Unit 1: Romantic Movement 1-Literature: any piece of written text having artistic quality.

Some concepts: 2-Pre-Victorian female writers *Jane Austen: she was born on the 16th December 1775 in Steventon Rectory, Hampshire, England and died on the 18th July 1817 in Winchester, Hampshire, England. She is one of the first women writer in English. She is different from other writers of her time because her main interest is in moral, social and psychological behavior of the character. She writes mainly about young women as they grow up and search for personal happiness. Austen pictures are detailed often ironic and always about a small number of people. She gives her main characters choices and then shows how and why they make their choices. She criticized novels of sensibility. Her plots are fundamentally comic; she also highlighted the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security. WORKS: Sense of sensibility (1811); Pride and Prejudice (1815); Mansfield Pride (1814); Emma (1816); Northanger Abbey (1818); Persuasion (1818). *The Bronte Sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne were all writers of great talent, although it is probably Charlotte who is remembered today as the most gifted. Their family was poor and in the early years the sisters tried to earn money by working as governesses and later by opening a village school. Then, they gave up teaching and started to write, first poetry and then novels. Because of the difficulties of writers as women in 19th c, they wrote under the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell: 1)- Charlotte: was born in Yorkshire in 1816 into a truly remarkable literary family. She published three novels before her death in 1855 which are: THE PROFESSOR. It describes events in the life of a school master in Brussels. Without beauty and money, the heroine becomes a teacher and wins respect by her fine character. Her finest novel is JANE EYRE (1847). It describes the life of a poor and unbeautiful girl who is brought up by a cruel aunt and sent her to a miserable school. After that she goes to teach the daughter of Mr Rochester at Thornfield Hall. The book was very successful, although the heroine was neither beautiful nor rich. Jane Eyre is a reflection of Charlottes early life in Cowan Bridge School which is represented in the novel as Lowood School. Due to its poor conditions, two of Charlottes sisters, Mary and Elizabeth died of tuberculosis in the same year and of course the infection damaged Charlottes health permanently. Another less important novel is Sherley (1849) which is concerned with the wool industry with riots and with the Napoleonic wars. Some of her poems are: The Missionary, Passions, Parting, and Pilates wifes dream. Continuing with her biography, Charlotte married her fathers curate, a man named Nicholls. However, she died a year later from an illness associated with pregnancy. 2)Emily: (Ellis-1818/1848). She wrote one of the greatest of English novels, Wuthering Heights in 1847. The novel had been compared to Shakespeares king Liar, chiefly because of its immense and uncontrollable passions. In the opinion of some critics, no woman could have written it. Some of her poems are: My ladys grave, No coward soul is mine, The imagination, The prisoner.3)-Anne: (Acton Bell-1820/1847) the youngest sister wrote The Tenant of Fell Hall and Agnes Gray (both in 1848) with central female characters with unusual courage. Some of her poems are: Memory, The consolation, the penitent. *Mary Shelly: (1797/1851) London. In 1814, at the age of 17, Mary met and fell in love with poet Percy Shelly. She ran away with him to France and they were married in 1816 after Shellys wife committed suicide. In her best known work, Frankenstein, she shows an extraordinary world in which a living being is created by a Genevan Dr from the bound of a death person, but later it becomes a monster which nobody can control. The monster murders Frankensteins brothers and his wife, and finally Frankenstein himself. The novel shows the interest in the supernatural and in the attempts of man to be as powerful as god. This novel can be seen as one of the first fiction novels. And she wrote Frankenstein after Lord Byron introduced a challenge to discern who among the three writers (Percy, Mary and Byron) could write the best ghost story. Some others works: The last man, Mathilda, The fortunes of Perkins Warbeck, Lodore. 3-JANE EYRE PLOT Jane Eyre is a young orphan being raised by Mrs. Reed, her cruel, wealthy aunt. Only a servant named Bessie Lee provides Jane with some of the few kindnesses she receives, telling her stories and singing songs to her. One day, as punishment for fighting with her bullying cousin John Reed, Janes aunt imprisons Jane in the red-room, the room in which Janes Uncle Reed died. While locked in, Jane, believing that she sees her uncles ghost, screams and faints. She wakes to find herself in the care of Bessie and the kindly apothecary Mr. Lloyd, who suggests to Mrs. Reed that Jane be sent away to school. To Janes delight, Mrs. Reed concurs. Once at the Lowood School, Jane finds that her life is far from idyllic. The schools headmaster is Mr. Brocklehurst, a cruel, hypocritical, and abusive man who preaches a doctrine of poverty and privation to his 1

students while using the schools funds to provide a wealthy and luxurious lifestyle for his own family. At Lowood, Jane befriends a young girl named Helen Burns, whose strong, martyr like attitude toward the schools miseries is both helpful and displeasing to Jane. However, a massive typhus epidemic sweeps Lowood, and Helen dies of consumption. The epidemic also results in the departure of Mr. Brocklehurst by attracting attention to the insalubrious conditions at Lowood. After a group of more sympathetic gentlemen takes Brocklehursts place, Janes life improves dramatically. She spends eight more years at Lowood, six as a student and two as a teacher. And after teaching for two years, Jane yearns for new experiences. She accepts a governess position at a manor called Thornfield, where she teaches a French girl named Adle. The distinguished housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax presides over the estate but Janes employer at Thornfield is a dark, impassioned man named Rochester, with whom Jane finds herself falling secretly in love. She saves Rochester from a fire one night, which he claims was started by a drunken servant named Grace Poole. But because Grace Poole continues to work at Thornfield, Jane concludes that she has not been told the entire story. Jane sinks into despondency when Rochester brings home a beautiful but vicious woman named Blanche Ingram. But Rochester disguises as a gypsy to test if Blanche wants to marry him because she loves him or because of his money and also to know if Jane loves him. Jane expects Rochester to propose to Blanche but to her surprise, he instead proposes to Jane, who accepts almost disbelievingly. The wedding day arrives, and as Jane and Mr. Rochester prepares to exchange their vows, the voice of Mr. Mason cries out that Rochester already has a wife. Mason introduces himself as the brother of that wife-a woman named Bertha. Mr. Mason testifies that Bertha, whom Rochester married when he was a young man in Jamaica, is still alive. Rochester does not deny Masons claims, but he explains that Bertha has gone mad. He takes the wedding party back to Thornfield, where they witness the insane Bertha Mason scurrying around on all fours and growling like an animal. Rochester pays Grace Poole to keep his wife under control and she was the real cause of the mysterious fire earlier in the story. Knowing that it is impossible for her to be with Rochester, Jane flees Thornfield. Penniless and hungry, Jane is forced to sleep outdoors and beg for food. At last, three siblings who live in a manor alternatively called Moor House take her in. Their names are Mary, Diana, and St. John (pronounced Sinjin) Rivers, and Jane quickly becomes friends with them. St. John is a clergyman, and he finds Jane a job teaching at a charity school in Morton. He surprises her one day by declaring that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left her a large fortune: 20,000 pounds. When Jane asks how he received this news, he shocks her further by declaring that her uncle was also his uncle: Jane and the Riverses are cousins. Jane immediately decides to share her inheritance equally with her three newfound relatives. St. John decides to travel to India as a missionary, and he urges Jane to accompany him-as his wife. Jane agrees to go to India but refuses to marry her cousin because she does not love him. St. John pressures her to reconsider, and she nearly gives in. However, she realizes that she cannot abandon forever the man she truly loves when one night she hears Rochesters voice calling her name over the moors. Jane immediately hurries back to Thornfield and finds that it has been burned to the ground by Bertha Mason, who lost her life in the fire. Rochester saved the servants but lost his eyesight and one of his hands. Jane travels on to Rochesters new residence, Ferndean, where he lives with two servants named John and Mary. At Ferndean, Rochester and Jane rebuild their relationship and soon marry. At the end of her story, Jane writes that she has been married for ten blissful years and that she and Rochester enjoy perfect equality in their life together. She says that after two years of blindness, Rochester regained sight in one eye and was able to behold their first son at his birth. Character List Jane Eyre: the protagonist and narrator of the novel, Jane is an intelligent, honest, plain-featured young girl forced to contend with oppression, inequality, and hardship. Although she meets with a series of individuals who threaten her autonomy, Jane repeatedly succeeds at asserting herself and maintains her principles of justice, human dignity, and morality. She also values intellectual and emotional fulfillment. Her strong belief in gender and social equality challenges the Victorian prejudices against women and the poor. Edward Rochester : Janes employer and the master of Thornfield, Rochester is a wealthy, passionate man with a dark secret that provides much of the novels suspense. He is rash and impetuous and has spent much of his adult life roaming about Europe in an attempt to avoid the consequences of his youthful indiscretions. His problems are partly the result of his own recklessness, but he is a sympathetic figure because he has suffered for so long as a result of his early marriage to Bertha.

St. John Rivers: with his sisters, Mary and Diana, he serves as Janes benefactor after she runs away from Thornfield, giving her food and shelter. He is the minister at Morton; he is also cold, reserved, and often controlling in his interactions with others and he is entirely alienated from his feelings and devoted solely to an austere ambition. Mrs. Reed: is Janes cruel aunt, who raises her at Gateshead Hall until Jane is sent away to school at age ten. Later in her life, Jane attempts reconciliation with her aunt, but the old woman continues to resent her because her husband had always loved Jane more than his own children. Bessie Lee: is the maid at Gateshead who is the only figure in Janes childhood who regularly treats her kindly, telling her stories and singing her songs. Bessie later marries Robert Leaven, the Reeds coachman. She also meets Jane after goes to Thornfield Hall to work with Mr. Rochester and she tells her about her cousins and Mrs. Reeds situation. Mr. Lloyd: is the Reeds apothecary, who suggests that Jane be sent away to school. Always kind to Jane, Mr. Lloyd writes a letter to Miss Temple confirming Janes story about her childhood and clearing Jane of Mrs. Reeds charge that she is a liar. Georgiana Reed: is Janes cousin and one of Mrs. Reeds two daughters. The beautiful Georgiana treats Jane cruelly when they are children, but later in their lives she befriends her cousin and confides in her. Georgiana attempts to elope with a man named Lord Edwin Vere, but her sister, Eliza, alerts Mrs. Reed of the arrangement and sabotages the plan. After Mrs. Reed dies, Georgiana marries a wealthy man. Eliza Reed: is Janes cousin and one of Mrs. Reeds two daughters. Not as beautiful as her sister, Eliza devotes herself somewhat self-righteously to the church and eventually goes to a convent in France where she becomes the Mother Superior. John Reed: is Janes cousin, Mrs. Reeds son, and brother to Eliza and Georgiana. John treats Jane with appalling cruelty during their childhood and later falls into a life of drinking and gambling. John commits suicide midway through the novel when his mother ceases to pay his debts for him. Helen Burns: is Janes close friend at the Lowood School. She endures her miserable life there with a passive dignity that Jane cannot understand. Helen dies of consumption in Janes arms. Mr. Brocklehurst : the cruel, hypocritical master of the Lowood School who preaches a doctrine of privation, while stealing from the school to support his luxurious lifestyle. After a typhus epidemic sweeps Lowood, Brocklehursts shifty and dishonest practices are brought to light and he is publicly discredited. Maria Temple is a kind teacher at Lowood, who treats Jane and Helen with respect and compassion. Along with Bessie Lee, she serves as one of Janes first positive female role models. Miss Temple helps clear Jane of Mrs. Reeds accusations against her. Miss Scatcherd:Janes sour and vicious teacher at Lowood, Miss Scatcherd behaves with particular cruelty toward Helen. Alice Fairfax is the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall. She is the first to tell Jane that the mysterious laughter often heard echoing through the halls is, in fact, the laughter of Grace Poolea lie that Rochester himself often repeats. Bertha Mason : Rochesters clandestine wife, Bertha Mason is a formerly beautiful and wealthy Creole woman who has become insane, violent, and bestial. She lives locked in a secret room and is guarded by Grace Poole, whose occasional gets drunk and sometimes enable Bertha to escape. Bertha eventually burns down Thornfield, plunging to her death in the flames. Grace Poole: is Bertha Masons keeper at Thornfield, whose drunken carelessness frequently allows Bertha to escape. When Jane first arrives at Thornfield, Mrs. Fairfax attributes to Grace all evidence of Berthas misdeeds. Adle Varens: Janes pupil at Thornfield, Adle Varens is a lively though somewhat spoiled child from France. Rochester brought her to Thornfield after her mother, Celine, abandoned her. Although Celine was once Rochesters mistress, he does not believe himself to be Adles father. Celine Varens: is a French opera dancer with whom Rochester once had an affair. Rochester brought Celines daughter, Adele, to England when Celine abandoned her and he had broken off his relationship with Celine after learning that she was unfaithful to him and interested only in his money. Sophie: is Adles French nurse at Thornfield. Richard Mason is Berthas brother. During a visit to Thornfield, he is injured by his mad sister. After learning of Rochesters intent to marry Jane, Mason arrives with the solicitor Briggs in order to thwart the wedding and reveal the truth of Rochesters prior marriage. Mr. Briggs: John Eyres attorney, he helps Richard Mason prevent Janes wedding to Rochester when he learns of the existence of Bertha Mason. After John Eyres death, Briggs searches for Jane in order to give her the inheritance. Blanche Ingram is a beautiful socialite who despises Jane and hopes to marry Rochester for his money. 3

Diana Rivers is Janes cousin, and the sister of St. John and Mary. Diana is a kind and intelligent person, and she urges Jane not to go to India with St. John. She serves as a model for Jane of an intellectually gifted and independent woman. Mary Rivers is Janes cousin, the sister of St. John and Diana. She is a kind and intelligent young woman who is forced to work as a governess after her father loses his fortune. Like her sister, she serves as a model for Jane of an independent woman who is also able to maintain close relationships with others and a sense of meaning in her life. Rosamond Oliver: She is the beautiful daughter of Mr. Oliver, Mortons wealthiest inhabitant and she gives money to the school in Morton where Jane works. Although she is in love with St. John, she becomes engaged to the wealthy Mr. Granby. John Eyre is Janes uncle, who leaves her his vast fortune of 20,000 pounds. Uncle Reed is Mrs. Reeds late husband. Because he was always fond of Jane and her mother (his sister), he made his wife promise that she would raise Jane as her own child. It is a promise that Mrs. Reed does not keep. THEMES 1-Love vs Autonomy. Jane Eyre is very much the story of a quest to be loved. Jane searches, not just for romantic love but also for a sense of being value, of belonging and over the courses of the book, she must learn how to gain love without sacrificing and harming herself in the process. Her fear of losing her autonomy motives her refusal of Rochesters marriage proposal because she believes that by marrying him while he remains legally tied to Bertha would mean rendering herself a mistress and sacrificing her own integrity for the sake of emotional gratification. 2-Religion Throughout the novel, Jane encounters three main religion figures: 1)-Mr. Brocklehurst who illustrates the dangers and hypocrisies that Charlotte perceived in the 19th c evangelical movement. He adopts the rhetoric of evangelicalism when he claims to be purging his students of pride, however when he orders that the naturally curly hair of one of Janes classmates be cut so as to lie straight, is entirely un-Christian. 2)-Helen Burns: her mode of Christianity is too passive for Jane to adopts as her own, although she admires and loves Helen for it.3)-St John Rivers: he is a Christianity of ambition, glory, and extreme self-importance. He urges Jane to sacrifice her emotional deeds for the fulfillment of her moral duty. Although Jane ends up rejecting all three models, she doesnt abandon morality, spiritualism or a belief in a Christian God. 3-Social class Jane Eyre is critical of Victorian Englands strict social hierarchy. Jane is a figure of ambiguous class standing and, consequently, a source of extreme tension for the characters around her. Her manners, sophistication, and education are those of an aristocrat, because Victorian governesses, who tutored children in etiquette as well as academics, were expected to possess the culture of aristocracy. Yet, as paid employees, they were more or less treated as servants; thus, Jane remains penniless and powerless while at Thornfield. When she falls in love with Mr. Rochester, she understands that she is intellectual but also that she isnt his social equal. Finally, Jane is only able to marry Rochester as his equal because she has almost magically come into her own inheritance from her uncle. 4-Gender Relations Jane also must fight against patriarchal domination-against those who believe that women to be inferior to men and try to treat them as such. Mr. Brocklehurst, Mr. Rochester and St John are the central male figures that threaten her desire for equality and dignity. Each of them tries to keep Jane is a submissive position, where she is unable to express her own thoughts and feelings. Symbols 1-Bertha Mason: serves as a reminder of Rochesters youthful liberalism. It is a representation of the trapped Victorian wife, who is expected never to travel or work outside the house and also it may be a manifestation of Janes subconscious feelings because she declares her love for Rochester but she also secretly fears marriage to him and feels the need to rage against the imprisonment it could become for her. 2-The red room: represents what Jane must overcome in her struggle to find freedom, happiness and sense of belonging.

Unit 2. Victorian Literature 1-Victorian period: Background The movement roughly comprises the years from 1830 to 1900. The name given to the period is borrowed from the royal matriarch of England, Queen Victoria, who sat on throne from 1837 to 1901. One has difficulty determining with any accuracy where the Romantic Movement of the early 19th century leaves off and the Victorian period begins because these traditions have so many aspects in common. The Victorian writers exhibited some well-established habits from previous eras, while at the same time pushing arts and letters in new and interesting directions. For the majority of writers and thinkers, however, the inequality present in Victorian society was a kind of illness that would sooner or later come to a tipping point. Many intellectuals saw it as their duty to speak out against the injustices of this new and frightening world. Essayist like Thomas Carlyle railed against the systematic abuse he saw happening all around him. He saw machinery and the Industrial Revolution as engines of destruction, stripping people of their very humanity. The level of social consciousness and immediate relevancy one finds in much Victorian writing was sth not witnessed before in English letters. Rather than turning inside or escaping into fantasy, essayists and novelists chose to directly address the pressing social problems of the day. These problems ranged from atrocious labor conditions and rampant poverty to the issue of womens place in the world-what contemporaries referred to as The woman question. Elizabeth Barrett-Brownings long-form poem The cry of the children represents an attack on mining practices in England, specifically the employment of young children to work deep in the mines. BarrettBrowning had been outraged by a report she read detailing the practice and felt compelled to make her voice heard on the issue. But she was certainly not alone in this feeling. Novelist Charles Dickens made a cottage industry out of addressing social ills in a light-hearted, optimistic tone. Dickens is also noteworthy for his Rock star status, attaining popularity that would not have been possible in the previous generation. He wrote with a voice that was very accessible to the ordinary reader of the time, and yet couched within his fiction were essential questions that society would sooner or later be forced to confront. One cannot say exactly how much influence Dickens and others had on their society, but the fact that they tried to change their world is what is important. Writers of the preceding era did not speak to a popular audience nearly as much as the Victorians, or at least not as self-consciously. The Romantic Movement was marked by introversion and abstraction; they were much less interested in commenting on, much less altering the course of world events. Furthermore, the Romantics did not see leadership as a primary objective for art. Victorians, on the other hand, tacitly agreed that encouraging society toward a higher good was a righteous, noble occupation for any artist. Not surprisingly, women in the Victorian world held very little power and had to fight hard for the change they wanted in their lives. What one thinks of as feminism today had not yet taken form in the Victorian period. The philosophy of female emancipation, however, became a rallying point for many female Victorian writers and thinkers. However, Charlotte and Emily Bront crafted novels that have stood the test of time and taken their place as literary classics. Thats why these women were exceptions to the rule. Patriarchy had been firmly entrenched in Western society for so long that women writers faced an uphill climb to gain any level recognition and acceptance. Some authors, like Mary Ann Evans, felt the need to work under a male pseudonym in order to receive recognition. Evans published her first two novels, Adam Bede and Scenes of Clerical Life, under the false name of George Eliot. Interestingly, even today Evans is more commonly known by her pseudonym than her real name. In the early years of the Victorian Period, poetry was still the most visible of literary forms. It was still mired in the escapist, abstract imagery and themes of the earlier generation. While essayists and novelists were confronting social issues head-on, poets for their part remained ambivalent at best. This self-induced coma gradually lifted, and by mid-century most poets had moved away from the abstractions and metaphysical tropes of the Romantics and fashioned a more down-to-earth, realistic kind of verse. The obsession with the natural world and the imagination that so clearly distinguished the Romantic poets was supplanted during the Victorian Period by a clear-headed, almost utilitarian kind of poetics. The subject matter of Victorian poetry was quite often socially-oriented. Victorian poets were nothing if not masters of variety and inventiveness. At some point in the Victorian era, the novel replaced the poem as the most fashionable vehicle for the transmission of literature. This was partly because of the success of the novels of Sir Walter Scott. His great series of Waverly Novels, published between 1814 and 1832, became best sellers all over the world. They created a fashion for the series novel, published in monthly parts. This fashion went on for most of the rest of the century. When the novels were later published in volume form, usually in three volumes(triple-decker 5

novels) readers borrowed them from the libraries. The novels were often historica but then, with the novels of Charles dickens, a social concern with the problems of the society of the time enters the novel. Dickens made full use of the serial format, and his novels betray the episodic arrangement of their original publication method. He was the first great popular novelist in England, and was the forerunner of the artist-celebrity figure which in the twentieth century would become the norm. The influence of Dickens was so severe that every novelist who came after him had to work under his aesthetic shadow. Part of his appeal certainly owed to the fact that his literary style, while always entertaining, put the ills of society under the microscope for everyone to see. His Hard Times was a condemning portrait of societys obsession with logic and scientific advancement at the expanse of the imagination. For many, the word Victorian conjures up rules of personal conduct which were so inflexible that the Victorians garnered a reputation for saying one thing while doing another. A surging global economy was orchestrated by the might of the British Empire. The nobility, formerly at the top of the pyramid in society, found their status reduced as agriculture lost its preeminence in the now industrial economy. Mechanization and steam power led to ruthless efficiency, while more often than not the poor suffered under the weight of the capitalist middle class. Being impoverished in Victorian England was unpleasant to say the least, but there were efforts underway to improve the lot of the poor. The Reform Bills of the nineteenth century extended voting rights to men who were previously disenfranchised but not, of course, to women. That would require years more of struggle. For all of the social inequalities which still persisted, the Victorians successfully undermined some of humanitys most time-honored institutions. Some writers greeted these changes with fear, and wanted desperately for society to check its relentless pace. Others embraced the new world that was coming into being, thrilled at the progress of science and society. Together, these voices comprise an important and sometimes overlooked era in English literary history.

Characteristics of Victorian Literature The literature of the Victorian age (1837 1901, named for the reign of Queen Victoria) entered in a new period after the romantic revival. The literature of this era expressed the fusion of pure romance to gross realism. Though, the Victorian Age produced great poets, the age is also remarkable for the excellence of its prose. The four general characteristics are: 1. Literature of this age tends to come closer to daily life which reflects its practical problems and interests. It becomes a powerful instrument for human progress. Socially & economically, Industrialism was on the rise and various reform movements like emancipation, child labor, womens rights, and evolution. 2. Moral Purpose: The Victorian literature seems to deviate from "art for art's sake" and asserts its moral purpose. Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Ruskin - all were the teachers of England with the faith in their moral message to instruct the world. 3. Idealism: It is often considered as an age of doubt and pessimism. The influence of science is felt here. The whole age seems to be caught in the conception of man in relation to the universe with the idea of evolution. 4. Though, the age is characterized as practical and materialistic, most of the writers exalt a purely ideal life. It is an idealistic age where the great ideals like truth, justice, love, brotherhood are emphasized by poets, essayists and novelists of the age. The Style of the Victorian Novel Victorian novels tend to be idealized portraits of difficult lives in which hard work, perseverance, love and luck win out in the end; virtue would be rewarded and wrongdoers are suitably punished. They tended to be of an improving nature with a central moral lesson at heart. While this formula was the basis for much of earlier Victorian fiction, the situation became more complex as the century progressed. Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) and corresponds to the Victorian era. It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century.
6

The 19th century saw the novel become the leading form of literature in English. The works by pre-Victorian writers such as Jane Austen and Walter Scott had perfected both closely-observed social satire and adventure stories. Popular works opened a market for the novel amongst a reading public. The 19th century is often regarded as a high point in British literature as well as in other countries such as France, the United States and Russia. Books, and novels in particular, became ubiquitous, and the "Victorian novelist" created legacy works with continuing appeal. Significant Victorian novelists and poets include: Matthew Arnold, the Bront sisters (Emily, Anne and Charlotte Bront), Christina Rossetti, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Joseph Conrad, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, George Eliot, George Meredith, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Gissing, Richard Jefferies, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis

2)- Social Writers *Charles Dickens:(date of birth, place)wrote 13 novels: Scratches by Boz (1836), The Mystery of Edwin
Drood (1870), The Pickwick Papers (1836-7).Oliver Twist (1837-8), Nicholas Nickleby (1838-9): he writes of the social problems of young boys like Oliver and Nicholas(Olivers bad treatment in an institution for the poor and working for criminals; Nicks life in a Yorkshire school where he suffers terribly) The suffering of children were a main theme of Dickens writings. He wanted education for all children, and shows his readers the kind of problems they had in the cities, where poor people had no chance to share in the success of the nation. Another work is David Copperfield(1849-50) which is his most positive novel about growing up. The hero, David, becomes a kind of success which the Victorian admired-he is rich, he marries and a gral sense of a happy ending is given. It was based in part on Dickens own childhood and his success. But when he came to write another partly autobiographical story, Great Expectations (1860-1), there is a sense that the ending will not be so happy: There is feeling of disappointment, that hope will not be met and that the earlier ideals have been false. Even the title is ironic-the expectations or hopes of Philip are certainly not great in the way they were for David n the earlier novel. This irony marks a change of tone in all Dickens writings during the 1850s. Hard Times(1854). It shows the worst sides of the new industrial society of the midlands of England, with contrasts between the terrible education system of Mr Gradgrind who wants only facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts, and the circus of Mr Sleary, which represents the imagination. Industry is constrained with the freedom of individual and the whole novel presents a very pessimistic picture of the nation. Summing up, it shows how the poor lived. Dickens was a famous writer when he was alive and he is now one of the best known and most widely read of the English writers. *William Makepeace Thackeray /kri/; 18 July 1811 24 December 1863) was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works. He was born in Calcutta, India, and he was the only child of Richmond Thackeray (secretary to the board of revenue in the British East India Company) and Anne Becher (secretary and writer).William's father died in 1815, which made his mother send him to England in 1816 (but she remained in India) where he was educated at schools in Southampton and Chiswick and then at Charterhouse School. He disliked Charterhouse, parodying it in his later fiction as "Slaughterhouse." Never too keen on academic studies, he left the University in 1830. He travelled for some time on the continent, visiting Paris and Weimar, where he met Goethe. He returned to England and began to study law at the Middle Temple, but soon gave that up. On reaching the age of 21, he came into his inheritance but he squandered much of it on gambling. Forced to consider a profession to support himself, he turned first to art, which he studied in Paris, but did not pursue it except in later years as the illustrator of some of his own novels and other writings. Thackeray's years of semi-idleness ended after he married Isabella Gethin Shawe. They had three children, all girls: Anne Isabella, Jane and Harriet Marian). He now began "writing for his life," as he put it, turning to journalism in an effort to support his young family. Tragedy struck in his personal life as his wife succumbed to depression after the birth of their third child in 1840. Finding he could get no work done at home, he spent more and more time away, until September of that year, when he realised how grave her condition was. She eventually deteriorated into a permanent state of detachment from reality, unaware of the world around her. Thackeray desperately sought cures for her, but

nothing worked, and she ended up confined in a home near Paris. She remained there until 1893, outliving her husband by thirty years. In the early 1840s, Thackeray had some success with two travel books, The Paris Sketch Book and The Irish Sketch Book. But the work that really established his fame was the novel Vanity Fair(He also produced several large novels: Pendennis, The Newcomes, and The History of Henry Esmond, despite various illnesses, including a near fatal one that struck him in 1849 in the middle of writing Pendennis. Thackeray began as a satirist and parodist, writing papers with a sneaking fondness for roguish upstarts like Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair(the artist's daughter who rises nearly to the heights by manipulating the other characters) and the title characters of The Luck of Barry Lyndon (here he explored the situation of an outsider trying to achieve status in high society) and Catherine(considered his first novel which is a satire of the Newgate school of crime fiction). In his earliest works, writing under such pseudonyms as Charles James Yellowplush, Michael Angelo Titmarsh, and George Savage Fitz-Boodle, he tended towards the savage in his attacks on high society, military prowess, the institution of marriage, and hypocrisy. He is best known now for Vanity Fair, with its deft skewering of human foibles and its roguishly attractive heroine. The later works include Pendennis, a sort of bildungsroman depicting the coming of age of Arthur Pendennis, a kind of alter ego of Thackeray's who also features as the narrator of two later novels, The Newcomes and The Adventures of Philip. The Newcomes is noteworthy for its critical portrayal of the "marriage market," while Philip is noteworthy for its semi-autobiographical depiction of Thackeray's early life, in which the author partially regains some of his early satirical zest. His health worsened during the 1850s and he was plagued by a recurring stricture of the urethra that laid him up for days at a time. He also felt he had lost much of his creative impetus. He worsened matters by overeating and drinking and avoiding exercise. On 23 December 1863, after returning from dining out and before dressing for bed, Thackeray suffered a stroke and was found dead in his bed in the morning. His death at the age of fifty-two was entirely unexpected, and shocked his family, friends, and reading public *Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (187172), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and well known for their realism and psychological insight. She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot's life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances. An additional factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived for over 20 years. Throughout her career, Eliot wrote with a politically astute pen. From Adam Bede to The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner (who is persuaded that his alienationfrom the church means also his alienation from society, the author's life is again mirrored with her refusal to attend church ), Eliot presented the cases of social outsiders and small-town persecution. Felix Holt, the Radical and The Legend of Jubal were overtly political, and political crisis is at the heart of Middlemarch. Readers in the Victorian era particularly praised her books for their depictions of rural society, for which she drew on her own early experiences, and she shared with Wordsworth the belief that there was much interest and importance in the mundane details of ordinary country lives. Eliot did not, however, confine herself to her bucolic roots. Romola, an historical novel set in late 15th century Florence and touching on the lives of several real persons such as the priest Girolamo Savonarola, displays her wider reading and interests. In The Spanish Gypsy, Eliot made a foray into verse, creating a work whose initial popularity has not endured. By the time of Daniel Deronda, Eliot's sales were falling off, and she faded from public view to some degree. This was not helped by the biography written by her husband after her death, which portrayed a wonderful, almost saintly, woman totally at odds with the scandalous life people knew she had led. 3-Aestheticism (or the Aesthetic Movement) is an art movement supporting the emphasis of aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, music and other arts. The motto of the movement was Art for the arts sake. They cherished all art forms and they were in favour of beauty, fine decorations, 8

technical expressions and cultivated artificial style of speech and manners and eccentricity of dress. The main exponent is of curse: OSCAR WILDE and there were others: John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. CHARACTERISTICS: The artists and writers of Aesthetic style tended to profess that the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure, rather than convey moral or sentimental messages. They believed that Art did not have any didactic purpose; it need only be beautiful. The Aesthetes developed a cult of beauty, which they considered the basic factor of art. Life should copy Art, they asserted. They considered nature as crude and lacking in design when compared to art. The main characteristics of the style were: suggestion rather than statement, sensuality, great use of symbols, and synaesthetic effectsthat is, correspondence between words, colours and music. Music was *Oscar Wilde (16 October 1854 30 November 1900, he was born in Dublin) was an Irish writer and poet and he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the circumstances of his imprisonment, followed by his early death. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a license. At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel, a charge carrying a penalty of up to two years in prison. The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with other men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labour. In prison he wrote De Profundis (written in 1897 & published in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life. He died destitute in Paris at the age of forty-six. ANALYSIS OF THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ERNEST (It has three acts) Plot Overview Jack Worthing, the plays protagonist, is a pillar of the community in Hertfordshire, where he is guardian to Cecily Cardew, the pretty, eighteen-year-old granddaughter of the late Thomas Cardew, who found and adopted Jack when he was a baby. In Hertfordshire, Jack has responsibilities: he is a major landowner and justice of the peace, with tenants, farmers, and a number of servants and other employees all dependent on him. For years, he has also pretended to have an irresponsible black-sheep brother named Ernest who leads a scandalous life in pursuit of pleasure and is always getting into trouble of a sort that requires Jack to rush grimly off to his assistance. In fact, Ernest is merely Jacks alibi, a phantom that allows him to disappear for days at a time and do as he likes. No one but Jack knows that he himself is Ernest. Ernest is the name Jack goes by in London, which is where he really goes on these occasionsprobably to pursue the very sort of behavior he pretends to disapprove of in his imaginary brother. Jack is in love with Gwendolen Fairfax, the cousin of his best friend, Algernon Moncrieff. When the play opens, Algernon, who knows Jack as Ernest, has begun to suspect something, having found an inscription inside Jacks cigarette case addressed to Uncle Jack from someone who refers to herself as little Cecily. Algernon suspects that Jack may be leading a double life, a practice he seems to regard as commonplace and indispensable to modern life. He calls a person who leads a double life a Bunburyist, after a nonexistent friend he pretends to have, a chronic invalid named Bunbury, to whose deathbed he is forever being summoned whenever he wants to get out of some tiresome social obligation. At the beginning of Act I, Jack drops in unexpectedly on Algernon and announces that he intends to propose to Gwendolen. Algernon confronts him with the cigarette case and forces him to come clean, demanding to know who Jack and Cecily are. Jack confesses that his name isnt really Ernest and that Cecily is his ward, a responsibility imposed on him by his adoptive fathers will. Jack also tells Algernon about his fictional brother. Jack says hes been thinking of killing off this fake brother, since Cecily has been showing too active an

interest in him. Without meaning to, Jack describes Cecily in terms that catch Algernons attention and make him even more interested in her than he is already. Gwendolen and her mother, Lady Bracknell, arrive, which gives Jack an opportunity to propose to Gwendolen. Jack is delighted to discover that Gwendolen returns his affections, but he is alarmed to learn that Gwendolen is fixated on the name Ernest, which she says inspires absolute confidence. Gwendolen makes clear that she would not consider marrying a man who was not named Ernest. Lady Bracknell interviews Jack to determine his eligibility as a possible son-in-law, and during this interview she asks about his family background. When Jack explains that he has no idea who his parents were and that he was found, by the man who adopted him, in a handbag in the cloakroom at Victoria Station, Lady Bracknell is scandalized. She forbids the match between Jack and Gwendolen and sweeps out of the house. In Act II, Algernon shows up at Jacks country estate posing as Jacks brother Ernest. Meanwhile, Jack, having decided that Ernest has outlived his usefulness, arrives home in deep mourning, full of a story about Ernest having died suddenly in Paris. He is enraged to find Algernon there masquerading as Ernest but has to go along with the charade. If he doesnt, his own lies and deceptions will be revealed. While Jack changes out of his mourning clothes, Algernon, who has fallen hopelessly in love with Cecily, asks her to marry him. He is surprised to discover that Cecily already considers that they are engaged, and he is charmed when she reveals that her fascination with Uncle Jacks brother led her to invent an elaborate romance between herself and him several months ago. Algernon is less enchanted to learn that part of Cecilys interest in him derives from the name Ernest, which, unconsciously echoing Gwendolen, she says inspires absolute confidence. Algernon goes off in search of Dr. Chasuble, the local rector, to see about getting himself christened Ernest. Meanwhile, Gwendolen arrives, having decided to pay Jack an unexpected visit. Gwendolen is shown into the garden, where Cecily orders tea and attempts to play hostess. Cecily has no idea how Gwendolen figures into Jacks life, and Gwendolen, for her part, has no idea who Cecily is. Gwendolen initially thinks Cecily is a visitor to the Manor House and is disconcerted to learn that Cecily is Mr. Worthings ward. She notes that Ernest has never mentioned having a ward, and Cecily explains that it is not Ernest Worthing who is her guardian but his brother Jack and, in fact, that she is engaged to be married to Ernest Worthing. Gwendolen points out that this is impossible as she herself is engaged to Ernest Worthing. The tea party degenerates into a war of manners. Jack and Algernon arrive toward the climax of this confrontation, each having separately made arrangements with Dr. Chasuble to be christened Ernest later that day. Each of the young ladies points out that the other has been deceived: Cecily informs Gwendolen that her fianc is really named Jack and Gwendolen informs Cecily that hers is really called Algernon. The two women demand to know where Jacks brother Ernest is, since both of them are engaged to be married to him. Jack is forced to admit that he has no brother and that Ernest is a complete fiction. Both women are shocked and furious, and they retire to the house arm in arm. Act III takes place in the drawing room of the Manor House, where Cecily and Gwendolen have retired. When Jack and Algernon enter from the garden, the two women confront them. Cecily asks Algernon why he pretended to be her guardians brother. Algernon tells her he did it in order to meet her. Gwendolen asks Jack whether he pretended to have a brother in order to come into London to see her as often as possible, and she interprets his evasive reply as an affirmation. The women are somewhat appeased but still concerned over the issue of the name. However, when Jack and Algernon tell Gwendolen and Cecily that they have both made arrangements to be christened Ernest that afternoon, all is forgiven and the two pairs of lovers embrace. At this moment, Lady Bracknells arrival is announced. Lady Bracknell has followed Gwendolen from London, having bribed Gwendolens maid to reveal her destination. She demands to know what is going on. Gwendolen again informs Lady Bracknell of her engagement to Jack, and Lady Bracknell reiterates that a union between them is out of the question. Algernon tells Lady Bracknell of his engagement to Cecily, prompting her to inspect Cecily and inquire into her social connections, which she does in a routine and patronizing manner that infuriates Jack. He replies to all her questions with a mixture of civility and sarcasm, withholding until the last possible moment the information that Cecily is actually worth a great deal of money and stands to inherit still more when she comes of age. At this, Lady Bracknell becomes genuinely interested. Jack informs Lady Bracknell that, as Cecilys legal guardian, he refuses to give his consent to her union with Algernon. Lady Bracknell suggests that the two young people simply wait until Cecily comes of age, and Jack points out that under the terms of her grandfathers will, Cecily does not legally come of age until she is thirtyfive. Lady Bracknell asks Jack to reconsider, and he points out that the matter is entirely in her own hands. As soon as she consents to his marriage to Gwendolen, Cecily can have his consent to marry Algernon. However, Lady Bracknell refuses to entertain the notion. She and Gwendolen are on the point of leaving when 10

Dr. Chasuble arrives and happens to mention Cecilys governess, Miss Prism. At this, Lady Bracknell starts and asks that Miss Prism be sent for. When the governess arrives and catches sight of Lady Bracknell, she begins to look guilty and furtive. Lady Bracknell accuses her of having left her sisters house twenty-eight years before with a baby and never returned. She demands to know where the baby is. Miss Prism confesses she doesnt know, explaining that she lost the baby, having absentmindedly placed it in a handbag in which she had meant to place the manuscript for a novel she had written. Jack asks what happened to the bag, and Miss Prism says she left it in the cloakroom of a railway station. Jack presses her for further details and goes racing offstage, returning a few moments later with a large handbag. When Miss Prism confirms that the bag is hers, Jack throws himself on her with a cry of Mother! It takes a while before the situation is sorted out, but before too long we understand that Jack is not the illegitimate child of Miss Prism but the legitimate child of Lady Bracknells sister and, therefore, Algernons older brother. Furthermore, Jack had been originally christened Ernest John. All these years Jack has unwittingly been telling the truth: Ernest is his name, as is Jack, and he does have an unprincipled younger brotherAlgernon. Again the couples embrace, Miss Prism and Dr. Chasuble follow suit, and Jack acknowledges that he now understands the vital Importance of Being Earnest. Character List John (Jack/Ernest) Worthing, J.P. - The plays protagonist. Jack Worthing is a seemingly responsible and respectable young man who leads a double life. In Hertfordshire, where he has a country estate, Jack is known as Jack. In London he is known as Ernest. As a baby, Jack was discovered in a handbag in the cloakroom of Victoria Station by an old man who adopted him and subsequently made Jack guardian to his granddaughter, Cecily Cardew. Jack is in love with his friend Algernons cousin, Gwendolen Fairfax. The initials after his name indicate that he is a Justice of the Peace. Algernon Moncrieff - The plays secondary hero. Algernon is a charming, idle, decorative bachelor, nephew of Lady Bracknell, cousin of Gwendolen Fairfax, and best friend of Jack Worthing, whom he has known for years as Ernest. Algernon is brilliant, witty, selfish, amoral, and given to making delightful paradoxical and epigrammatic pronouncements. He has invented a fictional friend, Bunbury, an invalid whose frequent sudden relapses allow Algernon to wriggle out of unpleasant or dull social obligations. Gwendolen Fairfax - Algernons cousin and Lady Bracknells daughter. Gwendolen is in love with Jack, whom she knows as Ernest. A model and arbiter of high fashion and society, Gwendolen speaks with unassailable authority on matters of taste and morality. She is sophisticated, intellectual, cosmopolitan, and utterly pretentious. Gwendolen is fixated on the name Ernest and says she will not marry a man without that name. Cecily Cardew - Jacks ward, the granddaughter of the old gentlemen who found and adopted Jack when Jack was a baby. Cecily is probably the most realistically drawn character in the play. Like Gwendolen, she is obsessed with the name Ernest, but she is even more intrigued by the idea of wickedness. This idea, rather than the virtuous-sounding name, has prompted her to fall in love with Jacks brother Ernest in her imagination and to invent an elaborate romance and courtship between them. Lady Bracknell - Algernons snobbish, mercenary, and domineering aunt and Gwendolens mother. Lady Bracknell married well, and her primary goal in life is to see her daughter do the same. She has a list of eligible young men and a prepared interview she gives to potential suitors. Like her nephew, Lady Bracknell is given to making hilarious pronouncements, but where Algernon means to be witty, the humor in Lady Bracknells speeches is unintentional. Through the figure of Lady Bracknell, Wilde manages to satirize the hypocrisy and stupidity of the British aristocracy. Lady Bracknell values ignorance, which she sees as a delicate exotic fruit. When she gives a dinner party, she prefers her husband to eat downstairs with the servants. She is cunning, narrow-minded, authoritarian, and possibly the most quotable character in the play. Miss Prism - Cecilys governess. Miss Prism is an endless source of pedantic bromides and clichs. She highly approves of Jacks presumed respectability and harshly criticizes his unfortunate brother. Puritan though she is, Miss Prisms severe pronouncements have a way of going so far over the top that they inspire laughter. Despite her rigidity, Miss Prism seems to have a softer side. She speaks of having once written a novel whose manuscript was lost or abandoned. Also, she entertains romantic feelings for Dr. Chasuble. Rev. Canon Chasuble, D.D. - The rector on Jacks estate. Both Jack and Algernon approach Dr. Chasuble to request that they be christened Ernest. Dr. Chasuble entertains secret romantic feelings for Miss Prism. The initials after his name stand for Doctor of Divinity. Lane - Algernons manservant. When the play opens, Lane is the only person who knows about Algernons practice of Bunburying. Lane appears only in Act I. Merriman - The butler at the Manor House, Jacks estate in the country. Merriman appears only in Acts II and III. 11

Themes 1-The nature of marriage Marriage is of paramount importance in The Importance of Being Earnest, both as a primary force motivating the plot and as a subject for philosophical speculation and debate. The question of the nature of marriage appears for the first time in the opening dialogue between Algernon and his butler, Lane, and from this point on the subject never disappears for very long. Algernon and Jack discuss the nature of marriage when they dispute briefly about whether a marriage proposal is a matter of business or pleasure, and Lady Bracknell touches on the issue when she states, An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. Even Lady Bracknells list of bachelors and the prepared interview to which she subjects Jack are based on a set of assumptions about the nature and purpose of marriage. In general, these assumptions reflect the conventional preoccupations of Victorian respectabilitysocial position, income, and character. The play is actually an ongoing debate about the nature of marriage and whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. Lane remarks casually that he believes it to be a very pleasant state, before admitting that his own marriage, now presumably ended, was the result of a misunderstanding between myself and a young person. Algernon regards Lanes views on marriage as somewhat lax. His own views are relentlessly cynical until he meets and falls in love with Cecily. Jack, by contrast, speaks in the voice of the true romantic. He tells Algernon, however, that the truth isnt quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl. At the end of the play, Jack apologizes to Gwendolen when he realizes he had been telling the truth all his life. She forgives him, she says, on the grounds that she thinks hes sure to change, which suggests Gwendolens own rather cynical view of the nature of men and marriage. 2-The Constraints of Morality Morality and the constraints it imposes on society is a favorite topic of conversation in The Importance of Being Earnest. Algernon thinks the servant class has a responsibility to set a moral standard for the upper classes. Jack thinks reading a private cigarette case is ungentlemanly. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldnt read, Algernon points out. These restrictions and assumptions suggest a strict code of morals that exists in Victorian society, but Wilde isnt concerned with questions of what is and isnt moral. Instead, he makes fun of the whole Victorian idea of morality as a rigid body of rules about what people should and shouldnt do. The very title of the play is a double-edged comment on the phenomenon. The plays central plotthe man who both is and isnt Ernest/earnestpresents a moral paradox. Earnestness, which refers to both the quality of being serious and the quality of being sincere, is the plays primary object of satire. Characters such as Jack, Gwendolen, Miss Prism, and Dr. Chasuble, who put a premium on sobriety and honesty, are either hypocrites or else have the rug pulled out from under them. What Wilde wants us to see as truly moral is really the opposite of earnestness: irreverence. 3-Hypocrisy vs. Inventiveness Algernon and Jack may create similar deceptions, but they are not morally equivalent characters. When Jack fabricates his brother Ernests death, he imposes that fantasy on his loved ones, and though we are aware of the deception, they, of course, are not. He rounds out the deception with costumes and props, and he does his best to convince the family hes in mourning. He is acting hypocritically. In contrast, Algernon and Cecily make up elaborate stories that dont really assault the truth in any serious way or try to alter anyone elses perception of reality. In a sense, Algernon and Cecily are characters after Wildes own heart, since in a way they invent life for themselves as though life is a work of art. In some ways, Algernon, not Jack, is the plays real hero. Not only is Algernon like Wilde in his dandified, exquisite wit, tastes, and priorities, but he also resembles Wilde to the extent that his fictions and inventions resemble those of an artist. 4-The Importance of Not Being Earnest Earnestness, which implies seriousness or sincerity, is the great enemy of morality in The Importance of Being Earnest. Earnestness can take many forms, including boringness, solemnity, pomposity, complacency, smugness, self-righteousness, and sense of duty, all of which Wilde saw as hallmarks of the Victorian character. When characters in the play use the word serious, they tend to mean trivial, and vice versa. For example, Algernon thinks it shallow for people not to be serious about meals, and Gwendolen believes, In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing. For Wilde, the word earnest comprised two different but related ideas: the notion of false truth and the notion of false morality, or moralism. The moralism of Victorian societyits smugness and pomposityimpels Algernon and Jack to invent fictitious alter egos so as to be able to escape the strictures of propriety and decency. However, what one member of society considers decent or indecent doesnt always reflect what decency really is. One of the plays paradoxes is the impossibility of actually being either earnest (meaning serious or sincere) or moral while claiming to be so. The characters who embrace triviality and wickedness are the ones who may have the greatest chance of attaining seriousness and virtue. 12

Motifs 1-Puns In The Importance of Being Earnest, the pun, widely considered to be the lowest form of verbal wit, is rarely just a play on words. The pun in the title is a case in point. The earnest/Ernest joke strikes at the very heart of Victorian notions of respectability and duty. Gwendolen wants to marry a man called Ernest, and she doesnt care whether the man actually possesses the qualities that comprise earnestness. She is, after all, quick to forgive Jacks deception. In embodying a man who is initially neither earnest nor Ernest, and who, through forces beyond his control, subsequently becomes both earnest and Ernest, Jack is a walking, breathing paradox and a complex symbol of Victorian hypocrisy. In Act III, when Lady Bracknell quips that until recently she had no idea there were any persons whose origin was a Terminus, she too is making an extremely complicated pun. The joke is that a railway station is as far back as Jack can trace his identity and therefore a railway station actually is his origin, hence the pun. In Wildes day, as in the England of today, the first stop on a railway line is known as the origin and the last stop as the terminus. Theres also a whole series of implicit subsidiary puns on words like line and connection that can refer to either ancestry or travel. Wilde is poking fun at Lady Bracknells snobbery. He depicts her as incapable of distinguishing between a railway line and a family line, social connections and railway connections, a persons ancestral origins and the place where he chanced to be found. In general, puns add layers of meaning to the characters lines and call into question the true or intended meaning of what is being said. 2-Inversion One of the most common motifs in The Importance of Being Earnest is the notion of inversion, and inversion takes many forms. The play contains inversions of thought, situation, and character, as well as inversions of common notions of morality or philosophical thought. When Algernon remarks, Divorces are made in Heaven, he inverts the clich about marriages being made in heaven. Similarly, at the end of the play, when Jack calls it a terrible thing for a man to discover that hes been telling the truth all his life, he inverts conventional morality. Most of the women in the play represent an inversion of accepted Victorian practices with regard to gender roles. Lady Bracknell usurps the role of the father in interviewing Jack, since typically this was a fathers task, and Gwendolen and Cecily take charge of their own romantic lives, while the men stand by watching in a relatively passive role. The trick that Wilde plays on Miss Prism at the end of the play is also a kind of inversion: The trick projects onto the plays most fervently moralistic character the image of the fallen woman of melodrama. 3-Death Jokes about death appear frequently in The Importance of Being Earnest. Lady Bracknell comes onstage talking about death, and in one of the plays many inversions, she says her friend Lady Harbury looks twenty years younger since the death of her husband. With respect to Bunbury, she suggests that death is an inconvenience for othersshe says Bunbury is shilly-shallying over whether to live or to die. On being told in Act III that Bunbury has died suddenly in accordance with his physicians predictions, Lady Bracknell commends Bunbury for acting under proper medical advice. Miss Prism speaks as though death were something from which one could learn a moral lesson and piously says she hopes Ernest will profit from having died. Jack and Algernon have several conversations about how to kill Jacks imaginary brother. Besides giving the play a layer of dark humor, the death jokes also connect to the idea of life being a work of art. Most of the characters discuss death as something over which a person actually has control, as though death is a final decision one can make about how to shape and color ones life. 4-The Dandy To the form of Victorian melodrama, Wilde contributed the figure of the dandy, a character who gave the form a moral texture it had never before possessed. In Wildes works, the dandy is a witty,overdressed, self-styled philosopher who speaks in epigrams and paradoxes and ridicules the cant and hypocrisy of societys moral arbiters. To a very large extent, this figure was a self-portrait, a stand-in for Wilde himself. The dandy isnt always a comic figure in Wildes work. In A Woman of No Importance and The Picture of Dorian Gray, he takes the form of the villains Lord Illingworth and Lord Henry Wootton, respectively. But in works such as Lady Windermeres Fan, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest, Wilde seems to be evolving a more positive and clearly defined moral position on the figure of the dandy. The dandy pretends to be all about surface, which makes him seem trivial, shallow, and ineffectual. Lord Darlington and Lord Goring (in Lady Windermeres Fan and An Ideal Husband) both present themselves this way. In fact, the dandy in both plays turns out to be something very close to the real hero. He proves to be deeply moral and essential to the happy resolution of the plot. 13

In The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon has many characteristics of the dandy, but he remains morally neutral throughout the play. Many other characters also express dandiacal sentiments and views. Gwendolen and Lady Bracknell are being dandiacal when they assert the importance of surfaces, style, or profile, and even Jack echoes the philosophy of the dandy when he comes onstage asserting that pleasure is the only thing that should bring one anywhere. For the most part, these utterances seem to be part of Wildes general lampooning of the superficiality of the upper classes. The point is that its the wrong sort of superficiality because it doesnt recognize and applaud its own triviality. In fact, Cecily, with her impatience with selfimprovement and conventional morality and her curiosity about wickedness, is arguably the character who, after Algernon, most closely resembles the dandy. Her dandiacal qualities make her a perfect match for him. Symbols 1-The Double Life The double life is the central metaphor in the play, epitomized in the notion of Bunbury or Bunburying. As defined by Algernon, Bunburying is the practice of creating an elaborate deception that allows one to misbehave while seeming to uphold the very highest standards of duty and responsibility. Jacks imaginary, wayward brother Ernest is a device not only for escaping social and moral obligations but also one that allows Jack to appear far more moral and responsible than he actually is. Similarly, Algernons imaginary invalid friend Bunbury allows Algernon to escape to the country, where he presumably imposes on people who dont know him in much the same way he imposes on Cecily in the play, all the while seeming to demonstrate Christian charity. The practice of visiting the poor and the sick was a staple activity among the Victorian upper and upper-middle classes and considered a public duty. The difference between what Jack does and what Algernon does, however, is that Jack not only pretends to be something he is not, that is, completely virtuous, but also routinely pretends to be someone he is not, which is very different. This sort of deception suggests a far more serious and profound degree of hypocrisy. Through these various enactments of double lives, Wilde suggests the general hypocrisy of the Victorian mindset. 2-Food Food and scenes of eating appear frequently in The Importance of Being Earnest, and they are almost always sources of conflict. Act I contains the extended cucumber sandwich joke, in which Algernon, without realizing it, steadily devours all the sandwiches. In Act II, the climax of Gwendolen and Cecilys spat over who is really engaged to Ernest Worthing comes when Gwendolen tells Cecily, who has just offered her sugar and cake, that sugar is not fashionable any more and Cake is rarely seen at the best houses nowadays. Cecily responds by filling Gwendolens tea with sugar and her plate with cake. The two women have actually been insulting each other quite steadily for some time, but Cecilys impudent actions cause Gwendolen to become even angrier, and she warns Cecily that she may go too far. On one level, the jokes about food provide a sort of low comedy, the Wildean equivalent of the slammed door or the pratfall. On another level, food seems to be a stand-in for sex, as when Jack tucks into the bread and butter with too much gusto and Algernon accuses him of behaving as though he were already married to Gwendolen. Food and gluttony suggest and substitute for other appetites and indulgences. 3-Fiction and Writing Writing and the idea of fiction figure in the play in a variety of important ways. Algernon, when the play opens, has begun to suspect that Jacks life is at least partly a fiction, which, thanks to the invented brother Ernest, it is. Bunbury is also a fiction. When Algernon says in Act I, More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldnt read, he may be making a veiled reference to fiction, or at least reading material perceived to be immoral. In Act II, the idea of fiction develops further when Cecily speaks dismissively of three-volume novels and Miss Prism tells her she once wrote one herself. This is an allusion to a mysterious past life that a contemporary audience would have recognized as a stock element of stage melodrama. Cecilys diary is a sort of fiction as well: In it, she has recorded an invented romance whose details and developments she has entirely imagined. When Cecily and Gwendolen seek to establish their respective claims on Ernest Worthing, each appeals to the diary in which she recorded the date of her engagement, as though the mere fact of having written something down makes it fact. Ultimately, fiction becomes related to the notion of life as an art form. Several of the characters attempt to create a fictional life for themselves which then, in some capacity, becomes real. Wilde seems to regard as the most fundamentally moral those who not only freely admit to creating fictions for themselves but who actually take pride in doing so. 4-Imperialism involves the claiming and exploiting of territories outside of ones own national boundaries for a variety of motives. For instance, Great Britain seized territories in order to increase its own holdings and enhance its prestige, to secure trade routes, to obtain raw materials such as sugar, spices, tea, tin, and rubber, and to procure a market for its own goods. 14

The Empire did not found colonies in all of its possessions, nor were colony populations necessarily interested in anglicizing the indigenous peoples they shared space with, as is clear from Anthony Trollope's dismissive assessment of the Australian aborigines. But in general Great Britain was able to justify its expansion into other people lands by claiming a civilizing mission based on its own moral, racial, and national superiority. As we see from the selections by Edward Tylor and Benjamin Kidd, late-Victorian science sought to prove that non-Europeans were less evolved, biologically and culturally, and thus unable properly to govern themselves or develop their own territories. Other writers like W. Winwood Reade and Richard Marsh described the imperfectly evolved colonial subjects as fearsome cannibals and beasts, hardly human at all. Thus they were patently in need of taming, and taking on this job was "The White Man's Burden" in Rudyard Kipling famous phrase. *Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( /rdjd kpl/ rud-yd kip-ling; 30 December 1865 18 January 1936) was an English author and poet. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature, the youngest person ever to receive this award. He was born in Bombay, in the Bombay Presidency of British India, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old.Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book (a collection of stories which includes "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"), Just So Stories (1902) (1894), Kim (1901) (a tale of adventure), many short stories, including "The Man Who Would Be King" (1888);[3][4] and his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), The White Man's Burden (1899). He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story"; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works are said to exhibit "a versatile and luminous narrative gift". 5- The novel of adventure Mayor exponents: Sir Henry Haggard (King Salomons Mines) Jack London: (The black arrow, White fog) Robert Stevenson: (Treasure Island, Kidnapped, Travels with a donkey, The new Arabian night, The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) Anthony Hope: (The prisoner of Zenda-1894, Rupert of Hentzau-1898) Anthony Hope: It was the pen name of Anthony Hope Howkings. He left the readers two very popular novels of adventure. He created an imaginary country Rutania and made all the characters of the two novels live in this place. Rupert of Hentzou is a continuation of the Prisoner of Zenda and includes new characters apart from the already known ones. The reason of the countinuing popularity of these books is probably to be found in the powerful love interest, the attraction of the main characters and the clear descriptions of astonishing events. Robert Louis Stevenson, one of the masters of the Victorian adventure story, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1850. He was a sickly child, and respiratory troubles plagued him throughout his life. As a young man, he traveled through Europe, leading a bohemian lifestyle and penning his first two books, both travel narratives. In 1876, he met a married woman, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne, and fell in love with her. Mrs. Osbourne eventually divorced her husband, and she and Stevenson were married. Stevenson returned to London with his bride and wrote prolifically over the next decade, in spite of his terrible health. He won widespread admiration with Treasure Island, written in 1883, and followed it with Kidnapped in 1886; both were adventure stories, the former a pirate tale set on the high seas and the latter a historical novel set in Stevensons native Scotland. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which Stevenson described as a fine bogey tale, also came out in 1886. It met with tremendous success, selling 40,000 copies in six months and ensuring Stevensons fame as a writer. In its narrative of a respectable doctor who transforms himself into a savage murderer, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tapped directly into the anxieties of Stevensons age. With the notion of a single body containing both the erudite Dr. Jekyll and the depraved Mr. Hyde, Stevensons novel imagines an inextricable link between civilization and savagery, good and evil. Jekylls attraction to the freedom from restraint that Hyde enjoys mirrors Victorian Englands secr et attraction to allegedly savage nonWestern cultures, even as Europe claimed superiority over them. This attraction also informs such books as Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness. As the Western world came in contact with other peoples and ways of life, it found aspects of these cultures within itself, and both desired and feared to indulge them. These aspects included open sensuality, physicality, and other so-called irrational tendencies. Even as Victorian England sought to assert its civilization over and against these instinctual sides of life, it found them secretly

15

fascinating. Indeed, societys repression of its darker side only increased the fascination. As a product of this society, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde manifests this fascination; yet, as a work of art, it also questions this interest. By the late 1880s, Stevenson had become one of the leading lights of English literature. But even after garnering fame, he led a somewhat troubled life. His weak lungs drew him to travel in search of health. He went to live in Samoa (an island in the Pacific Ocean) and the experience of this trip is described in a book called Island Voyage. Treasure Island is an adventure story which is still popular and The new Arabian night is a book of stories which almost make us believe the impossible. Kidnapped is a story of adventure in Scotland but Stevensons best plot is perhaps that of The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. In this exciting novel the reader follows the struggle between two forms of the same man (the good Dr Jekyll and the evil Mr Hyde). Stevenson died suddenly in 1894, at the age of forty-four in Samoa. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Plot Overview On their weekly walk, an eminently sensible, trustworthy lawyer named Mr. Utterson listens as his friend Enfield tells a gruesome tale of assault. The tale describes a sinister figure named Mr. Hyde who tramples a young girl, disappears into a door on the street, and reemerges to pay off her relatives with a check signed by a respectable gentleman. Since both Utterson and Enfield disapprove of gossip, they agree to speak no further of the matter. It happens, however, that one of Uttersons clients and close friends, Dr. Jekyll, has written a will transferring all of his property to this same Mr. Hyde. Soon, Utterson begins having dreams in which a faceless figure stalks through a nightmarish version of London. Puzzled, the lawyer visits Jekyll and their mutual friend Dr. Lanyon to try to learn more. Lanyon reports that he no longer sees much of Jekyll, since they had a dispute over the course of Jekylls research, which Lanyon calls unscientific balderdash. Curious, Utterson stakes out a building that Hyde visitswhich, it turns out, is a laboratory attached to the back of Jekylls home. Encountering Hyde, Utterson is amazed by how undefinably ugly the man seems, as if deformed, though Utterson cannot say exactly how. Much to Uttersons surprise, Hyde willingly offers Utterson his address. Jekyll tells Utterson not to concern himself with the matter of Hyde. A year passes uneventfully. Then, one night, a servant girl witnesses Hyde brutally beat to death an old man named Sir Danvers Carew, a member of Parliament and a client of Utterson. The police contact Utterson, and Utterson suspects Hyde as the murderer. He leads the officers to Hydes apartment, feeling a sense of foreboding amid the eerie weatherthe morning is dark and wreathed in fog. When they arrive at the apartment, the murderer has vanished, and police searches prove futile. Shortly thereafter, Utterson again visits Jekyll, who now claims to have ended all relations with Hyde; he shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologizing for the trouble he has caused him and saying goodbye. That night, however, Uttersons clerk points out that Hydes handwriting bears a remarkable similarity to Jekylls own. For a few months, Jekyll acts especially friendly and sociable, as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. But then Jekyll suddenly begins to refuse visitors, and Lanyon dies from some kind of shock he received in connection with Jekyll. Before dying, however, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he not open it until after Jekylls death. Meanwhile, Utterson goes out walking with Enfield, and they see Jekyll a t a window of his laboratory; the three men begin to converse, but a look of horror comes over Jekylls face, and he slams the window and disappears. Soon afterward, Jekylls butler, Mr. Poole, visits Utterson in a state of desperation: Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for several weeks, and now the voice that comes from the room sounds nothing like the doctors. Utterson and Poole travel to Jekylls house through empty, windswept, sinister streets; once there, they find the servants huddled together in fear. After arguing for a time, the two of them resolve to break into Jekylls laboratory. Inside, they find the body of Hyde, wearing Jekylls clothes and apparently dead by suicideand a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain everything. Utterson takes the document home, where first he reads Lanyons letter; it reveals that Lanyons deterioration and eventual death were caused by the shock of seeing Mr. Hyde take a potion and metamorphose into Dr. Jekyll. The second letter constitutes a testament by Jekyll. It explains how Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovered a way to transform himself periodically into a deformed monster free of conscienceMr. Hyde. At first, Jekyll reports, he delighted in becoming Hyde and rejoiced in the moral freedom that the creature possessed. Eventually, however, he found that he was turning into Hyde involuntarily in his sleep, even without taking the potion. At this point, Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde. One night, however, the urge gripped him too strongly, and after the transformation he immediately rushed out 16

and violently killed Sir Danvers Carew. Horrified, Jekyll tried more adamantly to stop the transformations, and for a time he proved successful; one day, however, while sitting in a park, he suddenly turned into Hyde, the first time that an involuntary metamorphosis had happened while he was awake. The letter continues describing Jekylls cry for help. Far from his laboratory and hunted by the police as a murderer, Hyde needed Lanyons help to get his potions and become Jekyll againbut when he undertook the transformation in Lanyons presence, the shock of the sight instigated Lanyons deterioration and death. Meanwhile, Jekyll returned to his home, only to find himself ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increased in frequency and necessitated even larger doses of potion in order to reverse themselves. It was the onset of one of these spontaneous metamorphoses that caused Jekyll to slam his laboratory window shut in the middle of his conversation with Enfield and Utterson. Eventually, the potion began to run out, and Jekyll was unable to find a key ingredient to make more. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll slowly vanished. Jekyll writes that even as he composes his letter he knows that he will soon become Hyde permanently, and he wonders if Hyde will face execution for his crimes or choose to kill himself. Jekyll notes that, in any case, the end of his letter marks the end of the life of Dr. Jekyll. With these words, both the document and the novel come to a close. Character List Dr. Henry Jekyll - A respected doctor and friend of both Lanyon, a fellow physician, and Utterson, a lawyer. Jekyll is a seemingly prosperous man, well established in the community, and known for his decency and charitable works. Since his youth, however, he has secretly engaged in unspecified dissolute and corrupt behavior. Jekyll finds this dark side a burden and undertakes experiments intended to separate his good and evil selves from one another. Through these experiments, he brings Mr. Hyde into being, finding a way to transform himself in such a way that he fully becomes his darker half. Mr. Edward Hyde - A strange, repugnant man who looks faintly pre-human. Hyde is violent and cruel, and everyone who sees him describes him as ugly and deformedyet no one can say exactly why. Language itself seems to fail around Hyde: he is not a creature who belongs to the rational world, the world of conscious articulation or logical grammar. Hyde is Jekylls dark side, released from the bonds of conscience and loosed into the world by a mysterious potion. Mr. Gabriel John Utterson - He is a prominent and upstanding lawyer, well respected in the London community. Utterson is reserved, dignified, and perhaps even lacking somewhat in imagination, but he does seem to possess a furtive curiosity about the more sordid side of life. His rationalism, however, makes him illequipped to deal with the supernatural nature of the Jekyll-Hyde connection. While not a man of science, Utterson resembles his friend Dr. Lanyonand perhaps Victorian society at largein his devotion to reasonable explanations and his denial of the supernatural. Dr. Hastie Lanyon - He is a reputable London doctor and, along with Utterson, formerly one of Jekylls closest friends. As an embodiment of rationalism, materialism, and skepticism, Lanyon serves a foil (a character whose attitudes or emotions contrast with, and thereby illuminate, those of another character) for Jekyll, who embraces mysticism. His death represents the more general victory of supernaturalism over materialism in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mr. Poole - Jekylls butler. Mr. Poole is a loyal servant, having worked for the doctor for twenty years, and his concern for his master eventually drives him to seek Uttersons help when he becomes convinced that something has happened to Jekyll. Mr. Enfield - A distant cousin and lifelong friend of Mr. Utterson. Like Utterson, Enfield is reserved, formal, and scornful of gossip; indeed, the two men often walk together for long stretches without saying a word to one another. Mr. Guest - Uttersons clerk and confidant. Guest is also an expert in handwriting. His skill proves particularly useful when Utterson wants him to examine a bit of Hydes handwriting. Guest notices that Hydes script is the same as Jekylls, but slanted the other way. Sir Danvers Carew - A well-liked old nobleman, a member of Parliament, and a client of Utterson.

17

*Themes (are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work) 1-The Duality of Human Nature Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde centers upon a conception of humanity as dual in nature, although the theme does not emerge fully until the last chapter, when the complete story of the Jekyll-Hyde relationship is revealed. Therefore, we confront the theory of a dual human nature explicitly only after having witnessed all of the events of the novel, including Hydes crimes and his ultimate eclipsing of Jekyll. The text not only posits the duality of human nature as its central theme but forces us to ponder the properties of this duality and to consider each of the novels episodes as we weigh various theories. Jekyll asserts that man is not truly one, but truly two, and he imagines the human soul as the battleground for an angel and a fiend, each struggling for mastery. But his potion, which he hoped would separate and purify each element, succeeds only in bringing the dark side into being Hyde emerges, but he has no angelic counterpart. Once unleashed, Hyde slowly takes over, until Jekyll ceases to exist. If man is half angel and half fiend, one wonders what happens to the angel at the end of the novel. Perhaps the angel gives way permanently to Jekylls devil. Or perhaps Jekyll is simply mistaken: man is not truly two but is first and foremost the primitive creature embodied in Hyde, brought under tentative control by civilization, law, and conscience. According to this theory, the potion simply strips away the civilized veneer, exposing mans essential nature. Certainly, the novel goes out of its way to paint Hyde as animalistiche is hairy and ugly; he conducts himself according to instinct rather than reason; Utterson describes him as a troglodyte, or primitive creature. Yet if Hyde were just an animal, we would not expect him to take such delight in crime. Indeed, he seems to commit violent acts against innocents for no reason except the joy of it something that no animal would do. He appears deliberately and happily immoral rather than amoral; he knows the moral law and basks in his breach of it. For an animalistic creature, furthermore, Hyde seems oddly at home in the urban landscape. All of these observations imply that perhaps civilization, too, has its dark side. Ultimately, while Stevenson clearly asserts human nature as possessing two aspects, he leaves open the question of what these aspects constitute. Perhaps they consist of evil and virtue; perhaps they represent ones inner animal and the veneer that civilization has imposed. Stevenson enhances the richness of the novel by leaving us to look within ourselves to find the answers. 2-The Importance of Reputation For the characters in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, preserving ones reputation emerges as all important. The prevalence of this value system is evident in the way that upright men such as Utterson and Enfield avoid gossip at all costs; they see gossip as a great destroyer of reputation. Similarly, when Utterson suspects Jekyll first of being blackmailed and then of sheltering Hyde from the police, he does not make his suspicions known; part of being Jekylls good friend is a willingness to keep his secrets and not ruin his respectability. The importance of reputation in the novel also reflects the importance of appearances, facades, and surfaces, which often hide a sordid underside. In many instances in the novel, Utterson, true to his Victorian society, adamantly wishes not only to preserve Jekylls reputation but also to preserve the appearance of order and decorum, even as he senses a vile truth lurking underneath. Motifs (are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the texts major themes) 1-Violence Against Innocents The text repeatedly depicts Hyde as a creature of great evil and countless vices. Although the reader learns the details of only two of Hydes crimes, the nature of both underlines his depravity. Both involve violence directed against innocents in particular. In the first instance, the victim of Hydes violence is a small, female child whom he tramples; in the second instance, it is a gentle and muchbeloved old man. The fact that Hyde injures a girl and ruthlessly murders a man, neither of which has
18

done anything to provoke his rage or to deserve death, emphasizes the extreme immorality of Jekylls dark side unleashed. Hydes brand of evil constitutes not just a lapse from good but an outright attack on it. 2-Silence Repeatedly in the novel, characters fail or refuse to articulate themselves. Either they seem unable to describe a horrifying perception, such as the physical characteristics of Hyde, or they deliberately abort or avoid certain conversations. Enfield and Utterson cut off their discussion of Hyde in the first chapter out of a distaste for gossip; Utterson refuses to share his suspicions about Jekyll throughout his investigation of his clients predicament. Moreover, neither Jekyll in his final confession nor the third-person narrator in the rest of the novel ever provides any details of Hydes sordid behavior and secret vices. It is unclear whether these narrative silences owe to a failure of language or a refusal to use it. Ultimately, the two kinds of silence in the novel indicate two different notions about the interaction of the rational and the irrational. The characters refusals to discuss the sordid indicate an attribute of the Victorian society in which they live. This society prizes decorum and reputation above all and prefers to repress or even deny the truth if that truth threatens to upset the conventionally ordered worldview. Faced with the irrational, Victorian society and its inhabitants prefer not to acknowledge its presence and not to grant it the legitimacy of a name. Involuntary silences, on the other hand, imply something about language itself. Language is by nature rational and logical, a method by which we map and delineate our world. Perhaps when confronted with the irrational and the mystical, language itself simply breaks down. Perhaps something about verbal expression stands at odds with the supernatural. Interestingly, certain parts of the novel suggest that, in the clash between language and the uncanny, the uncanny need not always win. One can interpret Stevensons reticence on the topic of Jekylls and Hydes crimes as a conscious choice not to defuse their chilling aura with descript ions that might only dull them. 3-Urban Terror Throughout the novel, Stevenson goes out of his way to establish a link between the urban landscape of Victorian London and the dark events surrounding Hyde. He achieves his desired effect through the use of nightmarish imagery, in which dark streets twist and coil, or lie draped in fog, forming a sinister landscape befitting the crimes that take place there. Chilling visions of the city appear in Uttersons nightmares as well, and the text notes that he would be aware of the great field of lamps of a nocturnal city. . . . The figure [of Hyde] . . . haunted the lawyer all night; and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly . . . through wider labyrinths of lamp-lighted city, and at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming. In such images, Stevenson paints Hyde as an urban creature, utterly at home in the darkness of London where countless crimes take place, the novel suggests, without anyone knowing. Symbols (are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts) 1-Jekylls House and Laboratory Dr. Jekyll lives in a well-appointed home, characterized by Stevenson as having a great air of wealth and comfort. His laboratory is described as a certain sinister block of building [which] bore in every feature the marks of profound and sordid negligence. With its decaying facade and air of neglect, the laboratory quite neatly symbolizes the corrupt and perverse Hyde. Correspondingly, the respectable, prosperous-looking main house symbolizes the respectable, upright Jekyll. Moreover, the connection between the buildings similarly corresponds to the connection between the personas they represent. The buildings are adjoined but look out on two different streets. Because of the convoluted layout of the streets in the area, the casual observer cannot detect that the structures are two parts of a whole, just as he or she would be unable to detect the relationship between Jekyll and Hyde. 2-Hydes Physical Appearance According to the indefinite remarks made by his overwhelmed observers, Hyde appears repulsively ugly and deformed, small, shrunken, and hairy. His physical ugliness and deformity symbolizes his moral hideousness and warped ethics. Indeed, for the audience of Stevensons time, the connection between such ugliness and Hydes wickedness might have been seen as more than symbolic. Many people believed in the science of physiognomy, which held that one could identify a criminal by physical appearance. Additionally, Hydes small stature may represent the fact that, as Jekylls dark side, he has been repressed for years, prevented from growing and flourishing. His hairiness may indicate that he is not so much an evil side of Jekyll as the embodiment of Jekylls instincts, the animalistic core beneath Jekylls polished exterior. Chapter 1: Story of the Door 19

Mr. Utterson is a wealthy, well-respected London lawyer, a reserved and perhaps even boring man who nevertheless inspires a strange fondness in those who know him. Despite his eminent respectability, he never abandons a friend whose reputation has been sullied or ruined. Utterson nurtures a close friendship with Mr. Enfield, his distant relative and likewise a respectable London gentleman. The two seem to have little in common, and when they take their weekly walk together they often go for quite a distance without saying anything to one another; nevertheless, they look forward to these strolls as one of the high points of the week. As the story begins, Utterson and Enfield are taking their regular Sunday stroll and walking down a particularly prosperous-looking street. They come upon a neglected building, which seems out of place in the neighborhood, and Enfield relates a story in connection with it. Enfield was walking in the same neighborhood late one night, when he witnessed a shrunken, misshapen man crash into and trample a young girl. He collared the man before he could get away, and then brought him back to the girl, around whom an angry crowd had gathered. The captured man appeared so overwhelmingly ugly that the crowd immediately despised him. United, the crowd threatened to ruin the ugly mans good name unless he did something to make amends; the man, seeing himself trapped, bought them off with one hundred pounds, which he obtained upon entering the neglected building through its only door. Strangely enough, the check bore the name of a very reputable man; furthermore, and in spite of Enfields suspicions, it proved to be legitimate and not a forgery. Enfield hypothesizes that the ugly culprit had somehow blackmailed the man whose name appeared on the check. Spurning gossip, however, Enfield refuses to reveal that name. Utterson then asks several pointed questions confirming the details of the incident. Enfield tries to describe the nature of the mysterious mans ugliness but cannot express it, stating,I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He divulges that the culprits name was Hyde, and, at this point, Utterson declares that he knows the man, and notes that he can now guess the name on the check. But, as the men have just been discussing the virtue of minding ones own business, they promptly agree never to discuss the matter again. Chapter 2: Search for Mr. Hyde Utterson, prompted by his conversation with Enfield, goes home to study a will that he drew up for his close friend Dr. Jekyll. It states that in the event of the death or disappearance of Jekyll, all of his property should be given over immediately to a Mr. Edward Hyde. This strange will had long troubled Utterson, but now that he has heard something of Hydes behavior, he becomes more upset and feels convinced that Hyde has some peculiar power over Jekyll. Seeking to unravel the mystery, he pays a visit to Dr. Lanyon, a friend of Jekylls. But Lanyon has never heard of Hyde and has fallen out of communication with Jekyll as a result of a professional dispute. Lanyon refers to Jekylls most recent line of research as unscientific balderdash. Later that night, Utterson is haunted by nightmares in which a faceless man runs down a small child and in which the same terrifying, faceless figure stands beside Jekylls bed and commands him to rise. Soon, Utterson begins to spend time around the run-down building where Enfield saw Hyde enter, in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Hyde. Hyde, a small young man, finally appears, and Utterson approaches him. Utterson introduces himself as a friend of Henry Jekyll. Hyde, keeping his head down, returns his greetings. He asks Hyde to show him his face, so that he will know him if he sees him again; Hyde complies, and, like Enfield before him, Utterson feels appalled and horrified yet cannot pinpoint exactly what makes Hyde so ugly. Hyde then offers Utterson his address, which the lawyer interprets as a sign that Hyde eagerly anticipates the death of Jekyll and the execution of his will. After this encounter, Utterson pays a visit to Jekyll. At this point, we learn what Utterson himself has known all along: namely, that the run-down building that Hyde frequents is actually a laboratory attached to Jekylls wellkept townhouse, which faces outward on a parallel street. Utterson is admitted into Jekylls home by Jekylls butler, Mr. Poole, but Jekyll is not at home. Poole tells Utterson that Hyde has a key to the laboratory and that all the servants have orders to obey Hyde. The lawyer heads home, worrying about his friend. He assumes Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll, perhaps for some wrongdoings that Jekyll committed in his youth. Chapter 3: Dr. Jekyll Was Quite at Ease Two weeks later, Jekyll throws a well-attended dinner party. Utterson stays late so that the two men can speak privately. Utterson mentions the will, and Jekyll begins to make a joke about it, but he turns pale when Utterson tells him that he has been learning something of young Hyde. Jekyll explains that the situation with Hyde is exceptional and cannot be solved by talking. He also insists that the moment I choose, I can be rid of 20

Mr. Hyde. But Jekyll emphasizes the great interest he currently takes in Hyde and his desire to continue to provide for him. He makes Utterson promise that he will carry out his will and testament. Chapter 4: The Carew Murder Case Approximately one year later, the scene opens on a maid who, sitting at her window in the wee hours of the morning, witnesses a murder take place in the street below. She sees a small, evil-looking man, whom she recognizes as Mr. Hyde, encounter a polite, aged gentleman; when the gentleman offers Hyde a greeting, Hyde suddenly turns on him with a stick, beating him to death. The police find a letter addressed to Utterson on the dead body, and they consequently summon the lawyer. He identifies the body as Sir Danvers Carew, a popular member of Parliament and one of his clients. Utterson still has Hydes address, and he accompanies the police to a set of rooms located in a poor, evillooking part of town. Utterson reflects on how odd it is that a man who lives in such squalor is the heir to Henry Jekylls fortune. Hydes villainous-looking landlady lets the men in, but the suspected murderer is not at home. The police find the murder weapon and the burned remains of Hydes checkbook. Upon a subsequent visit to the bank, the police inspector learns that Hyde still has an account there. The officer assumes that he need only wait for Hyde to go and withdraw money. In the days and weeks that follow, however, no sign of Hyde turns up; he has no family, no friends, and those who have seen him are unable to give accurate descriptions, differ on details, and agree only on the evil aspect of his appearance Chapter 5: Incident of the Letter Utterson calls on Jekyll, whom he finds in his laboratory looking deathly ill. Jekyll feverishly claims that Hyde has left and that their relationship has ended. He also assures Utterson that the police shall never find the man. Jekyll then shows Utterson a letter and asks him what he should do with it, since he fears it could damage his reputation if he turns it over to the police. The letter is from Hyde, assuring Jekyll that he has means of escape, that Jekyll should not worry about him, and that he deems himself unworthy of Jekylls great generosity. Utterson asks if Hyde dictated the terms of Jekylls willespecially its insistence that Hyde inherit in the event of Jekylls -disappearance. Jekyll replies in the affirmative, and Utterson tells his friend that Hyde probably meant to murder him and that he has had a near escape. He takes the letter and departs. On his way out, Utterson runs into Poole, the butler, and asks him to describe the man who delivered the letter; Poole, taken aback, claims to have no knowledge of any letters being delivered other than the usual mail. That night, over drinks, Utterson consults his trusted clerk, Mr. Guest, who is an expert on handwriting. Guest compares Hydes letter with some of Jekylls own writing and suggests that the same hand inscribed both; Hydes script merely leans in the opposite direction, as if for the purpose of concealment. Utterson reacts with alarm at the thought that Jekyll would forge a letter for a murderer. Chapter 6: Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon As time passes, with no sign of Hydes reappearance, Jekyll becomes healthier-looking and more sociable, devoting himself to charity. To Utterson, it appears that the removal of Hydes evil influence has had a tremendously positive effect on Jekyll. After two months of this placid lifestyle, Jekyll holds a dinner party, which both Utterson and Lanyon attend, and the three talk together as old friends. But a few days later, when Utterson calls on Jekyll, Poole reports that his master is receiving no visitors. This scenario repeats itself for a week, so Utterson goes to visit Lanyon, hoping to learn why Jekyll has refused any company. He finds Lanyon in very poor health, pale and sickly, with a frightened look in his eyes. Lanyon explains that he has had a great shock and expects to die in a few weeks. [L]ife has been pleasant, he says. I liked it; yes, sir, I used to like it. Then he adds, I sometimes think if we knew all, we should be more glad to get away. When Utterson mentions that Jekyll also seems ill, Lanyon violently demands that they talk of anything but Jekyll. He promises that after his death, Utterson may learn the truth about everything, but for now he will not discuss it. Afterward, at home, Utterson writes to Jekyll, talking about being turned away from Jekylls house and inquiring as to what caused the break between him and Lanyon. Soon Jekylls written reply arrives, explaining that while he still cares for Lanyon, he understands why the doctor says they must not meet. As for Jekyll himself, he pledges his continued affection for Utterson but adds that from now on he will be maintaining a strict seclusion, seeing no one. He says that he is suffering a punishment that he cannot name. Lanyon dies a few weeks later, fulfilling his prophecy. After the funeral, Utterson takes from his safe a letter that Lanyon meant for him to read after he died. Inside, Utterson finds only another envelope, marked to remain sealed until Jekyll also has died. Out of professional principle, Utterson overcomes his curiosity and 21

puts the envelope away for safekeeping. As weeks pass, he calls on Jekyll less and less frequently, and the butler continues to refuse him entry. Chapter 7: Incident at the Window The following Sunday, Utterson and Enfield are taking their regular stroll. Passing the door where Enfield once saw Hyde enter to retrieve Jekylls check, Enfield remarks on the murder case. He notes that the story that began with the trampling has reached an end, as London will never again see Mr. Hyde. Enfield mentions that in the intervening weeks he has learned that the run-down laboratory they pass is physically connected to Jekylls house, and they both stop to peer into the houses windows, with Utterson noting his concern for Jekylls health. To their surprise, the two men find Jekyll at the window, enjoying the fresh air. Jekyll complains that he feels very low, and Utterson suggests that he join them for a walk, to help his circulation. Jekyll refuses, saying that he cannot go out. Then, just as they resume polite conversation, a look of terror seizes his face, and he quickly shuts the window and vanishes. Utterson and Enfield depart in shocked silence. Chapter 8: The Last Night Jekylls butler Poole visits Utterson one night after dinner. Deeply agitated, he says only that he believes there has been some foul play regarding Dr. Jekyll; he quickly brings Utterson to his masters residence. The night is dark and windy, and the streets are deserted, giving Utterson a premonition of disaster. When he reaches Jekylls house, he finds the servants gathered fearfully in the main hall. Poole brings Utterson to the door of Jekylls laboratory and calls inside, saying that Utterson has come for a visit. A strange voice responds, sounding nothing like that of Jekyll; the owner of the voice tells Poole that he can receive no visitors. Poole and Utterson retreat to the kitchen, where Poole insists that the voice they heard emanating from the laboratory does not belong to his master. Utterson wonders why the murderer would remain in the laboratory if he had just killed Jekyll and not simply flee. Poole describes how the mystery voice has sent him on constant errands to chemists; the man in the laboratory seems desperate for some ingredient that no drugstore in London sells. Utterson, still hopeful, asks whether the notes Poole has received are in the doctors hand, but Poole then reveals that he has seen the person inside the laboratory, when he came out briefly to search for something, and that the man looked nothing like Jekyll. Utterson suggests that Jekyll may have some disease that changes his voice and deforms his features, making them unrecognizable, but Poole declares that the person he saw was smaller than his masterand looked, in fact, like none other than Mr. Hyde. Hearing Pooles words, Utterson resolves that he and Poole should break into the laboratory. He sends two servants around the block the laboratorys other door, the one that Enfield sees Hyde using at the beginning of the novel. Then, armed with a fireplace poker and an axe, Utterson and Poole return to the inner door. Utterson calls inside, demanding admittance. The voice begs for Utterson to have mercy and to leave him alone. The lawyer, however, recognizes the voice as Hydes and orders Poole to smash down the door.

Once inside, the men find Hydes body lying on the floor, a crushed vial in his hand. He appears to have poisoned himself. Utterson notes that Hyde is wearing a suit that belongs to Jekyll and that is much too large for him. The men search the entire laboratory, as well as the surgeons theater below and the other rooms in the building, but they find neither a trace of Jekyll nor a corpse. They note a large mirror and think it strange to find such an item in a scientific laboratory. Then, on Jekylls business table, they find a large envelope addressed to Utterson that contains three items. The first is a will, much like the previous one, except that it replaces Hydes name with Uttersons. The second is a note to Utterson, with the present days date on it. Based on this piece of evidence, Utterson surmises that Jekyll is still aliveand he wonders if Hyde really died by suicide or if Jekyll killed him. This note instructs Utterson to go home immediately and read the letter that Lanyon gave him earlier. It adds that if he desires to learn more, Utterson can read the confession of Your worthy and unhappy friend, Henry Jekyll. Utterson takes the third item from the envelopea sealed packet and promises Poole that he will return that night and send for the police. He then heads back to his office to read Lanyons letter and the contents of the sealed packet. Chapter 9: Dr. Lanyons Narrative This chapter constitutes a word-for-word transcription of the letter Lanyon intends Utterson to open after Lanyons and Jekylls deaths. Lanyon writes that after Jekylls last dinner party, he received a strange letter from Jekyll. The letter asked Lanyon to go to Jekylls home and, with the help of Poole, break into the upper roomor cabinetof Jekylls laboratory. The letter instructed Lanyon then to
22

remove a specific drawer and all its contents from the laboratory, return with this drawer to his own home, and wait for a man who would come to claim it precisely at midnight. The letter seemed to Lanyon to have been written in a mood of desperation. It offered no explanation for the orders it gave but promised Lanyon that if he did as it bade, he would soon understand everything. Lanyon duly went to Jekylls home, where Poole and a locksmith met him. The locksmith broke into the lab, and Lanyon returned home with the drawer. Within the drawer, Lanyon found several vials, one containing what seemed to be salt and another holding a peculiar red liquid. The drawer also contained a notebook recording what seemed to be years of experiments, with little notations such as double or total failure!!! scattered amid a long list of dates. However, the notebooks offere d no hints as to what the experiments involved. Lanyon waited for his visitor, increasingly certain that Jekyll must be insane. As promised, at the stroke of midnight, a small, evil-looking man appeared, dressed in clothes much too large for him. It was, of course, Mr. Hyde, but Lanyon, never having seen the man before, did not recognize him. Hyde seemed nervous and excited. He avoided polite conversation, interested only in the contents of the drawer. Lanyon directed him to it, and Hyde then asked for a graduated glass. In it, he mixed the ingredients from the drawer to form a purple liquid, which then became green. Hyde paused and asked Lanyon whether he should leave and take the glass with him, or whether he should stay and drink it in front of Lanyon, allowing the doctor to witness something that he claimed would stagger the unbelief of Satan. Lanyon, irritated, declared that he had already become so involved in the matter that he wanted to see the end of it. Taking up the glass, Hyde told Lanyon that his skepticism of transcendental medicine would now be disproved. Before Lanyons eyes, the deformed man drank the glass in one gulp and then seemed to swell, his body expanding, his face melting and shifting, until, shockingly, Hyde was gone and Dr. Jekyll stood in his place. Lanyon here ends his letter, stating that what Jekyll told him afterward is too shocking to repeat and that the horror of the event has so wrecked his constitutionthathe will soondie. Chapter 10: Henry Jekylls Full Statement of the Case This chapter offers a transcription of the letter Jekyll leaves for Utterson in the laboratory. Jekyll writes that upon his birth he possessed a large inheritance, a healthy body, and a hardworking, decent nature. His idealism allowed him to maintain a respectable seriousness in public while hiding his more frivolous and indecent side. By the time he was fully grown, he found himself leading a dual life, in which his better side constantly felt guilt for the transgressions of his darker side. When his scientific interests led to mystical studies as to the divided nature of man, he hoped to find some solution to his own split nature. Jekyll insists that man is not truly one, but truly two, and he records how he dreamed of separating the good and evil natures. Jekyll reports that, after much research, he eventually found a chemical solution that might serve his purposes. Buying a large quantity of salt as his last ingredient, he took the potion with the knowledge that he was risking his life, but he remained driven by the hopes of making a great discovery. At first, he experienced incredible pain and nausea. But as these symptoms subsided, he felt vigorous and filled with recklessness and sensuality. He had become the shrunken, deformed Mr. Hyde. He hypothesizes that Hydes small stature owed to the fact that this persona represented his evil side alone, which up to that point had been repressed. Upon first looking into a mirror after the transformation, Jekyll-turned-Hyde was not repulsed by his new form; instead, he experienced a leap of welcome. He came to delight in living as Hyde. Jekyll was becoming too old to act upon his more embarrassing impulses, but Hyde was a younger man, the personification of the evil side that emerged several years afte r Jekylls own birth. Transforming himself into Hyde became a welcome outlet for Jekylls passions. Jekyll furnished a home and set up a bank account for his alter ego, Hyde, who soon sunk into utter degradation. But each time he transformed back into Jekyll, he felt no guilt at Hydes dark exploits, though he did try to right whatever wrongs had been done.
23

It was not until two months before the Carew murder that Jekyll found cause for concern. While asleep one night, he involuntarily transformed into Hydewithout the help of the potionand awoke in the body of his darker half. This incident convinced him that he must cease with his transformations or risk being trapped in Hydes form forever. But after two months as Jekyll, he caved in and took the pot ion again. Hyde, so long repressed, emerged wild and vengefully savage, and it was in this mood that he beat Carew to death, delighting in the crime. Hyde showed no remorse for the murder, but Jekyll knelt and prayed to God for forgiveness even before his transformation back was complete. The horrifying nature of the murder convinced Jekyll never to transform himself again, and it was during the subsequent months that Utterson and others remarked that Jekyll seemed to have had a weight lifted from his shoulders, and that everything seemed well with him. Eventually, though, Jekyll grew weary of constant virtue and indulged some of his darker desiresin his own person, not that of Hyde. But this dip into darkness proved sufficient to cause another spontaneous transformation into Hyde, which took place one day when Jekyll was sitting in a park, far from home. As Hyde, he immediately felt brave and powerful, but he also knew that the police would seize him for his murder of Carew. He could not even return to his rooms to get his potions without a great risk of being captured. It was then that he sent word to Lanyon to break into his laboratory and get his potions for him. After that night, he had to take a double dose of the potion every six hours to avoid spontaneous transformation into Hyde. As soon as the drug began to wear off, the transformation process would begin. It was one of these spells that struck him as he spoke to Enfield and Utterson out the window, forcing him to withdraw. In his last, desperate hours, Hyde grew stronger as Jekyll grew weaker. Moreover, the salt necessary for the potion began to run out. Jekyll ordered more, only to discover that the mineral did not have the same effect; he realized that the original salt must have contained an impurity that made the potion work. Jekyll then anticipated the fast approach of the moment when he must become Hyde permanently. He thus used the last of the potion to buy himself time during which to compose this final letter. Jekyll writes that he does not know whether, when faced with discovery, Hyde will kill himself or be arrested and hanged-but he knows that by the time Utterson reads this letter, Henry Jekyll will be no more. (genre: Gothic mystery story); major conflict Jekyll attempts to keep his dark half, Edward Hyde, under control and then to prevent himself from becoming Hyde permanently. (rising action Utterson attempts to discover the truth about the Jekyll-Hyde relationship); climax One could argue for two different climaxes. The moment when Utterson breaks down the door to Jekylls laboratory and finds Hydes corpse constitutes a climax in that Utterson finally admits and accepts that something terribly wrong has taken place. But one might also see the novels climax as arising within Lanyons letter, at the moment that he witnesses Hydes transformation into Jekyll and the mysterious connection between the personas is finally explained. Unit 3: American Literature 1)- Colonial period: The story of American literature begins in the early 1600s, long before there were any americans. The earliest writers were Englishmen describing the English exploration and colonization of the New World America. Thomas Hariots Brief and true report of the new-found land of Virginia(1588) was only the first of many such works. The writings of Captain John Smith (1580-1631)probably satisfied readers of both kinds, adventures and those who looked for excitement. Some of his works are: True relations of Virginia (1608) and Description of New England (1616) are fascinating advertisements which try to persuade the rader to settle in the new world; His general history of Virginia, New England and The summer Isles (1624) contains the story of his rescue by a beautiful Indian princess (the story is probably untrue but its the first famous tale from American Literature. The Puritans studied his Description of New England carefully and then they decided to settle there in 1620. Almost from the beginning there were important differences between the Southern and The New England colonies. In the south, enormous farms or plantations used the labor of black slaves to grow tobacco. The rich and powerful plantation owners were slow to develop a literature on their own. They preferred books imported from England. But in New England the Puritans settlers, who were high intellectuals, had come to form a society based on strict Christian belief. Therefore they had a far stronger sense of unity and literature developed much faster than in the south. Harvard, the first college in the colonies, was founded near Boston in 1636 to train new Puritan ministers. The first printing press in America was started there in 1638 and the first newspaper began in Boston in 1704. The most important works of Puritan Literature were histories. They were influenced by their religion belief and they saw the new England as the Promised Land of the Bible. The central drama of history 24

was the struggle between Christ and satan. They also wrote personal diaries, sermons, historical books, some poems. Some authors: 1)-William Bradford (1590-1657): Of Plymouth Plantation describes the Puritans difficult relations with the Indians, their difficulties during the first winter when half of the colony died. Puritan writers avoid elegant language so that uneducated people could understand and enjoy their literature. The examples they used were drawn either by the Bible or from the everyday life of farmers and fishermen. It is also influenced by the belief that God directs everything that happens. 2)-John Winthrop (1588-1649) was the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and, like most of the Puritan writers, was a minister all his life. He rarely shows shock or sadness, even when he describes scenes of great unhappiness, he believed that most events could be seen as a sign from God. The first puritans were not so democratic. 3)-Edward Johnson (1598-1672): The wonder-working Providence of Sions Savior in New England defends the harsh laws of the Puritans leaders. Everybody had to obey these church laws. Believers in others forms of Christianity were called snakes or even worse names. Their society was a theocracy. The laws of the society and religion were the same and those who broke the laws were punished severely. 4-Thomas Hooker (1586-1647): A Survey of the Summe of church Discipline is the most famous statement of these Puritans laws. 5-John Cotton (1645): Way of the Churches of Christ in New England. By the beginning of the 1700s, newer Puritans ideas were becoming important to the development of democracy. As a result some writers were struggling hard against the puritan theocracy. 6-Anne Hutchinson (1590-1643) and 7-Roger Williams(1603-1683) both desired a freer religious environment. Rogers was important because he went off to establish his own colony in Rhode Island. His Bloudy Tenant (1644) became a famous statement of the case for religious freedom. When the Indians were no longer a danger, the dark forests had become farmland, and more comfortable settlements had grown up, Puritan strictness began to relax. However, the change was very slow and it was not easily recognized by the people of that time. 8-Richard Mather (1596-1669) the founder of his family in America, was greatly admired as a typical strong Puritan minister. His son, 9-Increase Mather(1639-1723), was a leader of the New England theocracy until it began to fall apart at the end of the 17th C. The 1690s was the time of the great witchcraft panic. In the town of Salem, Massachusetts, young girls and lonely old women were arrested and put on trials as witches who were put to death for selling their souls to the devil. Increases best -known book, Remarkable Providence (1684) tells about the psychological environment of that time. To him and other Puritans, witchcraft and other forms of evil were an absolutely real part of everyday life. Increases son, 10-Cotton Mather (1663-1728) had an insane genius for advertising himself. He wrote more than 450 works. Whenever sth happened to him in his life, he wrote a religious book. When his first wife died, he published a long sermon called Death Made Easy and Happy and when his little daughter died, he wrote The best way of Living, which is to Die Daily. His famous Magnalia Christie Americana (1702) was published in many volumes and it describes Salems witch trials and he makes it clear that he personally believed that it was an assault from hell and that all of New England was filled with evil spirits from hell. But his longest work The Angel of Bethesda was so long that no one ever tried to publish it. We often find in the earliest Puritans writings some poems on religious themes. The two most outstanding poets were: Anne Bradstreet and Edward Tylor. 11-Anne (1612-1672) was the first real New England poet. Her Tenth Muse Lately Spring Up in America (1650), contained the first poems published in England. She gives us a look into the heart of the 17th C American woman. Some of her poems are. Contemplation, The flesh and the spirit, We may live together, of the four ages of man and Spirit. 12-Edward Tylors poetry (16451729)is some of the finest poetry written in Colonial America. Like Cotton Mather, he hoped for a rebirth of the puritan way. He created rich, unusual images to help the reader see, hear, taste and feel religious doctrines. Some poems: I am the living Bread, I go to prepare a place for you, If one died for all then are all dead, the reflection, Things present. Throughout American history, even in the 29th c, there had been many sudden explosions of religious emotions. Preachers like George Whitfield toured the country telling people to repent and be saved by the New Light. The sermons of Jonathan Edwards(1703-1758) were so powerful and frightening that his church was often filled with screams and crying. He wrote Sinners in the hands of an angry god (1733) and it is still famous for its literary quality. Although literature developed far more slowly in the South than in New England, a few early writers have to be mentioned: Robert Beverly (1673-1722) was a strong defender of black slavery and his section on the Indians of Virginia is free of race hatred. He wrote intelligently about nature and society. His History and present state of Virginia is written mixing wild humor with scientific observation. Another writer, William Byrd (1674-1744) 25

wrote history of the dividing line in which he used humor and realism to describe the life along the dividing line or frontier between Virginias settle areas and the deep forests. However their ideas of slavers freedom werent shared by the majority of southern Plantation owners. 2-EDGAR ALLAN POE(1809-1849)was born on January 19, 1809, and died on October 7, 1849. In his stormy forty years, which included a marriage to his cousin, fights with other writers, and legendary drinking binges, Poe lived in all the important literary centers of the northeastern United States: Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. He was a magazine editor, a poet, a short story writer, a critic, and a lecturer. He introduced the British horror story, or the Gothic genre, to American literature, along with the detective story, science fiction, and literary criticism. Poe became a key figure in the nineteenth-century flourishing of American letters and literature, a period which was called the American renaissance. The often tragic circumstances of Poes life haunt his writings. He watched his mother die of tuberculosis (at the age of 3) so he went to live with John and Frances Allan, wealthy theatergoers who knew his parents, both actors, from the Richmond, Virginia, stage. Like Poes mother, Frances Allan was chronically ill, and Poe experienced her sickness much as he did his mothers. His relationship with John Allan, who was loving but moody, generous but demanding, was emotionally turbulent. With Allans financial help, Poe attended school in England and then enrolled at the University of Virginia in 1826, but he was forced to leave after two semesters. Although Poe blamed Allans stinginess, his own gambling debts played a large role in his fiscal woes. Poe struggled with a view of Allan as a false father; generous enough to take him in at age three, but never dedicated enough to adopt him as a true son. There are echoes of Poes upbringing in his works, as sick mothers and guilty fathers appear in many of his tales. He was another writer interested in psychology and the darker side of human nature and he made important contributions to American Literature in three areas: the short story, literary criticism and poetry. Many of Poes tales of horror are known throughout the world. His method was to put his characters into unusual situations. Next, he would carefully describe their feelings of terror and guilt. Some examples of these are: 1-The Pit and the Pendulum (1841), 2-The Tell-Tale- Heart (1843) and 3-The Black Cat (1843). 4-The Fall of the Usher House is the best-known of Poes tales. It is a successful example of his theory that in short stories, unity of effects is everything. The storys setting and its symbols reveal the character of the hero. A crack in the house symbolizes the relationship between the adult twins, Roderick and Madeline usher. When Roderick buries his twin sister before she is really dead, she returns to the house from her grave. When Roderick dies, the house sinks into the black lake surrounding it. Poes heroines often return from the grave by various means. In 5Ligeia (1838) the ghost of the heros first wife returns to life by stealing the body of his second wife. Poe was also one of the creators of the modern detective story. Instead of examining characters and feelings these stories examine mysterious problems: E.g. 6- The murders in the Rue morgue (1841), 7-The mystery of Marie Roget(1842) and 8-The purloined letter. Each of these stories has the same hero, the brilliant French detective Monsieur Dupin. This character is one of Poes finest creations. The author shows us how Dupins brilliant mind works. The interest of Poes poetry is in its sound, rather than in its content. He constantly experimented with ways to make it musical, and defined poetry as the rhythmic creation of beauty. Even the names he uses have a musical sound: 9- Eulalie, 10-lenore, 11-Ulalume. He felt that the real goal of poetry is pleasure, not truth. But for him, pleasure didnt mean happiness. Rather, a good poem creates in the reader a feeling of gentle sadness. Poes literary criticism is also important. His views for the Southern Literary Messenger (A newspaper) were read everywhere in America. He wanted to help develop a national literature for the young country and felt that intelligent criticism was the key. He hated bad books and bad writing and his criticisms were usually accurate. However, this made him many enemies and even after his death, some writers continued to attack him and tell lies about his personal life. Poes unhappy life ended when he was found in a Baltimore Street, drunk and dying in 1849. 3.THE FALL OF THE USHER HOUSE An unnamed narrator approaches the house of Usher on a dull, dark, and soundless day. This housethe estate of his boyhood friend, Roderick Usheris gloomy and mysterious. The narrator observes that the house seems to have absorbed an evil and diseased atmosphere from the decaying trees and murky ponds around it. He has come to the house because his friend Roderick sent him a letter earnestly requesting his company. Roderick wrote that he was feeling physically and emotionally ill, so the narrator is rushing to his assistance. He mentions that the Usher family, though an ancient clan, has never flourished. Only one member of the Usher family has survived from generation to generation, thereby forming a direct line of descent without any outside branches. 26

The narrator finds the inside of the house just as spooky as the outside. He makes his way through the long passages to the room where Roderick is waiting. He notes that Roderick is paler and less energetic than he once was. Roderick tells the narrator that he suffers from nerves and fear and that his senses are heightened. He also notes that Roderick seems afraid of his own house. Rodericks sister, Madeline, has taken ill with a mysterious sicknessperhaps catalepsy, the loss of control of ones limbsthat the doctors cannot reverse. So, he spends several days trying to cheer up Roderick. Madeline soon dies, and Roderick decides to bury her temporarily in the tombs below the house. He wants to keep her in the house because he fears that the doctors might dig up her body for scientific examination, since her disease was so strange to them. The narrator helps Roderick put the body in the tomb, and he notes that Madeline has rosy cheeks, as some do after death. He also realizes suddenly that Roderick and Madeline were twins. Over the next few days, Roderick becomes even more uneasy. One night, the narrator cannot sleep either. Roderick knocks on his door, apparently hysterical. He leads the narrator to the window, from which they see a bright-looking gas surrounding the house. He tells Roderick that the gas is a natural phenomenon, not altogether uncommon. He decides to read to Roderick in order to pass the night away. He reads Mad Trist by Sir Lancelot Canning, a medieval romance. As he reads, he hears noises that correspond to the descriptions in the story. At first, he ignores these sounds as the vagaries of his imagination. Soon, however, they become more distinct and he can no longer ignore them. He also notices that Roderick has slumped over in his chair and is muttering to himself. The narrator approaches Roderick and listens to what he is saying. Roderick reveals that he has been hearing these sounds for days, and believes that they have buried Madeline alive and that she is trying to escape. He yells that she is standing behind the door. The wind blows open the door and confirms Rodericks fears: Madeline stands in white robes bloodied from her struggle. She attacks Roderick as the life drains from her, and he dies of fear. The narrator flees the house. As he escapes, the entire house cracks along the break in the frame and crumbles to the ground. Character List Roderick Usher - The owner of the mansion and last male in the Usher line. Roderick functions as a doppelganger, or character double, for his twin sister, Madeline. He represents the mind to her body and suffers from the mental counterpart of her physical illness. Madeline Usher - Rodericks twin sister and victim of catalepsy, a mysterious incapacitating illness. Because the narrator is surprised to discover that Madeline is a twin, she signals the narrators outsider relationship to the house of Usher. Unnamed narrator - Rodericks best boyhood friend. Contacted by Roderick during his emotional distress, the narrator knows little about the house of Usher and is the first outsider to visit the mansion in many years. Themes 1)-Love/ Death Poe makes death and decay frightening because he reveals them to be the hidden destiny of everyone and everything. The narrator gets this insight immediately on approaching the house and feeling a depression of soul .Death is the truth we all fear at the end of life, and love is not enough to stop it from happening. The narrators friendship and devotion to Roderick can do nothing to avert the tragedy. What is more, he is too drawn into complicity with death by going along with the plan to bury Madeleine. 2)-The Sentience of All Things Having material or normally inanimate objects come alive is one of the stock motifs of gothic or horror stories. Poe makes Roderick Usher propound a theory of the correlation of matter and spirit. He suggests there is a spiritual world beyond the material one, and that one influences the other Of particular interest is Ushers reading of Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the Swedish mystic, whose doctrine of correspondences helps to explain Ushers theory about the House of Usher being sentient. Swedenborg taught there are correspondences or equivalent laws and relationships in the spiritual and physical worldsone reflects the other. The human soul is a microcosm that precisely mirrors the macrocosm. Thus, it is not fantastic to think that the material House of Usher, the mansion, is alive and reflecting the mental or spiritual life of the Usher family. 3)-Hypochondria and Madness The Usher family has a peculiar sensibility of temperament that has a positive result in their artistic and philanthropic endeavors (p. 39), but which also shows itself as hypochondria(depression). Roderick is described by the narrator as incoherent and inconsistent. He engages in a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancyan excessive nervous agitation. Perhaps he is bi-polar, as the narrator suggests: His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. The narrator continually likens the atmosphere of the house and Rodericks behavior to drunkenness or to an opium hallucination. Roderick says he has a constant terror and dread, not of anything in particular, but calls it an agitation of the soul. The narrator finds 27

out about Rodericks fears through broken and equivocal hints rather than any coherent comm unication. Indeed, at the end, Usher is reduced to a gibbering murmur as he rocks in his chair and makes his confession. The story details Ushers descent into madness, and his complete awareness of what is happening to him. He sings and makes music from the highest artificial excitement . The narrator knows that Roderick has a full consciousness of his tottering and lofty reason when he hears him sing The Haunted Palace about a once Radiant palace that loses wit and wisdom as it becomes taken over by a discordant melody. 4-TRANSCENDETALISM Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest to the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian church taught at Harvard Divinity School. Among the transcendentalists' core beliefs was the inherent goodness of both man and nature. Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions - particularly organized religion and political parties - ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual. They had faith that man is at his best when truly "self-reliant" and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed. Transcendentalism was in many aspects the first notable American intellectual movement. It certainly was the first to inspire succeeding generations of American intellectuals, as well as a number of literary monuments.[6] Rooted in the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant (and of German Idealism more generally), it developed as a reaction against 18th Century rationalism, John Locke's philosophy of Sensualism, and the manifest destiny of New England Calvinism. Its fundamental belief was in the unity and immanence of God in the world. The Transcendentalists found inspiration for their philosophy in a variety of diverse sources such as: Vedic thought, various religions, and German idealism. The major figures in the movement were: A-HERMAN MELVILLE:(August 1, 1819 September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd. His first three books gained much contemporary attention (the first, Typee, becoming a bestseller), but after a fastblooming literary success in the late 1840s, his popularity declined precipitously in the mid-1850s and never recovered during his lifetime. When he died in 1891, he was almost completely forgotten. It was not until the "Melville Revival" in the early 20th century that his work won recognition, especially Moby-Dick, which was hailed as one of the literary masterpieces of both American and world literature. He was the first writer to have his works collected and published by the Library of America. His most important works are: Typee( a Peep at Polynesian Life -1846); Omoo( a narrative of Adventures in the South Seas-1847); Mardi (a Voyage Thither1849); Redburn (his First Voyage -1849); White-Jacket or also called The World in a Man-of-War (1850); Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851- It has become Melville's most famous work and is often considered one of the greatest literary works of all time. It was dedicated to Melville's friend Nathaniel Hawthorne. It did not, however, make Melville rich) and Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). B-NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, the only judge involved in the Salem witch trials who never repented of his actions. Nathaniel later added a "w" to make his name "Hawthorne" in order to hide this relation. He entered Bowdoin College in 1821 and graduated in 1825. Hawthorne anonymously published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828. He published several short stories in various periodicals which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The next year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at a Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to The Wayside in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, and was survived by his wife and their three children. Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his friend Franklin Pierce.Hawthorne was predominantly a short story writer in his early career. Upon publishing Twice-Told Tales, however, he noted, "I do not think much of them", and he expected little response from the public.[92] His four major romances were written between 1850 and 1860: The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), The Blithedale Romance (1852) and The Marble Faun (1860). Another novel-length romance, Fanshawe was published anonymously in 1828. Hawthorne defined a romance as being radically different from a novel by not being concerned with the possible or probable course 28

of ordinary experience.[93] In the preface to The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne describes his romance-writing as using "atmospherical medium as to bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture."[94] Hawthorne also wrote nonfiction. In 2008, The Library of America selected Hawthorne's "A Collection of Wax Figures" for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American True Crime. C-WALT WHITHMAN: (May 31, 1819 March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass (major work), which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality. Born on Long Island, Whitman worked as a journalist, a teacher, a government clerk, and in addition to publishing his poetry was a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. Leaves of Grass, was first published in 1855 with his own money. The work was an attempt at reaching out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death in 1892. After a stroke towards the end of his life, he moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. He died at age 72 and his funeral became a public spectacle. Early in his career, he also produced a temperance novel, Franklin Evans (1842). Whitman's sexuality is often discussed alongside his poetry. Though biographers continue to debate his sexuality, he is usually described as either homosexual or bisexual in his feelings and attractions. However, there is disagreement among biographers as to whether Whitman had actual sexual experiences with men. Whitman was concerned with politics throughout his life. He supported the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the extension of slavery generally. His poetry presented an egalitarian view of the races, and at one point he called for the abolition of slavery, but later he saw the abolitionist movement as a threat to democracy. Works: Franklin Evans (1842); Leaves of Grass (1855); Drum-Taps (1865); Memoranda During the War; Specimen Days; Democratic Vistas (1871).Literary contribution: Whitman's work breaks the boundaries of poetic form and is generally prose-like. He also used unusual images and symbols in his poetry, including rotting leaves, tufts of straw, and debris. He also openly wrote about death and sexuality, including prostitution. He is often labeled as the father of free verse, though he did not invent it. Whitman's collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, stands among the masterpieces of world literature. Scholars have name Whitman the "Poet of Democracy" and "America's Shakespeare." Leaves of grass: This book is notable for its delight in and praise of the senses during a time when such candid displays were considered immoral. It (particularly the first edition) exalted the body and the material world. Influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalist movement, itself an offshoot of Romanticism, Whitman's poetry praises nature and the individual human's role in it. However, much like Emerson, Whitman does not diminish the role of the mind or the spirit; rather, he elevates the human form and the human mind, deeming both worthy of poetic praise. D-WASHINGTON IRVING: (April 3, 1783 November 28, 1859) was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Christopher Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra. Irving also served as the U.S. minister to Spain from 1842 to 1846.He made his literary debut at the age of 19, in 1802. He began writing letters to the New York Morning Chronicle, submitting commentaries on the city's social and theater scene under the name of Jonathan Oldstyle. The name, which purposely evoked the writer's Federalist leanings, was the first of many pseudonyms Irving would employ throughout his career. The letters brought Irving some early fame and moderate notoriety. After moving to England for the family business in 1815, he achieved international fame with the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, in 1819. He continued to publish regularlyand almost always successfullythroughout his life, and completed a five-volume biography of George Washington just eight months before his death, at age 76, in Tarrytown, New York. Irving was among the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and he encouraged American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. As America's first genuine internationally best-selling author, Irving advocated for writing as a legitimate profession, and argued for stronger laws to protect American writers from copyright infringement. Literary contribution: Irving perfected the American short story and was the first American writer to place his stories firmly in the United States, even as he poached from German or Dutch folklore. He is also generally credited as one of the first to write both in the vernacular, and without an obligation to the moral or didactic in his short stories, writing stories simply to entertain rather than to enlighten. Irving also encouraged would-be writers. Works:1- Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle 1802, 2-Salmagundi January 18071808 (literary magazine, 29

writing under various pseudonyms, such as William Wizard and Launcelot Langstaff, Irving lampooned New York culture and politics in a manner similar to today's Mad magazine. Salmagundi was a moderate success, spreading Irving's name and reputation beyond New York. 3-In late 1809, while mourning the death of his seventeen year old fiance Matilda Hoffman, Irving completed work on his first major book, A History of NewYork from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker (1809), a satire on self-important local history and contemporary politics. Prior to its publication, Irving started a hoax akin to today's viral marketing campaigns; he placed a series of missing person adverts in New York newspapers seeking information on Diedrich Knickerbocker, a crusty Dutch historian who had gone missing from his hotel in New York City. As part of the ruse, Irving placed a noticeallegedly from the hotel's proprietorinforming readers that if Mr. Knickerbocker failed to return to the hotel to pay his bill, he would publish a manuscript Knickerbocker had left behind. 4-The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. 18191824 (it is a book which contains many short stories: The Legend of the sleepy hollow, Rip van Wrinkle, Bracebridge Hall, Tales of a traveller, etc) 5-The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus 1828-Biography/History 6-The Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada 1829 Fray Antonio Agapida-Romantic history, 7-The Life of Oliver Goldsmith 1840. 8- Mahomet and His Successors 1850-Biography. F- HENRY David THOROU: was born in Concord Massachusetts, the USA in 1817 and died in 1862 in the same city, American essayist, poet and practical philosopher. He was famous and respected. Renowned for having lived the doctrines of Transcendentalism as recorder in his master work Walden (1854) for having been a vigorous advocated on civil liberties as evidence in the essay Civil Disobedience (1849). Little distinguished his family. He was the 1st child of a fleckless small business man named John Thorou and Cinthia Thorou. His parents sent him to Concord academy where he impressed his teachers and soon was permitted to prepare for college. He entered Harvard University in 1833 and in 1838 he started a small school with the help of his brother John. However, it lasted for three years because John fell ill. In the 1890s, he took up the profession of poet and became friend with Ralph Emerson and they founded one of the most significant literary movements The new England Transcendentalism. Essentially it combined romanticism with reform; it celebrated the individual rather than the masses, emotion rather than reason, nature rather than man. Transcendentalism conceded that there were two ways of knowing, through the senses and through intuition but asserted that intuition transcended the movement at knowledge, that matter and spirit both existed. It claims, however, that reality of spirit transcended reality of matter. Works: 1-Cape code (1865), 2- Civil Disobedience (1849), 3-Life without principles (1865), 4-Plea for Captain John Brown (1859), 5-Walden (1854). G-RALPH EMERSON: was born in 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was an American essayist, lecturer and poet who led The Transcendentalist movement of the mid19th c; he was the 2nd of five sons of Ruth Haskins and Rev. William Emerson. He went to Harvard College and in 1826, he began writing poetry and in addition to this, he established his own school and made his living as a school master. Then, he went to Harvard Divine School and served as a junior pastor invited by the Bostons second church in 1829. However, during this period facing the eminent death of his 1st wife, he began to doubt his own beliefs and to be in disagreement with the churchs methods. In 1833, he toured Europe and later he wrote of his travel in English Traits (1857). When he returned to America, he anonymously published his first essay Nature(1836) and a year later, he delivered his now famous The American scholar. Emerson was anti-slavery but he didnt appreciate being in the public limelight and was hesitant about lecturing on the subject. In 1860, he published The conduct of life, his final original collection of essays. But in 1867, his health began to decline and he started having memory problems and suffered from aphasia. Finally, in 1882, he was diagnosed with pneumonia and died. Literary contribution: Emersons religious views were often considered radical at the time. He believed that all things are connected with God and, therefore, all things are divine. His views, the basis of transcendentalism, suggested that God doesnt have to reveal the truth but that the truth could be intuitively experience directly from nature. His works not only influenced his contemporaries, such as Whitman and Thorou, but also continue influencing thinkers and writers around the world now. Works:1-Nature (1836), 2-Representative men (1850), English traits (1856), 3-May day and other poems (1867), 4-Society and silence (1870), 5- The American Scholar (1837). 5-THE SCARLET LETTER:*Introduction: it opens with a preamble about how the book came to be written. The nameless narrator was the surveyor of the customhouse in Salem, Massachusetts. In the customhouses attic, he discovered a number of documents and among them a manuscript which was bundled with a scarlet, goldembroidered patch of cloth in the shape of an A. It detailed events that occurred some two hundred years before the narrators time and when the narrator lost his custom post, he decided to write a fict ional account of the events recorded in the manuscript. And the Scarlet letter is the final product. Plot: In the 17th c, in Boston in a Puritan settlement, a young woman, Hester Prynne, is led to the town prison with her infant daughter Pearl in her arms and the Scarlet letter A on her breast. A man in the crow tells an 30

elderly onlooker that she is being punished for adultery. Her husband, a scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to America but he never arrives in Boston. The consensus is that, he has been lost at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair as she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal her lovers name, however, the scarlet letter along with her public shame, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. On this day Hester is led to town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers but she again refuses to identify the childs father. The elderly onlooker is Hesters missing husband who is now practicing medicine and calling himself Roger chillingworth. He settles in Boston, intend on revenge. He reveals his true identity to no one but Hester whom he has sworn to secrecy. Several years pass. Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and Pearl grows into a willful, impish child. Shunned by the community, they live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community officials attempt to take Pearl away from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale, a young and eloquent minister, the mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be wasting away and suffers from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological distress. Chillingworth attaches himself to the ailing minister and eventually moves in with him so that he can provide his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects that there may be a connection between the ministers torments and Hesters secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to see what he can learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers a mark on the mans breast (the details of which are kept from the reader), which convinces him that his suspicions are correct. Dimmesdales psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for himself. In the meantime, Hesters charitable deeds and quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the community. One night, when Pearl is about seven years old, she and her mother are returning home from a visit to a deathbed when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to punish himself for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link hands. Dimmesdale refuses Pearls request that he acknowledge her publicly the next day, and a meteor marks a dull red A in the night sky. Hester can see that the ministers condition is worsening, and she resolves to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to Dimmesdales self-torment. Chillingworth refuses. Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest because she is aware that Chillingworth has probably guessed that she plans to reveal his identity to Dimmesdale. The former lovers decide to flee to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. They will take a ship sailing from Boston in four days. Both feel a sense of release, and Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without the letter. The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a holiday and Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon ever. Meanwhile, Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of their plan and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving the church after his sermon, sees Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold. He impulsively mounts the scaffold with his lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing a scarlet letter seared into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead, as Pearl kisses him. Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and resume her charitable work. She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who has married a European aristocrat and established a family of her own. When Hester dies, she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two share a single tombstone, which bears a scarlet A. Character List 1-Hester Prynne :is the books protagonist and the wearer of the scarlet letter that gives the book its title. The letter, a patch of fabric in the shape of an A, signifies that Hester is an adulterer. As a young woman, Hester married an elderly scholar, Chillingworth, who sent her ahead to America to live but never followed her. While waiting for him, she had an affair with a Puritan minister named Dimmesdale, after which she gave birth to Pearl. She is passionate but also strongshe endures years of shame and scorn. She equals both her husband and her lover in her intelligence and thoughtfulness. Her alienation puts her in the position to make acute observations about her community, particularly about its treatment of women. 2-Pearl - Hesters illegitimate daughter Pearl is a young girl with a moody, mischievous spirit and an ability to perceive things that others do not. For example, she quickly discerns the truth about her mother and Dimmesdale. The townspeople say that she barely seems human and spread rumors that her unknown father is actually the Devil. She is wise far beyond her years, frequently engaging in ironic play having to do with her mothers scarlet letter. 3-Roger Chillingworth: is actually Hesters husband in disguise. He is much older than she is and had sent her to America while he settled his affairs in Europe. Because he is captured by Native Americans, he arrives in Boston belatedly and finds Hester and her illegitimate child being displayed on the scaffold. He lusts for revenge, and thus decides to stay in Boston despite his wifes betrayal and disgrace. He is a scholar and uses 31

his knowledge to disguise himself as a doctor, intent on discovering and tormenting Hesters anonymous lover. Chillingworth is self-absorbed and both physically and psychologically monstrous. His single-minded pursuit of retribution reveals him to be the most malevolent character in the novel. 4-Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale - is a young man who achieved fame in England as a theologian and then emigrated to America. In a moment of weakness, he and Hester became lovers. Although he will not confess it publicly, he is the father of her child. He deals with his guilt by tormenting himself physically and psychologically, developing a heart condition as a result. Dimmesdale is an intelligent and emotional man, and his sermons are thus masterpieces of eloquence and persuasiveness. His commitments to his congregation are in constant conflict with his feelings of sinfulness and need to confess. 5-Governor Bellingham - Governor Bellingham is a wealthy, elderly gentleman who spends much of his time consulting with the other town fathers. Despite his role as governor of a fledgling American society, he very much resembles a traditional English aristocrat. Bellingham tends to strictly adhere to the rules, but he is easily swayed by Dimmesdales eloquence. He remains blind to the misbehaviors taking place in his own house: his sister, Mistress Hibbins, is a witch. 6-Mistress Hibbins - Mistress Hibbins is a widow who lives with her brother, Governor Bellingham, in a luxurious mansion. She is commonly known to be a witch who ventures into the forest at night to ride with the Black Man. Her appearances at public occasions remind the reader of the hypocrisy and hidden evil in Puritan society. 7-Reverend Mr. John Wilson - Bostons elder clergyman, Reverend Wilson is scholarly yet grandfatherly. He is a stereotypical Puritan father, a literary version of the stiff, starkly painted portraits of American patriarchs. Like Governor Bellingham, Wilson follows the communitys rules strictly but can be swayed by Dimmesdales eloquence. Unlike Dimmesdale, his junior colleague, Wilson preaches hellfire and damnation and advocates harsh punishment of sinners. 8-Narrator - The unnamed narrator works as the surveyor of the Salem Custom-House some two hundred years after the novels events take place. He discovers an old manuscript in the buildings attic that tells the story of Hester Prynne; when he loses his job, he decides to write a fictional treatment of the narrative. The narrator is a rather high-strung man, whose Puritan ancestry makes him feel guilty about his writing career. He writes because he is interested in American history and because he believes that America needs to better understand its religious and moral heritage. THEMES 1-Sin, Knowledge, and the Human Condition Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in knowledgespecifically, in knowledge of what it means to be human. For Hester, the scarlet letter functions as her passport into regions where other women dared not tread, leading her to speculate about her society and herself more boldly than anyone else in New England. As for Dimmesdale, the burden of his sin gives him sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his heart vibrate[s] in unison with theirs. His eloquent and powerful sermons derive from this sense of empathy. Hester and Dimmesdale contemplate their own sinfulness on a daily basis and try to reconcile it with their lived experiences. The Puritan elders, on the other hand, insist on seeing earthly experience as merely an obstacle on the path to heaven. 2-The Nature of Evil The characters in the novel frequently debate the identity of the Black Man, the embodiment of evil which is associated with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and Mistress Hibbins, and little Pearl is thought by some to be the Devils child. This confusion over the nature and causes of evil reveals the problems with the Puritan conception of sin. The book argues that true evil arises from the close relationship between hate and love. As the narrator points out in the novels concluding chapter, both emotions depend upon a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent . . . upon another. Evil is not found in Hester and Dimmesdales lovemaking, nor even in the cruel ignorance of the Puritan fathers. Evil, in its most poisonous form, is found in the carefully plotted and precisely aimed revenge of Chillingworth, whose love has been perverted. 3-Identity and Society After Hester is publicly shamed and forced by the people of Boston to wear a badge of humiliation, her unwillingness to leave the town may seem puzzling. She is not physically imprisoned, and leaving the Massachusetts Bay Colony would allow her to remove the scarlet letter and resume a normal life. Surprisingly, Hester reacts with dismay when Chillingworth tells her that the town fathers are considering letting her remove the letter. Hesters behavior is premised on her desire to determine her own identity rather than to allow others 32

to determine it for her. To her, running away or removing the letter would be an acknowledgment of societys power over her. MOTIFS 1-Civilization Versus the Wilderness The town and the surrounding forest represent opposing behavioral systems. The town represents civilization, a rule-bound space where everything one does is on display and where transgressions are quickly punished. The forest, on the other hand, is a space of natural rather than human authority. In the forest, societys rules do not apply, and alternate identities can be assumed. While this allows for misbehavior Mistress Hibbinss midnight rides, for exampleit also permits greater honesty and an escape from the repression of Boston. When Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the woods, for a few moments, they become happy young lovers once again. 2-Night Versus Day By emphasizing the alternation between sunlight and darkness, the novel organizes the plots events into two categories: those which are socially acceptable, and those which must take place covertly. Daylight exposes an individuals activities and makes him or her vulnerable to punishment. Night, on the other hand, conceals and enables activities that would not be possible or tolerated during the dayfor instance, Dimmesdales encounter with Hester and Pearl on the scaffold. 3-Evocative Names The names in this novel often seem to beg to be interpreted allegorically. Chillingworth is cold and inhuman and thus brings a chill to Hesters and Dimmesdales lives. Prynne rhymes with sin, while Dimmesdale suggests dimnessweakness, indeterminacy, lack of insight, and lack of will, all of which characterize the young minister. The name Pearl evokes a biblical allegorical devicethe pearl of great price that is salvation. SYMBOLS 1-The Scarlet Letter It meant to be a symbol of shame, but instead it becomes a powerful symbol of identity to Hester. The letters meaning shifts as time passes. Originally intended to mark Hester as an adulterer, the A eventually comes to stand for Able. Like Pearl, the letter functions as a physical reminder of Hesters affair with Dimmesdale. But, compared with a human child, the letter seems insignificant, and thus helps to point out the ultimate meaninglessness of the communitys system of judgment and punishment. The child has been sent from God, or at least from nature, but the letter is merely a human contrivance. 2-The Meteor As Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl, a meteor traces out an A in the night sky. To Dimmesdale, the meteor implies that he should wear a mark of shame just as Hester does. The meteor is interpreted differently by the rest of the community, which thinks that it stands for Angel and marks Governor Winthrops entry into heaven. 3-Pearl Although Pearl is a complex character, her primary function within the novel is as a symbol. Pearl is a sort of living version of her mothers scarlet letter. She is the physical consequence of sexual sin and the indicator of a transgression. UNIT 4 AMERICA LITERATURE IN THE 20th C 1-John Steinbeck (1902-1968), born in Salinas, California, came from a family of moderate means. He worked his way through college at Stanford University but never graduated. In 1925 he went to New York, where he tried for a few years to establish himself as a free-lance writer, but he failed and returned to California. After publishing some novels and short stories, Steinbeck first became widely known with 1-Tortilla Flat(1935), a series of humorous stories about Monterrey paisanos. Steinbeck's novels can all be classified as social novels dealing with the economic problems of rural labour, but there is also a streak of worship of the soil in his books, which does not always agree with his matter-offact sociological approach. After the rough and earthy humour of Tortilla Flat, he moved on to more serious fiction, often aggressive in its social criticism, to 2- In Dubious Battle(1936), which deals with the strikes of the migratory fruit pickers on California plantations. This was followed by 3- Of Mice and Men (1937), the story of the imbecile giant Lennie, and a series of admirable short stories collected in the volume 4- The Long Valley (1938). In 1939 he published what is considered his best work, 5- The Grapes of Wrath, the story of Oklahoma tenant farmers who, unable to earn a living from the land, moved to California where they became migratory workers.

33

Among his later works should be mentioned 6-East of Eden (1952), 7-The Winter of Our Discontent(1961), and 8-Travels with Charley (1962), a travelogue in which Steinbeck wrote about his impressions during a three-month tour in a truck that led him through forty American states. He died in New York City in 1968. 2-OF MICE AND MEN Two migrant workers, George and Lennie, have been let off a bus miles away from the California farm where they are due to start work. George is a small, dark man with sharp, strong features. Lennie, his companion, is his opposite, a giant of a man with a shapeless face. Overcome with thirst, the two stop in a clearing by a pool and decide to camp for the night. As the two converse, it becomes clear that Lennie has a mild mental disability, and is deeply devoted to George and dependent upon him for protection and guidance. George finds that Lennie, who loves petting soft things but often accidentally kills them, has been carrying and stroking a dead mouse. George angrily throws it away, fearing that Lennie might catch a disease from the dead animal. George complains loudly that his life would be easier without having to care for Lennie, but the reader senses that their friendship and devotion is mutual. He and Lennie share a dream of buying their own piece of land, farming it, and, much to Lennies delight, keeping rabbits. George ends the night by treating Lennie to the story he often tells him about what life will be like in such an idyllic place. The next day, the men report to the nearby ranch. George, fearing how the boss will react to Lennie, insists that hell do all the talking. He lies, explaining that they travel together because they are cousins and that a horse kicked Lennie in the head when he was a child. They are hired. They meet Candy, an old swamper, or handyman, with a missing hand and an ancient dog, and Curley, the bosss mean-spirited son. Curley is newly married, possessive of his flirtatious wife, and full of jealous suspicion. Once George and Lennie are alone in the bunkhouse, Curleys wife appears and flirts with them. Lennie thinks she is purty, but George, sensing the trouble that could come from tangling with this woman and her husband, warns Lennie to stay away from her. Soon, the ranch-hands return from the fields for lunch, and George and Lennie meet Slim, the skilled mule driver who wields great authority on the ranch. Slim comments on the rarity of friendship like that between George and Lennie. Carlson, another ranch-hand, suggests that since Slims dog has just given birth, they should offer a puppy to Candy and shoot Candys old, good-for-nothing dog. Next day, George confides in Slim that he and Lennie are not cousins, but have been friends since childhood. He tells how Lennie has often gotten them into trouble. For instance, they were forced to flee their last job because Lennie tried to touch a womans dress and was accused of rape. Slim agrees to give Lennie one of his puppies, and Carlson continues to badger Candy to kill his old dog. When Slim agrees with Carlson, saying that death would be a welcome relief to the suffering animal, Candy gives in. Carlson, before leading the dog outside, promises to do the job painlessly. Slim goes to the barn to do some work, and Curley, who is maniacally searching for his wife, heads to the barn to accost Slim. Candy overhears George and Lennie discussing their plans to buy land, and offers his lifes savings if they will let him live there too. The three make a pact to let no one else know of their plan. Slim returns to the bunkhouse, berating Curley for his suspicions. Curley, searching for an easy target for his anger, finds Lennie and picks a fight with him. Lennie crushes Curleys hand in the altercation. Slim warns Curley that if he tries to get George and Lennie fired, he will be the laughingstock of the farm. Next night, most of the men go to the local brothel. Lennie is left with Crooks, the lonely, black stable-hand, and Candy. Curleys wife flirts with them, refusing to leave until the other men come home. She notices the cuts on Lennies face and suspects that he, and not a piece of machinery as Curley claimed, is responsible for hurting her husband. This thought amuses her. The next day, Lennie accidentally kills his puppy in the barn. Curleys wife enters and consoles him. She admits that life with Curley is a disappointment, and wishes that she had followed her dream of becoming a movie star. Lennie tells her that he loves petting soft things, and she offers to let him feel her hair. When he grabs too tightly, she cries out. In his attempt to silence her, he accidentally breaks her neck. Lennie flees back to a pool of the Salinas River that George had designated as a meeting place should either of them get into trouble. As the men back at the ranch discover what has happened and gather together a lynch party, George joins Lennie. Much to Lennies surprise, George is not mad at him for doing a bad thing. George begins to tell Lennie the story of the farm they will have together. As he describes the rabbits that Lennie will tend, the sound of the approaching lynch party grows louder. George shoots his friend in the back of the head. When the other men arrive, George lets them believe that Lennie had the gun, and George wrestled it away from him and shot him. Only Slim understands what has really happened, that George has killed his friend out of mercy. Slim consolingly leads him away, and the other men, completely puzzled, watch them leave. Character List 1-Lennie - A large, lumbering, childlike migrant worker. Due to his mild mental disability, Lennie completely depends upon George, his friend and traveling companion, for guidance and protection. The two men share a 34

vision of a farm that they will own together, a vision that Lennie believes in wholeheartedly. Gentle and kind, Lennie nevertheless does not understand his own strength. His love of petting soft things, such as small animals, dresses, and peoples hair, leads to disaster 2-George - A small, wiry, quick-witted man who travels with, and cares for, Lennie. Although he frequently speaks of how much better his life would be without his caretaking responsibilities, George is obviously devoted to Lennie. His behavior is motivated by the desire to protect Lennie and, eventually, deliver them both to the farm of their dreams. Though George is the source of the often-told story of life on their future farm, it is Lennies childlike faith that enables George to actually believe his account of their future. 3-Candy - An aging ranch handyman, Candy lost his hand in an accident and worries about his future on the ranch. Fearing that his age is making him useless, he seizes on Georges description of the farm he and Lennie will have, offering his lifes savings if he can join George and Lennie in owning the land. The fate of Candys ancient dog, which Carlson shoots in the back of the head in an alleged act of mercy, foreshadows the manner of Lennies death. 4-Curleys wife - The only female character in the story, Curleys wife is never given a name and is only mentioned in reference to her husband. The men on the farm refer to her as a tramp, a tart, and a looloo. Dressed in fancy, feathered red shoes, she represents the temptation of female sexuality in a male-dominated world. She is desperately lonely and has broken dreams of a better life. 5-Crooks - the black stable-hand, gets his name from his crooked back. Proud, bitter, and caustically funny, he is isolated from the other men because of the color of his skin. Despite himself, Crooks becomes fond of Lennie, and though he derisively claims to have seen countless men following empty dreams of buying their own land, he asks Lennie if he can go with them and hoe in the garden. 6-Curley - the bosss son, Curley wears high-heeled boots to distinguish himself from the field hands. Rumored to be a champion prizefighter, he is a confrontational, mean-spirited, and aggressive young man who seeks to compensate for his small stature by picking fights with larger men. Recently married, Curley is plagued with jealous suspicions and is extremely possessive of his flirtatious young wife. 7-Slim - A highly skilled mule driver and the acknowledged prince of the ranch, Slim is the only character who seems to be at peace with himself. The other characters often look to Slim for advice. For instance, only after Slim agrees that Candy should put his decrepit dog out of its misery does the old man agree to let Carlson shoot it. A quiet, insightful man, Slim alone understands the nature of the bond between George and Lennie, and comforts George at the books tragic ending. 8-Carlson - A ranch-hand, Carlson complains bitterly about Candys old, smelly dog. He convinces Candy to put the dog out of its misery. When Candy finally agrees, Carlson promises to execute the task without causing the animal any suffering. Later, George uses Carlsons gun to shoot Lennie. 9-The Boss - The stocky, well-dressed man in charge of the ranch, and Curleys father. He is never named and appears only once, but seems to be a fair-minded man. Candy happily reports that the boss once delivered a gallon of whiskey to the ranch-hands on Christmas Day. 10-Aunt Clara- Lennies aunt, who cared for him until her death, does not actually appear in the work except at the end, as a vision chastising Lennie for causing trouble for George. By all accounts, she was a kind, patient woman who took good care of Lennie and gave him plenty of mice to pet. THEMES 1-The Predatory Nature of Human Existence Nearly all of the characters, including George, Lennie, Candy, Crooks, and Curleys wife, admit, at one time or another, to having a profound sense of loneliness and isolation. Each desires the comfort of a friend, but will settle for the attentive ear of a stranger. Curleys wife admits to Candy, Crooks, and Lennie that she is unhappily married, and Crooks tells Lennie that life is no good without a companion to turn to in times of confusion and need. The characters are rendered helpless by their isolation, and yet, even at their weakest, they seek to destroy those who are even weaker than they. FOR EXAMPLE: Crooks seems at his strongest when he has nearly reduced Lennie to tears for fear that something bad has happened to George, just as Curleys wife feels most powerful when she threatens to have Crooks lynched. The novella suggests that the most visible kind of strengththat used to oppress othersis itself born of weakness. 2-Fraternity and the Idealized Male Friendship One of the reasons that the tragic end of George and Lennies friendship has such a prof ound impact is that one senses that the friends have lost a dream larger than themselves. The farm on which George and Lennie plan to livea place that no one ever reacheshas a magnetic quality, as Crooks points out. After hearing a description of only a few sentences, Candy is completely drawn in by its magic. Crooks has witnessed countless men fall under the same silly spell, and still he cannot help but ask Lennie if he can have a patch of garden to hoe there. They want to live with one anothers best interests in mind, to protect each other, and to know that there is someone in the world dedicated to protecting them. Given the harsh, lonely conditions under 35

which these men live, it should come as no surprise that they idealize friendships between men in such a way. However, the world is too harsh and predatory a place to sustain such relationships. Lennie and George, who come closest to achieving this ideal of brotherhood, are forced to separate tragically. 3-The Impossibility of the American Dream Most of the characters admit, at one point or another, to dreaming of a different life. Before her death, Curleys wife confesses her desire to be a movie star. Crooks, bitter as he is, allows himself the pleasant fantasy of hoeing a patch of garden on Lennies farm one day, and Candy latches on desperately to Georges vision of owning a couple of acres. George and Lennies dream of owning a farm, which would enable them to sustain themselves, and, most important, offer them protection from an inhospitable world, represents a prototypically American ideal. Their journey, which awakens George to the impossibility of this dream, sadly proves that the bitter Crooks is right: such paradises of freedom, contentment, and safety are not to be found in this world. MOTIFS 1-The Corrupting Power of Women We learn early that Lennie and George are on the run from the previous ranch where they worked, due to encountering trouble there with a woman. Misunderstanding Lennies love of soft things, a woman accused him of rape for touching her dress. George berates Lennie for his behavior, but is convinced that women are always the cause of such trouble. Their enticing sexuality, he believes, tempts men to behave in ways they would otherwise not. A visit to the flophouse (a cheap hotel, or brothel) is enough of women for George, and he has no desire for a support Georges view of marriage. Dissatisfied with her marriage to a brutish man and bored with life on the ranch, she is constantly looking for excitement or trouble. In one of her more revealing moments, she threatens to have the black stable-hand lynched if he complains about her to the boss. Her insistence on flirting with Lennie seals her unfortunate fate. 2-Loneliness and Companionship Many of the characters admit to suffering from profound loneliness. George sets the tone for these confessions early in the novella when he reminds Lennie that the life of a ranch-hand is among the loneliest of lives. Candy, Crooks, and Curleys wife all confess their deep loneliness. The fact that they admit to complete strangers their fear of being cast off shows their desperation. For George, the hope of such companionship dies with Lennie, and true to his original estimation, he will go through life alone. 3-Strength and Weakness Steinbeck explores different types of strength and weakness throughout the novella. The first, and most obvious, is physical strength. Lennie possesses physical strength beyond his control, as when he cannot help killing the mice. Great physical strength is, like money, quite valuable to men in George and Lennies circumstances. Curley, as a symbol of authority on the ranch and a champion boxer, makes this clear immediately by using his brutish strength and violent temper to intimidate the men and his wife. SYMBOLS 1-George and Lennies Farm It is one of the most powerful symbols in the book. It seduces not only the other characters but also the reader, who, like the men, wants to believe in the possibility of the free, idyllic life it promises. Candy is immediately drawn in by the dream, and even the cynical Crooks hopes that Lennie and George will let him live there too. A paradise for men who want to be masters of their own lives, the farm represents the possibility of freedom, self-reliance, and protection from the cruelties of the world. 2-Lennies Puppy It represents the victory of the strong over the weak. Lennie kills the puppy accidentally, as he has killed many mice before, by virtue of his failure to recognize his own strength. Although no other character can match Lennies physical strength, the huge Lennie will soon meet a fate similar to that of his small puppy. Like an innocent animal, Lennie is unaware of the vicious, predatory powers that surround him. 3-Candys Dog It represents the fate awaiting anyone who has outlived his or her purpose. Once a fine sheepdog, useful on the ranch, Candys mutt is now debilitated by age. Candys sentimental attachment to the animalhis plea that Carlson let the dog live for no other reason than that Candy raised it from a puppymeans nothing at all on the ranch. Although Carlson promises to kill the dog painlessly, his insistence that the old animal must die supports a cruel natural law that the strong will dispose of the weak. UNIT 6: 20th C LITERATURE IN THE BRITISH ISLES 1-DETECTIVE FICTION: is a literary genre in which a detective solves a mysterious crime through deduction originated in the scientific interest of Victorian literature. It began with the stories written by Edgar Allan Poe who wrote 1-Murders of the rue morgue (1841); 2-The mystery of Margery Roget (1843), and continued with 36

writers such as Willkie Collins (1824-1889) with The woman in white (1860) and The moonstone (1862). Collins was a great believer in a good story but used suspense and crime for more artistic purposes than most of his successors. Detective fiction achieved its greatest popularity with Sherlock Holmes novels (1887) of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). CHARACTERISTICS: 1-A crime is committed, 2-Evryone is suspected, 3-A detective appears on scene, 4-the detective through deduction and rational/scientific knowledge develops the investigation, 5-the least suspected one is guilty, 6- the crime is resolved. The period of 1920s and 1930s is generally referred as the Golden Age of detective fiction due to the fact that a number of popular writers emerged, mostly British with a notably subset of American writers. Female writers constituted a major portion including Agatha Christie who is the most famous. Four female writers are considered the four original queens of crime: Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh ( New Zeeland), and Margery Allingham. Another writers: Charles Dickens (Bleak house), Dickson Carr (the master of the locked room), Cecil Street. 2-AGATHA CHRISTIE: was born in Britain in 1890. She is well known all over the world as the queen of crime. She wrote 77 detective novels and books of stories which have been translated into many languages. She began writing at the end of the First World War when she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian detective. Her other world-famous creation is Miss Marple whom many readers identify with Agatha Christie herself. She dies in 1976. Works: 1-The adventure of Johnnie Waverly, a collection of her short stories first published in 1974, comes from Poirots early cases. 2-And then there were none (1939). 3-Murder on the Orient express (1934). 4- Death on the Nile (1937). 3-THE WOMAN IN WHITE(1859): is an epistolary(written in the form of letter) novel, serialized in 1859-1860 and it was first published in book form in 1860. It is considered to be among the 1stb mystery novels and is widely regarded as one of the first and finest in the genre of sensation novels. It is also considered an early example of detective fiction with the hero, Walter Hartright, employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives. CHARACTERS: Laura Fairlie, Anne Catherick (the woman in white), Sir Pecival Glyde, Count Fosco, Mariam Halcombe, Frederick Fairlie (Lauras uncle) and Mrs Catherick( Annes unsympathetic mother) 4-SCIENCE FICTIONAL LITERATURE: texts, usually novels, which fire imagination of the readers. They are usually set in other worlds or even planets. Frequently they are set in the future (and may incorporate alien beings or supernatural elements). S F is generally described as stories based on developments in science or technology (existing ones or fictional ones of the future). Many writers have written SF. Authors: a-H.G Well: he was very interested in the scientific advances of his age and looked ahead to imagine what the results might be in the future. He also was interested in the possibilities for good rather than in the disadvantages, although he was conscious of the possible dangers and many of his novels present a struggle between two ways of life: the human and the non-human. Works: 1-The time machine (1895): is about a machine that can travel through time instead of through space. 2-The War of the worlds (1898) describes an attack on this world by men of Mars who can conquer everything but mans diseases. 3-The first man on the moon (1901) shows men flying to the moon about seventy years before this actually happened. 4-Ann Veronica (1909): it is about a girl who wants to choose for herself what to do in life. 5-The first man on the moon is a scientific romance which was published in 1901. It tell the story of a journey to the moon undertaken by the two protagonist, a businessman narrator, Mr. Bedford and an eccentric scientist Mr. Cavor. They discover that the moon is inhabited by a sophisticated extraterrestrial civilization of insect-like creatures they call Selenities. b- Ray Bradbury: he was born in 1920 in Illinois and grew up in Los Angeles and died in 2011. He has written poetry, radio drama, television and screen plays but he is best known by SF. He started writing in high school and he was 20 when his first story was published. Since then, his short stories have appeared in many different magazines and in over seven hundred anthologies (a collection of poems, stories, etc that have been written by different people and published together in a book). Bradbury became famous with the publication of The Martian Chronicles (1950- a book about the colonization mars). His short story collection The illustrated man was published in 1951. c-Aldous Huxley: In Brave new world (1932), she gave a picture of a society so heavenly organized and controlled that the only way for people to be themselves lies in escape. d-George Orwell: 1-Nineteen Eighty-four. 2-Anthony Burges. 3-A clockwork orange. He gives pictures of a future world but their interest is less in the scientific advances that have been made than the purposes these are used for. He is interested in the effect on the human personality and Burgess in the moral problems that changes can bring. e-Kingsley Ami: New maps of hell(1961); the four-gated city(1969) 37

f-Doris Lessing: also moves into the areas of S F when she describes the world after it has been almost destroyed and several of her later novels have also been of SF. g-John Wynnham: In The day of Triffids (1951) and The Krakan wakes(1953) shows the world after society as we know it today has been completely destroyed. h-Braian Aldiss: Greybeard (1964) a small group of people trying to stay alive when most of the world have been destroyed; Barefoot in the head (1969). i-Arthur Clarke: The city and the stars (1957), a whole society is created by a machine that organizes everything until a mistake leads to the creation of a man who fights the rest of the society; 2001: A space odyssey(1968), which takes up the subject on exploration in space. j-Isaac Asimov: was born in Petrovich in the Russian Soviet federative socialist republic in 1920 and died in 1992 in New York city. He was an American author and professor in biochemistry in Boston University, best known for his works of SF. He was one of the most prolific writers of all time having written or edited more than 500 books. He is widely considered a master of hard SF and along with Robert Heinlein and Arthur Clarke, he was considered of the BIG THREE science fiction writers during his lifetime. Asimovs mo st famous work is the Foundation Series, another works: Galatic Empire series, Robot series, both of which he later tied into some fictional universe to create a unified future history for his stories. He also wrote many short stories, among them Nightfall, which in 1964 was voted by the SF writers of America as the best short story of all time. He wrote mystery and fantasy, as well as much non-fiction. Most of his popular SF book explain scientific concepts in historical way. Works: 1-The robot series: the caves of stell, the naked sun, the robots of dawn, robots and empire. 2-Galatic Empire series: pebble in the sky; the stars, like dust; the currents of space. 3Original Foundation trilogy: foundation (1951), foundation and empire (1952), second foundation (1953). 4Extended foundation series: Foundation edge, foundation and earth, prelude to foundation. 5-lucky stars series: between 1952 and 1958. 6-Norby chronicles: 1983-1991. 7-Short story collection: I, Robot (1950), The Martian way and other stories (1955), Nightfall and other stories, The complete robot (1982), Robot dreams (1986), Robot vision. UNIT 7: NEW BRITISH THREATRE 1-The influence of Henry Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw. Isbens plays represented the beginnings of the modern European drama. His influence in establishing a serious drama based on moral and social issues hung over what has been called The minority theatre, represented by the playwrights who did not write for the audiences of popular west end theatres but for the smaller playhouses, repertory theatres and clubs which were beginning to establish themselves in London and the provinces. The Norwegian playwright Henrik Isbens play ghost came to London in 1888 scandalized critics and public alike. The theme of the play (syphilis) struck at the heart of the institution of the family and the seriousness of the tone was at the opposite extreme to the entertainment that was expected. His champion (defendant) in England was G.B Shaw, and it was through his plays that Isbens influence on British Stage was most clearly felt. Shaw made the minority theatre a commercial and popular success. The new drama demanded new, simpler staging and a new kind of theatre. The court theatre became the leading avant-garde (vanguardia) theatre in London. It established some of the approaches which were the influence of the 20th c. The convention of the long run was replaced by a repertory system. The role of the actor-manager was replaced by the novel idea of the director who had overall control of production. Shaws theatrical career and influence spanned (crossed) the centuries. In the late 1890s and the first years of the 20th c, he wrote a series of comedies that were to challenge amuse and shock his audience. He was the man of ideas and his view of theatre was that it had a serious purpose: to make people think. Shaw was also an entertainer who invented a cast of comic characters. He had no radical or original approach to staging or plot. He used the familiar forms of romance, historic chronicle and melodrama. What he did achieve was give each of the familiar plots with his own twist, to surprise an audience and to frustrate their expectations. In place of traditional resolution to a knotty(tangled) plot, Shaw wrote discussions, refining and clarifying the issues. All his heroes and heroines are polished (consumados) debaters. 2-The growth of the new theatre. The repertory movement became unstoppable and was closely linked with regional and provincial theatre. Most notable was the founding of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, where repertory theatres were established too fast. This movement cane to Glasgow in 1909 and in 1913, the Birmingham Theatre opened and it was the 1st theatre specifically built for a repertory company. However, perhaps it was the most influential of the companies was that founded at the Gaiety Theatre in 1908 8the so called Manchester school). The drama very often centered on a family and explored the conflicts between the younger and older generations. The last one was typically represented by a patriarchal figure who values were Victorian. The struggle between the generations often involved the rights and freedom of a young woman who found herself 38

in conflict because she didnt want to marry her lover; she wanted to divorce or to have an abortion. The plays were set firmly in the world of work and of business. What happened in the theatre in the early years of this century was an outburst of dramatic energy. 3-The important points of of new theatre drama. a-Division between the commercial theatre and the smaller, poorer but much more important theatre that we associate with the repertory movement and the little theatres. b-The sense of theatre mediating to a wider audience, the crucial issues of the movement rather than being an exclusive entertainment for the upper classes and middle classes. c- The movement away from Londons west end to the provinces. d-the representation of working class people on stage. 4-The theatre of the Absurd. It is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one of the styles of theatre which has evolved from their work. Their work expressed the belief that human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down. Logical construction and argument gives away to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence. Playwrights commonly associated with the theatre of the absurd include: Samuel Becket, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Fernando Arrabal, and Edward Albee. 5-ANGRY YOUNG MEN (A term used to describe the generation of young artists who protested against society. They appeared as characters in novels and plays-1950 which were novels and plays of personal relationships with the purpose of giving a psychological and moral insight in the character behavior. Main exponents: Priestley J, Evelyn Waugh, Samuel Becket. They were a group of mostly working and middle class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. Its leading members include John Osborne and kingsley Amis. The phrase was originally coined by the royal court theatres press officer to promote Osbornes Look back I anger. It is thought to be derived from the autobiography of Leslie Paul, founder of the woodcraft folk, whose Angry young men was published in 1951. Following Osbornes play success, the label was later applied by British newspapers to describe young British writers who were characterized by disillusionment with traditional English society. Their political view was usually seen as identifying with the left, sometimes anarchistic, and they described social alienation of different kinds. They also often expressed their critical views on society as a whole, criticizing certain behaviours as groups in different ways. On TV, their writings were often expressed in plays in anthology drama series such as Armchair theatre (1956-68) and the Wednesday Play (1961-70). Also included in the angry young men was a small group of young existentialist philosophers led by Collin Wilson, Stuart Holroyd and Bill Hopkins. Outside of these subgroupings, the Angries included writers of lower class origin concerned with their political and economic aspiration. Writers: Edward Bond, John Braine, Michael Hastings, Thomas Hinde, John Osborne, Harold Pinter , Alan Sillitoe, Kennet Tynan, Arnold wesker. 6-AN INSPECTOR CALLS. Major Themes 1-Class Taking the play from a socialist perspective inevitably focuses on issues of social class. Class is a large factor, indirectly, in the events of the play and Eva Smiths death. Mrs. Birling, Priestley notes, is her husbands social superior, just as Gerald will be Sheilas social superior if they do get married. Priestley also subtly notes that Geralds mother, Lady Croft, disapproves of Geralds marrying Sheila for precisely this reason. Finally, everyones treatment of Eva might be put down (either in part or altogether) to the fact that she is a girl, as Mrs. Birling puts it, of that class. Priestley clearly was interested in the class system and how it determines the decisions that people make. 2-Youth and Age The play implicitly draws out a significant contrast between the older and younger generations of Birlings. While Arthur and Sybil refuse to accept responsibility for their actions toward Eva Smith (Arthur, in particular, is only concerned for his reputation and his potential knighthood), Eric and especially Sheila are shaken by the Inspectors message and their role in Eva Smiths suicide. The younger generation is taking more responsibility, perhaps because they are more emotional and idealistic, but perhaps because Priestley is suggesting a more communally responsible socialist future for Britain. 3-Responsibility and Avoiding It Though responsibility itself is a central theme of the play, the last act of the play provides a fascinating portrait of the way that people can let themselves off the hook. If one message of the play is that we must all care 39

more thoroughly about the general welfare, it is clear that the message is not shared by all. By contrasting the older Birlings and Gerald with Sheila and Eric, Priestley explicitly draws out the difference between those who have accepted their responsibility and those who have not. 4-Cause and Effect The Inspector outlines a chain of events that may well have led to Eva Smiths death. Her suicide, seen in this way, is likely the product not of one person acting alone, but of a group of people each acting alone; it resulted from several causes. If Birling had not sacked Eva in the first place, Sheila could not have had her dismissed from Milwards, and Eric and Gerald would not have met her in the Palace bar. Had she never known Eric, she would never have needed to go to the charity commission. This series of events is closely associated with Priestleys fascination with time and how things in time cause or are caused by others. 5-Time Time, which deeply fascinated Priestley, is a central theme in many of his works. He famously was interested in Dunnes theory of time, which argued that the past was still present, and that time was not linear as many traditional accounts suggest. An Inspector Calls explicitly deals with the nature of time in its final twist: has the play, we might wonder, simply gone back in time? Is it all about to happen again? How does the Inspector know of the fire and blood and anguish, usually interpreted as a foreshadowing of the First and Second World Wars? 6-The Supernatural The Inspectors name, though explicitly spelled Goole in the play, is often interpreted through an alternative spelling: ghoul. The Inspector, it seems, is not a real Brumley police inspector, and Priestley provides no answer as to whether we should believe his claim that he has nothing to do with Eva Smith. What are we to make of the police inspector who rings to announce his arrival at the end of the play? Is the original Inspector, perhaps, a ghost? What forces are at work in the play to make the Birlings really accept their responsibility and guilt? 7-Social Duty We do not live alone, the Inspector says in his final speech, we are members of one body. This perhaps is the most important and central theme of the play: that we have a duty to other people, regardless of social status, wealth, class, or anything else. There is, Priestley observes, such a thing as society, and he argues that it is important that people be aware of the effects of their actions on others. The Birlings, of course, initially do not think at all about how they might have affected Eva Smith, but they are forced to confront their likely responsibility over the course of the play. PLOT One evening in the spring of 1912, the Birlings are celebrating their daughter Sheilas engagement to Gerald Croft, who is also present. Husband and wife Arthur and Sybil Birling, along with their son Eric, are pleased with themselves. Birling toasts the happy couple, and Gerald presents Sheila with a ring which absolutely delights her. Birling makes a lengthy speech, not only congratulating Gerald and Sheila, but also commenting on the state of the nation. He predicts prosperity, particularly referring to the example of the unsinkable Titanic, which set sail the week earlier. Birling styles himself as a hard-headed man of business. The women leave the room, and Eric follows them. Birling and Gerald discuss the fact that Gerald might have done better for [himself] socially: Sheila is Geralds social inferior. Birling confides to Gerald that he is in the running for a knighthood in the next Honors List. When Eric returns, Birling continues giving advice, and he is passionately announcing his every man for himself worldview when the doorbell rings. It is an Inspector, who refuses a drink from Birling. Birling is surprised, as an ex-Lord Mayor and an alderman, that he has never seen the Inspector before, though he knows the Brumley police force pretty well. The Inspector explains that he is here to investigate the death of a girl who died two hours ago in the Infirmary after committing suicide by drinking disinfectant. Her name was Eva Smith, and the Inspector brings with him a photograph, which he shows to Birlingbut not to anyone else. It is revealed that Eva Smith worked in Birlings works, from which she was dismissed after being a ringleader in an unsuccessful strike to demand better pay for Birlings workers. The Inspector outlines that a chain of events might be responsible for the girls death, andfor the rest of the playinterrogates each member of the family, asking questions about the part they played in Eva Smiths life. We then discover that Sheila Birling encountered Eva Smith at Milwards, where Sheila jealously insisted that she was dismissed. Sheila feels 40

tremendously guilty about her part in Evas death. It becomes clear that each member of the family might have part of the responsibility. Eva Smith then, we discover, changed her name to Daisy Rentonand it is by this name that she encountered Gerald Croft, with whom she had a protracted love affair. Sheila is not as upset as one might expect; indeed, she seems to have already guessed why Gerald was absent from their relationship last summer. He put her up in a cottage he was looking after, made love to her, and gave her gifts of money, but after a while, he ended the relationship. Gerald asks the Inspector, whose control over proceedings is now clear, to leaveand Sheila gives him back his engagement ring. The Inspector next interrogates Mrs. Birling, who remains icily resistant to accepting any responsibility. Eva Smith came to her, pregnant, to ask for help from a charity committee of which Mrs. Birling was chairperson. Mrs. Birling used her influence to have the committee refuse to help the girl. Mrs. Birling resists the Inspectors questioning, eventually forcefully telling him that the father of the child is the one with whom the true responsibility rests. It transpires, to Mrs. Birlings horror, that Eric was, in fact, the father of the child, and she has just unwittingly damned her own son. Once Eric returns, the Inspector interrogates him about his relationship with Eva Smith. After meeting her in a bar when he was drunk (he has a drinking problem), he forced his way into her rooms, then later returned and continued their sexual relationship. He also gave her money that he had stolen from his fathers works, but after a while, Eva broke off the relationship, telling Eric that he did not love her. The Inspector makes a final speech, telling the Birlings, We dont live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when, if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. He exits. After his exit, the Birlings initially fight among themselves. Sheila finally suggests that the Inspector might not have been a real police inspector. Gerald returns, having found out as much from talking to a policeman on the corner of the street. The Birlings begin to suspect that they have been hoaxed. Significantly, Eric and Sheila, unlike their parents and Gerald, still see themselves as responsible. He was our police inspector all right, Eric and Sheila conclude, whether or not he had the states authority or was even real. Realizing that they could each have been shown a different photograph, and after calling the Chief Constable to confirm their suspicions, Mr. and Mrs. Birling and Gerald conclude that they have been hoaxed, and they are incredibly relieved. Gerald suggests that there were probably several different girls in each of their stories. They call the Infirmary and learn delightedly that no girl has died that nightthe Infirmary has seen no suicide for months. Everyone, it seems, is off the hook, even if each of their actions was immoral and irresponsible. Only Sheila and Eric fail to agree with that sentiment and recognize the overall theme of responsibility.As Birling mocks his childrens feelings of moral guilt, the phone rings. He answers it and is shocked, revealing the plays final twist: That was the police. A girl has just diedon her way to the Infirmaryafter swallowing some disinfectant. And a police inspector is on his way hereto ask somequestions Character List 1-Arthur Birling: Husband of Sybil, father of Sheila and Eric. Priestley describes him as a "heavy-looking man" in his mid-fifties, with easy manners but "rather provincial in his speech." He is the owner of Birling and Company, some sort of factory business which employs several girls to work on (presumably sewing) machines. He is a Magistrate and, two years ago, was Lord Mayor of Brumley. He thus is a man of some standing in the town. He describes himself as a "hard-headed practical man of business," and he is firmly capitalist, even right-wing, in his political views. 2-Gerald Croft:Engaged to be married to Sheila. His parents, Sir George and Lady Croft, are above the Birlings socially, and it seems his mother disapproves of his engagement to Sheila. He is, Priestley says, "an attractive chap about thirty ... very much the easy well-bred young-man-about-town." He works for his father's company, Crofts Limited, which seems to be both bigger and older than Birling and Company. 3-Sheila Birling: Engaged to be married to Gerald. Daughter of Arthur Birling and Sybil Birling, and sister of Eric. Priestley describes her as "a pretty girl in her early twenties, very pleased with life and rather excited," which is precisely how she comes across in the first act of the play. In the second and third acts, however, following the realization of the part she has played in Eva Smith's life, she matures and comes to realize the importance of the Inspector's message. 4-Sybil Birling: Married to Arthur. Mother of Sheila and Eric. Priestley has her "about fifty, a rather cold woman," and--significantly--her husband's "social superior." Sybil is, like her husband, a woman of some public influecnce, sitting on charity organizations and having been married two years ago to the Lord Mayor. She is 41

an icily impressive woman, arguably the only one of all the Birlings to almost completely resist the Inspector's attempts to make her realize her responsibilities. 5-Eric Birling: Son of Arthur and Sybil Birling. Brother of Sheila Birling. Eric is in his "early twenties, not quite at ease, half shy, half assertive" and, we discover very early in the play, has a drinking problem. He has been drinking steadily for almost two years. He works at Birling and Company, and his father, we presume, is his boss. He is quite naive, in no way as worldly or as cunning as Gerald Croft. By the end of the play, like his sister, Eric becomes aware of his own responsiblities. 6-Inspector Goole: The Inspector "need not be a big man, but he creates at once an impression of massiveness, solidity and purposefulness." He is in his fifties, and he is dressed in a plain dark suit. Priestley describes him as speaking "carefully, weightily ... and [he] has a disconcerting habit of looking hard at the person he addresses before he speaks." He initially seems to be an ordinary Brumley police inspector, but (as his name might suggest) comes to seem something more ominous--perhaps even a supernatural being. The precise nature of his character is left ambiguous by Priestley, and it can be interpreted in various ways. 7-Edna: "The parlour maid." Her name is very similar to "Eva," and her presence onstage is a timely reminder of the presence of the lower classes, whom families like the Birlings unthinkingly keep in thrall. 8-Eva Smith: A girl who the Inspector claims worked for Birling and was fired, before working for Milwards and then being dismissed. She subsequently had relationships with Gerald Croft and then Eric Birling (by whom she became pregnant). Finally she turned to Mrs. Birling's charitable committee for help, but she committed suicide two hours before the time of the beginning of the play; she drank strong disinfectant. It is possible, though, that the story is not quite true and that she never really existed as one person. Gerald Croft's suggestion that there was more than one girl involved in the Inspector's narrative could be more accurate. 9-Daisy Renton: A name that Eva Smith assumes. The Lord Of the Flies. THEMES 1-Civilization vs. Savagery The central concern of Lord of the Flies is the conflict between two competing impulses that exist within all human beings: the instinct to live by rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands, and value the good of the group against the instinct to gratify ones immediate desires, act violently to obtain supremacy over others, and enforce ones will. This conflict might be expressed in a number of ways: civilization vs. savagery, order vs. chaos, reason vs. impulse, law vs. anarchy, or the broader heading of good vs. evil. Throughout the novel, Golding associates the instinct of civilization with good and the instinct of savagery with evil. The conflict between the two instincts is the driving force of the novel, explored through the dissolution of the young English boys civilized, moral, disciplined behavior as they accustom themselves to a wild, brutal, barbaric life in the jungle. Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, which means that Golding conveys many of his main ideas and themes through symbolic characters and objects. He represents the conflict between civilization and savagery in the conflict between the novels two main characters: Ralph, the protagonist, who represents order and leadership; and Jack, the antagonist, who represents savagery and the desire for power. As the novel progresses, Golding shows how different people feel the influences of the instincts of civilization and savagery to different degrees. Piggy, for instance, has no savage feelings, while Roger seems barely capable of comprehending the rules of civilization. Generally, however, Golding implies that the instinct of savagery is far more primal and fundamental to the human psyche than the instinct of civilization. Golding sees moral behavior, in many cases, as something that civilization forces upon the individual rather than a natural expression of human individuality. When left to their own devices, Golding implies, people naturally revert to cruelty, savagery, and barbarism. This idea of innate human evil is central to Lord of the Flies, and finds expression in several important symbols, most notably the beast and the sows head on the stake. Among all the characters, only Simon seems to possess anything like a natural, innate goodness. 2-Loss of Innocence As the boys on the island progress from well-behaved, orderly children longing for rescue to cruel, bloodthirsty hunters who have no desire to return to civilization, they naturally lose the sense of innocence that they possessed at the beginning of the novel. The painted savages in Chapter 12 who have hunted, tortured, and killed animals and human beings are a far cry from the guileless children swimming in the lagoon in Chapter 3. But Golding does not portray this loss of innocence as something that is done to the children; rather, it results naturally from their increasing openness to the innate evil and savagery that has always existed within them. Golding implies that civilization can mitigate but never wipe out the innate evil that exists within all human 42

beings. The forest glade in which Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this loss of innocence. At first, it is a place of natural beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in the novel, he discovers the bloody sows head impaled upon a stake in the middle of the clearing. The bloody offering to the beast has disrupted the paradise that existed beforea powerful symbol of innate human evil disrupting childhood innocence. MOTIFS 1-Biblical Parallels Many critics have characterized Lord of the Flies as a retelling of episodes from the Bible. While that description may be an oversimplification, the novel does echo certain Christian images and themes. Golding does not make any explicit or direct connections to Christian symbolism in Lord of the Flies; instead, these biblical parallels function as a kind of subtle motif in the novel, adding thematic resonance to the main ideas of the story. The island itself, particularly Simons glade in the forest, recalls the Garden of Eden in its status as an originally pristine place that is corrupted by the introduction of evil. Similarly, we may see the Lord of the Flies as a representation of the devil, for it works to promote evil among humankind. Furthermore, many critics have drawn strong parallels between Simon and Jesus. Among the boys, Simon is the one who arrives at the moral truth of the novel, and the other boys kill him sacrificially as a consequence of having discovered this truth. Simons conversation with the Lord of the Flies also parallels the confrontation between Jesus and the devil during Jesus forty days in the wilderness, as told in the Christian Gospels. However, it is important to remember that the parallels between Simon and Christ are not complete, and that there are limits to reading Lord of the Flies purely as a Christian allegory. Save for Simons two uncanny predictions of the future, he lacks the supernatural connection to God that Jesus has in Christian tradition. Although Simon is wise in many ways, his death does not bring salvation to the island; rather, his death plunges the island deeper into savagery and moral guilt. Moreover, Simon dies before he is able to tell the boys the truth he has discovered. Jesus, in contrast, was killed while spreading his moral philosophy. In this way, Simonand Lord of the Flies as a wholeechoes Christian ideas and themes without developing explicit, precise parallels with them. The novels biblical parallels enhance its moral themes but are not necessarily the primary key to interpreting the story. SYMBOLS 1-The Conch Shell Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach at the start of the novel and use it to summon the boys together after the crash separates them. Used in this capacity, the conch shell becomes a powerful symbol of civilization and order in the novel. The shell effectively governs the boys meetings, for the boy who holds the shell holds the right to speak. In this regard, the shell is more than a symbolit is an actual vessel of political legitimacy and democratic power. As the island civilization erodes and the boys descend into savagery, the conch shell loses its power and influence among them. Ralph clutches the shell desperately when he talks about his role in murdering Simon. Later, the other boys ignore Ralph and throw stones at him when he attempts to blow the conch in Jacks camp. The boulder that Roger rolls onto Piggy also crushes the conch shell, signifying the demise of the civilized instinct among almost all the boys on the island. 2-Piggys Glasses Piggy is the most intelligent, rational boy in the group, and his glasses represent the power of science and intellectual endeavor in society. This symbolic significance is clear from the start of the novel, when the boys use the lenses from Piggys glasses to focus the sunlight and start a fire. When Jacks hunters raid Ralphs camp and steal the glasses, the savages effectively take the power to make fire, leaving Ralphs group helpless. 3-The Signal Fire The signal fire burns on the mountain, and later on the beach, to attract the notice of passing ships that might be able to rescue the boys. As a result, the signal fire becomes a barometer of the boys connection to civilization. In the early parts of the novel, the fact that the boys maintain the fire is a sign that they want to be rescued and return to society. When the fire burns low or goes out, we realize that the boys have lost sight of their desire to be rescued and have accepted their savage lives on the island. The signal fire thus functions as a kind of measurement of the strength of the civilized instinct remaining on the island. Ironically, at the end of the novel, a fire finally summons a ship to the island, but not the signal fire. Instead, it is the fire of savagery the forest fire Jacks gang starts as part of his quest to hunt and kill Ralph. 4-The Beast 43

The imaginary beast that frightens all the boys stands for the primal instinct of savagery that exists within all human beings. The boys are afraid of the beast, but only Simon reaches the realization that they fear the beast because it exists within each of them. As the boys grow more savage, their belief in the beast grows stronger. By the end of the novel, the boys are leaving it sacrifices and treating it as a totemic god. The boys behavior is what brings the beast into existence, so the more savagely the boys act, the more real the beast seems to become. 5-The Lord of the Flies The Lord of the Flies is the bloody, severed sows head that Jack impales on a stake in the forest glade as an offering to the beast. This complicated symbol becomes the most important image in the novel when Simon confronts the sows head in the glade and it seems to speak to him, telling him that evil lies within every human heart and promising to have some fun with him. (This fun foreshadows Simons death in the following chapter.) In this way, the Lord of the Flies becomes both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure who evokes the beast within each human being. Looking at the novel in the context of biblical parallels, the Lord of the Flies recalls the devil, just as Simon recalls Jesus. In fact, the name Lord of the Flies is a literal translation of the name of the biblical name Beelzebub, a powerful demon in hell sometimes thought to be the devil himself. 6-Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, and Roger Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, and many of its characters signify important ideas or themes. A-Ralph represents order, leadership, and civilization. B-Piggy represents the scientific and intellectual aspects of civilization. C-Jack represents unbridled savagery and the desire for power. D-Simon represents natural human goodness. E-Roger represents brutality and bloodlust at their most extreme. To the extent that the boys society resembles a political state, the littluns might be seen as the common people, while the older boys represent the ruling classes and political leaders. The relationships that develop between the older boys and the younger ones emphasize the older boys connection to either the civilized or the savage instinct: civilized boys like Ralph and Simon use their power to protect the younger boys and advance the good of the group; savage boys like Jack and Roger use their power to gratify their own desires, treating the littler boys as objects for their own amusement. MAJOR CHARACTER 1-Ralph: is the athletic, charismatic protagonist of Lord of the Flies. Elected the leader of the boys at the beginning of the novel, Ralph is the primary representative of order, civilization, and productive leadership in the novel. While most of the other boys initially are concerned with playing, having fun, and avoiding work, Ralph sets about building huts and thinking of ways to maximize their chances of being rescued. For this reason, Ralphs power and influence over the other boys are secure at the beginning of the novel. However, as the group gradually succumbs to savage instincts over the course of the novel, Ralphs position declines precipitously while Jacks rises. Eventually, most of the boys except Piggy leave Ralphs group for Jacks , and Ralph is left alone to be hunted by Jacks tribe. Ralphs commitment to civilization and morality is strong, and his main wish is to be rescued and returned to the society of adults. In a sense, this strength gives Ralph a moral victory at the end of the novel, when he casts the Lord of the Flies to the ground and takes up the stake it is impaled on to defend himself against Jacks hunters. 2-Jack: is the novels primary representative of the instinct of savagery, violence, and the desire for powerin short, the antithesis of Ralph. From the beginning of the novel, Jack desires power above all other things. He is furious when he loses the election to Ralph and continually pushes the boundaries of his subordinate role in the group. Early on, Jack retains the sense of moral propriety and behavior that society instilled in himin fact, in school, he was the leader of the choirboys. The first time he encounters a pig, he is unable to kill it. But Jack soon becomes obsessed with hunting and devotes himself to the task, painting his face like a barbarian and giving himself over to bloodlust. The more savage Jack becomes, the more he is able to control the rest of the group. Jacks love of authority and violence are intimately connected, as both enable him to feel powerful and exalted. By the end of the novel, Jack has learned to use the boys fear of the beast to control their behavior a reminder of how religion and superstition can be manipulated as instruments of power. 3-Simon: stands on an entirely different plane from all the other boys. He embodies a kind of innate, spiritual human goodness that is deeply connected with nature and, in its own way, as primal as Jacks evil. The other boys abandon moral behavior as soon as civilization is no longer there to impose it upon them. They are not innately moral; rather, the adult worldthe threat of punishment for misdeedshas conditioned them to act 44

morally. To an extent, even the seemingly civilized Ralph and Piggy are products of social conditioning, as we see when they participate in the hunt-dance Character List Ralph - The novels protagonist, the twelve-year-old English boy who is elected leader of the group of boys marooned on the island. Ralph attempts to coordinate the boys efforts to build a miniature civilization on the island until they can be rescued. Ralph represents human beings civilizing instinct, as opposed to the savage instinct that Jack embodies. Jack - The novels antagonist, one of the older boys stranded on the island. Jack becomes the leader of the hunters but longs for total power and becomes increasingly wild, barbaric, and cruel as the novel progresses. Jack, adept at manipulating the other boys, represents the instinct of savagery within human beings, as opposed to the civilizing instinct Ralph represents. Simon - A shy, sensitive boy in the group. Simon, in some ways the only naturally good character on the island, behaves kindly toward the younger boys and is willing to work for the good of their community. Moreover, because his motivation is rooted in his deep feeling of connectedness to nature, Simon is the only character whose sense of morality does not seem to have been imposed by society. Simon represents a kind of natural goodness, as opposed to the unbridled evil of Jack and the imposed morality of civilization represented by Ralph and Piggy. Piggy - Ralphs lieutenant. A whiny, intellectual boy, Piggys inventiveness frequently leads to innovation, such as the makeshift sundial that the boys use to tell time. Piggy represents the scientific, rational side of civilization. Roger - Jacks lieutenant. A sadistic, cruel older boy who brutalizes the littluns and eventually murders Piggy by rolling a boulder onto him. Sam and Eric - A pair of twins closely allied with Ralph. Sam and Eric are always together, and the other boys often treat them as a single entity, calling them Samneric. The easily excitable Sam and Eric are part of the group known as the bigguns. At the end of the novel, they fall victim to Jacks manipulation and coercion. The Lord of the Flies - The name given to the sows head that Jacks gang impales on a stake and erects in the forest as an offering to the beast. The Lord of the Flies comes to symbolize the primordial instincts of power and cruelty that take control of Jacks tribe. PLOT In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the other boys. Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and devising a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who will hunt food for the entire group. Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing ships. The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through the lenses of Piggys eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and one of the youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having burned to death. At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend much of their time splashing in the water and playing games. Ralph, however, complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in their attempt to catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting. When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice, to their horror, that the signal fire which had been the hunters responsibility to maintainhas burned out. Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the hunters seem gripped with a strange frenzy, reenacting the chase in a kind of wild dance. Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits Piggy across the face. Ralph blows the conch shell and reprimands the boys in a speech intended to restore order. At the meeting, it quickly becomes clear that some of the boys have started to become afraid. The littlest boys, known as littluns, have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys now believe that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island. The older boys try to convince the others at the meeting to think rationally, 45

asking where such a monster could possibly hide during the daytime. One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the seaa proposition that terrifies the entire group. Not long after the meeting, some military planes engage in a battle high above the island. The boys, asleep below, do not notice the flashing lights and explosions in the clouds. A parachutist drifts to earth on the signalfire mountain, dead. Sam and Eric, the twins responsible for watching the fire at night, are asleep and do not see the parachutist land. When the twins wake up, they see the enormous silhouette of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it makes. Thinking the island beast is at hand, they rush back to the camp in terror and report that the beast has attacked them. The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for the monster. Jack and Ralph, who are increasingly at odds, travel up the mountain. They see the silhouette of the parachute from a distance and think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape. The group holds a meeting at which Jack and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack says that Ralph is a coward and that he should be removed from office, but the other boys refuse to vote Ralph out of power. Jack angrily runs away down the beach, calling all the hunters to join him. Ralph rallies the remaining boys to build a new signal fire, this time on the beach rather than on the mountain. They obey, but before they have finished the task, most of them have slipped away to join Jack. Jack declares himself the leader of the new tribe of hunters and organizes a hunt and a violent, ritual slaughter of a sow to solemnize the occasion. The hunters then decapitate the sow and place its head on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast. Later, encountering the bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible vision, during which it seems to him that the head is speaking. The voice, which he imagines as belonging to the Lord of the Flies, says that Simon will never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon faints. When he wakes up, he goes to the mountain, where he sees the dead parachutist. Understanding then that the beast does not exist externally but rather within each individual boy, Simon travels to the beach to tell the others what he has seen. But the others are in the midst of a chaotic revelryeven Ralph and Piggy have joined Jacks feastand when they see Simons shadowy figure emerge from the jungle, they fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands and teeth. The following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have done. Jacks hunters attack them and their few followers and steal Piggys glasses in the process. Ralphs group travels to Jacks stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders Sam and Eric tied up and fights with Ralph. In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger, rolls a boulder down the mountain, killing Piggy and shattering the conch shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent of spears. Ralph hides for the rest of the night and the following day, while the others hunt him like an animal. Jack has the other boys ignite the forest in order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding place. Ralph stays in the forest, where he discovers and destroys the sows head, but eventually, he is forced out onto the beach, where he knows the other boys will soon arrive to kill him. Ralph collapses in exhaustion, but when he looks up, he sees a British naval officer standing over him. The officers ship noticed the fire raging in the jungle. The other boys reach the beach and stop in their tracks at the sight of the officer. Amazed at the spectacle of this group of bloodthirsty, savage children, the officer asks Ralph to explain. Ralph is overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is safe but, thinking about what has happened on the island, he begins to weep. The other boys begin to sob as well. The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their composure. Omniscient Narrator: makes us think, we see and feel through his/her eyes.

46