tess is primarily a REGIONAL NOVEL (fiction that is set in real regions in order to show how the region positively differs from any other region or urban area). It deals with the specific problematic of industrialisation and the visual impact it had on the region and with that criticises industrialisation and living in urban areas - promotes living close to nature.
WHAT ARE 3 THEMES IN TESS?
- RELIGIONS: different kinds of religion in opposition to pagan, natural beliefs. Tess is symbolically a pagan Goddess who lives close to nature and ends up feeling strangled by the civilisation, the Western predominant religion mostly preached by men.
- LOVE AND SUFFERING: love is as inevitable as suffering
- HYPOCRISY: sexual double standards! Tess is able to forgive Angel for cheating, but he can’t forgive her that she was raped? ALSO paradoxical ideas of purity! Tess is essentially good, but since she was raped and had an illegitimate child she is labeled a fallen woman
- INJUSTICES: rape, killing of the family horse, falling in love with a man who’s an idiot, industrialisation, clash of traditioinal & modern ways of life
WHY IS TESS A ‘GODDESS ON EARTH’ AND A ‘SACRIFICIAL VICTIM’?
Earth goddess is a pagan reference made about Tess due to her performing as the goddess of harvest, Ceres, at the village May-Day dance. When she baptises her child, she chooses a passage from Genesis over more traditioinal New Testament verses. Tess is the personification of nature: lovely, but exploitable. There is also animal imagery present throughout the novel, always in connection with some important event from Tess’ life (e.g. the horse’s death is the reason why Tess decides to meet with the d’Urbervilles, she and Angel fall in love amid cows…). She is seen as a sacrificial victim to the society that shunned he, because, in the end, when she comes to Stonehenge (which at the time was believed to be a pagan shrine) with Angel, she willingly lies down on an altar and reconciles herself to the oncoming punishment for the crime she commited and separation from Angel.
NOVELISTIC MODES IN TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES AND EXAMPLES
- PROVINCIAL NOVEL: takes place in a generic location, the province differs negatively
- REGIONAL NOVEL: idealises the country and criticises the city, industr5ialisation and urban areas
- CONDITION-OF-ENGLAND NOVEL
- PARTLY SENSATIONAL NOVEL: emotional scenes, such as rape, dead child, execution and murder
- ROMANTIC NOVEL
- TRAGIC NOVEL: an essentially good character makes a fatal mistake and then pays for it
WHAT ARE THE SENSATIONAL ELEMENTS IN TESS?
Rabe, burial of the child (Sorrow), murder, execution.
WHY CAN’T VANITY FAIR BE REGARDED AS A REPRESENTATIVE ENTIRELY OF EUROPEAN REALISM?
Because it has a lot of Victorian characteristics:
- it shows values typical for the 18th century
- stresses the importance of money, greed, social rise/fall
- the three lawyers are named after famous killers
- history does not define the fate of the individuals, there is NO CAUSAL DETERMINISM, Napoleonic wars direct the whole course of events
- Thackeray still believes that the essential is human nature
- Vanity Fair still promotes the Victorian society while the realists depend only upon the 3 determinants: genes - environment - historical context
- Thackeray is extremely moralistic which no realist would do
NARRATION IN VANITY FAIR
The narratos is omniscient and takes on different personas: he manages the performance, he is the harlequin and the ‘reflective’ man –> with these three personas the narrator comments the story and directs the reader, but he also takes on the role of the moralist, which distances the reader and makes the reader aware that everything is just a show. This is called the split-level technique.
WHAT ARE THE NOVELISTIC MODES IN JANE EYRE?
- FEMALE BILDUNGSROMAN: follows Jane’s life from her childhood to her marriage with Rochester.
- RELIGIOUS NOVEL: institutional vs personal religion is discussed. Bronte criticises the institution of the Church, she addresses the hypocrisy; the official fate is questioned, the Church does not adapt to changes, clergy is using faith and religion for its own purposes and vanity
- ROMANCE NOVEL: Jane’s relationship with Rochester
- SENSATIONAL NOVEL: Rochester’s scandalous wife, her madness, the burning of the castle
- SOCIALLY-SPIRITED NOVEL: position of women in the society (they are objects in the hands of men), the abuse of children in church schools, class distinctions in the society (although Bronte does not show this as much as Dickens), British Imperialism
- AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ELEMENTS: Jane reads the same books as Bronte
SYMBOLIC POTENTIAL OF BERTHA MASON
Bertha Mason is a symbol of people’s attitude towards people from colonies. The general feeling of xenophobia - Britain fearerd and locked away the cultures it encountered on its colonial journey, they tried to change everything that wasn’t British. Bertha is Creole and because of that she is passionate and has murder instincts. The British believed that her madness is hereditary and that it was embedded in her, that she inherited it from her mother. Bertha can also be regarded as the symbol of the trapped Victorian wife and as a warning to Jane of what total submission to Rochester would bring about for her.
DISCUSS ROCHESTER’S CHARACTER
Rochester is a dark, passionate man with a secret, who is essentially not evil - a typical Byronic hero. He is too passionate, which makes him weak. Jane is stronger than him and she enters the marriage as a slightly more dominant spouse. Bronte was also influenced by Milton when creating the character of Rochester: he is without moral restraints, but at the same time interesting and intelligent, much like Lucifer in Paradise Lost.
DISCUSS THE ROMANTIC INFLUENCE ON CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND GIVE EXAMPLES FROM JANE EYRE
Bronte was influenced by the romantics which shows in the way that the feeling directs the action and the way her characters speak the ‘language of truth’ or the language of real people. The influence is also shown in the attitude towards nature - nature is the mirror of character’s emotions and changes accordingly (e.g. the lightning when Rochester proposes to Jane suggests that something bad will follow). The names are also taken from nature. Another romantic feature is the heavy use of coincidences (e.g. Jane being an heiress of a huge fortune, The RIvers family turn out to be Jane’s relatives, the voice she hears when deciding whether to return to Rochester or not).
DSICUSS THE SYMBOLISM IN THE MILLS ON THE FLOSS
- THE FLOSS symbolizes water, the river, the floods, symbolic of Maggie who has deeply running unpredictable emotions
- ST OGG’S AND ITS LEGEND: legendary patron saint of the town, it symbolizes the feeling of sympathy and pity (indicationg hypocrisy, because the city of Ogg lacks just that) and Maggie’s search for Tom
- MAGGIE’S EYES: connected to Medusa, Maggie’s eyes compel people, which is indicated by the way that people react to her gaze
- ‘GOING TO LAW’: the corruption of the system that came with industrialisation
WHICH CURRENT ISSUES ARE DISCUSSED IN THE MILL ON THE FLOSS? GIVE EXAMPLES.
- LOVE AND SUFFERING: Maggie’s love and relationships with male characters. For example, the relationship with Phillip presents intellectual love, whereas th love for Stephen is physical and romantic. Eliot discusses these two oppositions, she implies that Maggie cannot be happy with either one of them
- FAMILY: very important theme. It is presented as a source of destruction, and institution that is so strong that everything else conforms to it. Family duty is extremely important, putting your duty before your feelings, sacrificing love for duty. The most important is the relationship between siblings
- THE CHAIN OF PAST UPON PRESENT IDENTITY (CAUSAL DETERMINISM): past determines the characters
- CHOICES: Maggie is constantly faced with choices in her life. Eliot emphasizes that there are no black and white choices, but that each choice has its consequences which can turn out to be very painful and are not a result of morality
- HOME: provides an identity, Maggie symbolically finds her home in the end of the novel when she passes away
- COMPASSION, SYMPATHY AND FORGIVENESS: all values that Maggie promotes
- GENDER: the differences between the genders are presented through the relationship between Tom and Maggie. Maggie is much more intelligent than her brother, but she is constantly restrained because she’s a woman. Her gender determines her life. Eliot wanted to give a critique on the position of women in society, to show how ridiculous the prevailing attitude is. However, she refused being a feminist, probably because she didn’t want to be a part of any ideology
- SOCIETY and how an individual is constructed by it
- ART AND CULTURE: something profound and meaningful, a refuge from everyday life. Maggie and Phillip find solace in art. The importance of music is emphasized
