Novel
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Animal Farm
George Orwell wrote Animal Farm to express his disappointment with society and human nature.  Animal Farm, written in 1944, is a book that tells the animal fable of a farm in which the farm animals revolt against their human masters.  It is an example of social criticism in literature in which Orwell satirised the events in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution.
   Orwell begins his book by criticising the capitalists and ruling elite, who is represented in Animal Farm by Mr. Jones, the farmer.  He is shown as a careless drunkard, who constantly starved his animals. Orwell shows us how, “if only animals became aware of their strength, we should have no power over them” . Animal Farm is easily the most famous work of political allegory ever written. The animals take over the running of a farm, and everything is wonderful for a while - until the pigs get out of hand. It is a brilliant description of what happens when the revolution goes astray. Animal Farm expresses perfectly the inner philosophy of tens of millions of free men in our present world.
   The story takes place on a farm somewhere in England. A narrator in the third person tells the story. The action of this novel starts when the oldest pig, Old Major on the farm calls all animals to a secret meeting. He tells all the other animals about his dream of a revolution against the cruel Mr. Jones. Three days later Major dies. The pigs that were considered the most intelligent animals, instructed the other ones. During the period of preparation two pigs could distinguish themselves, Napoleon and Snowball. Napoleon is big, and although he is not a good speaker, he could assert himself. Napoleon is a better speaker, he has many ideas and he is very vivid. Together with another pig called Squealer, who is a very good speaker, they work out the theory of "Animalism". The rebellion starts some months later, as one night Mr. Jones comes home drunk, and forgets to feed the animals. They break out of the barns and run to the house, where the food is stored. As Mr. Jones recognises this he takes out his shotgun, but it is to late for him, all the animals fall over him and drive him off the farm. The animals destroy all the instruments that were used to suppress them. The same day the animals celebrate their victory with extra food. The pigs have made up the seven commandments, and they have written then above the door of the big barn.1.: Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. 2.: Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings is a friend. 3.: No animal shall wear clothes. 4.: No animal shall sleep in a bed. 5.: No animal shall drink alcohol. 6.: No animal shall kill another animal. 7.: All animals are equal. The animals also agreed that no animal shall ever enter the farmhouse, and that no animal shall have contact with humans. These commandments are summarised in the simple phrase: "Four legs good, two legs bad".
  After some time Jones came back with some other men from the village to recapture the farm. The animals fight brave, and they manage to defend the farm. Snowball and Boxer received medals of honour for defending the farm so bravely. In addition, Napoleon who had not fought at all takes a medal. This is the reason that the two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon are often arguing. As Snowball one day presented his idea to build a windmill, to produce electricity to the other animals, Napoleon calls nine strong dogs. The dogs drive off Snowball from the farm, and Napoleon explains that Snowball in fact was co-operating with Mr. Jones. He also explains that Snowball in realty never had a medal of honour, that in Snowball was always trying to cover up that he was fighting at the side of Mr. Jones. The animals then started with the building of the windmill, and as time went on the working-time went up, whereas the food ration went down. Although the "common" animals had not enough food, the pigs grow fatter and fatter. The pigs tell the animals that they need more food, for they are managing the whole farm. Again some time later the pigs explain to the other animals that they have to trade with the neighbour farms. The common animals are very upset , because after the revolution, there has been a resolution that no animal shall make trade with a human. However, the pigs ensured that there never has been such a resolution, and that this was evil lye by Snowball. Short after this decision the pigs moved to the farm house. The other animals remembered that there was a commandment that forbids sleeping in beds, and so they go to the big barn to look at the commandments. As they arrive there they cannot believe their eyes, the 4th commandment has been changed to: "No animal shall sleep in bed with sheets". In addition, the other commandments were changed: "No animal shall kill another animal without reason", or "No animal shall drink alcohol in excess". The way the Seven Commandments have gradually been changed displays a kind of irony. When Squealer, the propaganda agent, changes the Commandments one by one, he, in fact, changes the meaning underlying the revolution completely. The Commandments come to mean just the opposite of what old Major intended to mean in the beginning. Some months there is a heavy storm that destroys the windmill, which is nearly ready. Napoleon accuses Snowball of destroying the mill, and he promises a reward to the animal that gets Snowball. The rebuilding of the mill takes two years. Again Jones attacks the farm, and although the animals defend the farm the windmill is once again destroyed. The pigs decide to build the mill again, and they cut down the food ration. Moreover, some day Boxer breaks down. He is sold to a butcher, whereas Napoleon tells the pigs that Boxer was brought to a hospital where he has died. Three years later the mill was finally ready. In this time Napoleon deepens the relations with the neighbour farm, and one day Napoleon even invites the owners of this farm for an inspection. They sit inside the farmhouse and celebrate the efficiency of his farm, where the animals work very hard with the minimum of food. During this celebration all the other animals have meet at the window of the farm, and as they look inside they cannot distinguish between man and animal.
 
   The novel Animal Farm is a satire on the Russian revolution, and therefore is full of symbolism. Orwell associates certain real characters with the characters of the book. Mr. Jones the farmer stands for the moral decline of men in a capitalist or feudalist type of society. Old Major represents the workers of the Putilow factory, who started the February-revolution. Nevertheless, it is also possible that Orwell made Old Major a symbol for Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who somehow invented the communist belief. Another possibility is that Old Major represents Lenin, the leader of the October revolution. Napoleon without doubt stands for Stalin, one of the cruellest dictators in world's history. Squealer the pig is an excellent speaker. Squealer persuades all animals to follow the revolution. The appearance of this pig can be compared with Goebbels, the German minister for propaganda. Snowball is a symbol for Trotzky. In the beginning Trotzky participated in the revolution, but later was forced to go to the exile. Boxer & Clover are a sing for the Russian working-class that was convinced of the necessity of the Revolution. The Russian working-class then has built up the industry, which was forty years behind the western countries. Then this class that has done so much for the prosperity of Russia has been betrayed by the Communist party, or in this case the pigs. Orwell has chosen the pigs to represent the communist Party. Before and short after the revolution they acted like being loyal to the common animals, but later they have changed. One can say that the cruel dogs stand for the army and the secret-police. Moses the raven is a symbol for the orthodox church. Moses always told stories of the "Sugar Candy Mountain" where all dead animals live on. Moses tries to persuade the animals that there is no need for revolution. The humans stand for the capitalists. The rats and the rabbits are regarded as wild animals that somehow represent the socialist movement. In the very beginning of the book the animals vote if rats and rabbits should be comrades. The pigeons that fly out each day to spread out he message of the victory represent the "Communist World Revolution". The farm stands for the Kremlin. The Windmill for example stands for the Russian industry, that has been build up by the working-class. Fredericks stands for Hitler. Foxwood farm is representing England. Pinchfiled symbolises Germany. The destruction of the Windmill is a symbol for the failure of the Five Year Plan.
Animal Satire in Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an animal satire through which Orwell indirectly attacks on the Russian Communism, on Stalinism. Through a humorous and effective animal allegory, Orwell directs his satiric attack on the events of the Russian Revolution. Orwell combines political purpose with artistic purpose to voice his pessimistic belief. He believes that it is only a dream to assume that people can achieve a classless society through revolutions. Moreover, he thinks that human nature is corrupt. In a society where people have no voice a total corruption will happen. In the novel, what happens in the end turns out to be in sharp contrast with what the Revolution was all about. The dream was a classless society where everybody would be equal and free, enjoying a perfect democracy; the reality is the terror and poverty of dictatorship.
 
  
 
GULLIVER'S TRAVELS
Gulliver's Travels is the tale of Lemuel Gulliver as he voyages to the strange lands of Lilliput, Brobdingnag, the kingdom of Laputa, and the land of the Houyhnhnms. In Lilliput people are six inches high, and Gulliver, in comparison, is a giant, or a "Man-Mountain," as they call him. This section of the novel (Part I) is essentially an allegory of English politics in the early eighteenth century when the Whigs and Tories were fighting bitterly for control of the country. Correspondingly, Gulliver becomes involved with the domestic and international dealings of the Lilliputian government. Legislation is drafted and enacted to deal with Gulliver's physical presence and needs; an official document outlining the terms of his freedom is drawn up. One of these terms is that Gulliver must aid the Lilliputians in their war against Blefuscu (Lilliput represents England, Blefuscu, France). Gulliver literally seizes the enemy fleet and strides across the harbor with it back to Lilliput. For a short time he's a hero. But Gulliver intervenes in the peace process, and wins a more advantageous treaty for the Blefuscudians than they would otherwise have had. After that it's downhill for Gulliver in Lilliput. When he urinates onto a fire raging in the palace and thereby saves the royal chambers, he is impeached for disobeying an ordinance prohibiting public urination. This and some other trumped-up charges against Gulliver result in a conviction of high treason, punishable by blinding. Gulliver escapes to Blefuscu, then home to England.
Part II, which takes place in the land of Brobdingnag, continues the allegory on English politics. This time, however, it's Gulliver--every inch the Lilliputian among the giant Brobdingnagians--who represents English ways. After a short stint as a working freak, Gulliver is rescued by the king and queen and lives a life of considerable comfort at court. He spends much of his time learning the language and talking with the king about life in England. The king emerges as a fair, merciful ruler and a very sympathetic and humane man. Gulliver, in contrast, seems as petty, vindictive, and cruel as the Lilliputians. One day while on an outing with the king and queen, Gulliver's "box" (his house) is kidnapped by a bird (with him inside), and dropped in the sea, and recovered by an English ship. Gulliver stays in England a while with his family then goes back to sea.
In Part III, where Gulliver goes to the flying island of Laputa and some of its colonies nearby, you get a sort of "allegorical tour" of early eighteenth-century scientific activities and attitudes. His first stop is Laputa, where the inhabitants have one eye turned inward and one eye turned up to the sky--they're thinking always of their own speculations (inward) and of lofty issues in mathematics, astronomy and music (upward). They're so fixated they need "flappers" to box them on the ear to let them know someone is talking to them. The Laputans are so distracted from everyday life that they're barely conscious of their wives (who fornicate with their lovers right in front of them, knowing they'll never be noticed). Because the Laputans are despotic rulers of their colonies, and because they pay precious little attention to Gulliver, he gets sick of them and goes on to the island of Balnibarbi. There Gulliver becomes friendly with Count Munodi, who is the only one on the island who lives in a beautiful, well-built house and whose lands yield crops. The others--Projectors, most of them, engaged in "advanced" scientific research--do everything according to the most "sophisticated" theories. Consequently their houses are in ruins and their lands lie fallow. Gulliver visits the Academy of the Projectors to learn more about them, and witnesses a series of perfectly useless, wasteful experiments. In Glubbdubdrib Gulliver is able to call up historical figures from the past and converse with them. In Luggnagg Gulliver meets the Struldbrugs, a race of people who live forever. They do not have eternal youth, though; rather, they grow perpetually older, more feeble, miserable, and useless. Gulliver returns to England before again setting sail.
In Part IV Gulliver, after a mutiny, ends up in the land of the Houyhnhnms (pronounced WHIN-nims). The Houyhnhnms are horses governed totally by reason. They have created a society that is perfectly ordered, perfectly peaceful (except for the Yahoos), and exempt from the topsy-turviness of passion. The Yahoos are humans, but are so bestial that they are human only in outward appearance. The Yahoos are kept in a kennel, and are prohibited from having anything to do with the Houyhnhnms. The Yahoos arrived here by accident. Gulliver tries his best to become a Houyhnhnm--he talks like them, walks like them, tries to think and act like them. He's in the anxious position of being neither a Yahoo nor a Houyhnhnm; he fits nowhere, and because of this he must leave. Gulliver goes mad in Part IV, and can never reconcile himself to other people, whom he considers Yahoos. Neither can he come to terms with the Yahoo part of himself. Back in England, he buys horses and spends most of his time in the stable. He can barely tolerate the presence of his family, and has as little to do with them as possible. He says that his aim in writing Gulliver's Travels is to correct the Yahoos. Having been exposed to the Houyhnhnms, he feels he is the man for the job. Swift's characters aren't the well-rounded, "flesh and blood" characters you usually find in a skillfully written novel. His characters are allegorical; that is, they stand for something--an idea, an attitude, a posture--or someone else. It's never simple with Swift. Gulliver, for instance, represents different things at different points in the novel. In Part I Gulliver is solid, decent, and responsible. At times in Lilliput (during the inventory sequence in Chapter II for example), Gulliver stands for Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke. In Part II Gulliver represents a man who under repeated attacks on his ego and self-image succumbs to pettiness and vindictiveness characteristic of the Lilliputians. Swift's allegories are never black and white. Even the Lilliputians have their good points--they are very clever. And the Houyhnhnms, who have created a perfectly orderly society in which there are not even words to describe anger, lying, and disagreement, let alone the more serious vices, have their drawbacks, subtle though they may be. A life without passion may always be calm, but is it life as humans know it, and could live it? Part III may be the exception, in that the Laputans and Projectors do tend to be black and white. Many critics feel that because of this, Swift's satire, from an artistic standpoint, is weaker here than in the other books. You will have to decide this for yourself. Bear in mind that in Gulliver's Travels there's no character you can follow as you can a traditional omniscient narrator. Swift's satire is designed to keep you an independent reader, the characters are meant to stimulate you, not to lead you.
 
  
 
HARD TIMES BY CHARLES DICKENS
 
        The novel is a large mirror of life. It reflects society as it gives us an analysis of character. In other words, the novel is a picture of real life, manners, and the time of its happenings. George Eliot and Charles Dickens were among the most important writers of the Victorian age. At that time, England was the greatest nation of the world. It increased its industry and was turning into a manufacturing nation. This scientific progress increased the wealth of the nation but caused a great misery among the workers and lower classes. These lower classes were miserable because the machines throw the hand-labourers out of work and they were poorly paid.
        The industrial revolution developed a new system of thought. It was built on the belief of the eighteenth century philosophy. They believed in “The greatest happiness for the greatest number” or Utilitarianism. The novels of the age attacked the horrors of industrial societies. One of these novels was North and South, written by Mrs. Gaskell. It deals with the relationship between employer and employee that should be based on mutual understanding. Another novel is Hard Times, written by Charles Dickens. It is an examination of the dominant philosophy of industrialism. The novel displays the most important social problems of the time. Dickens links up several issues such as the ugliness of industrial development. Other issues are the abstract theory of Utilitarianism, self-interest, the anti-social force of capitalists and trade unionism. Cake-town stands for the first issue and Gradgrind for the second. The rest of the characters also, represent all other issues.
        Dickens was against measuring life in terms of profit and loss. He thought that this way leads to a mechanistic view of life. The aim of Hard Times is to attack this philosophy by showing how it fails in Gradgrind’s private life. Dickens was concerned about the difference between fact and fancy. To him, facts alone lack sympathy and understanding between human beings. It is, also, destructive of all moral values. In the novel, there is a comparison between being a Utilitarian or being a Humanitarian. The first is represented by Gradgrind, Bitzer, Tom, Bounderby, Cake-town and the classroom. On the other hand, Sissy Jupe, Stephen and Louisa represent the second.
        Hard Times is certainly, Dickens’s most philosophical novel. The word ‘Hard’, in the title, may stand for difficult economic conditions, solid
 facts and measurable things. The book starts with the scene of a Utilitarian type, Gradgrind, in a school. He teaches children to stick to facts. The children are considered like vessels to be filled with facts, they are also taught that the motive behind any human action should be self-interest and profit. Bitzer is a model child in this school. In contrast to his classmate Sissy Jupe, his physical qualities reveal his character. Bitzer is pale and white and he has cold eyes. On the other hand, Sissy is a symbol of every thing that is human. She was born and married among people whose activities are not dominated by pure utility but are associated with art. At home, Gradgrind applies the same rules to his children. No Gradgrind child has seen the face of the moon. They have been taught to discord fancy and never wonder. As a result, the children are hard; Louiza makes a wrong marriage and Tom became a thief. The principles of Utilitarianism also dominate Cake-town. Cake-town is a dull town of much smoke and stands as a symbol of any industrial town. Bounderby is also a capitalist who works as the manager of the bank. He embodies the vulgar, moneymaking and power seeking ideals. By making him married to Louiza, Dickens makes fun of him. She agrees to marry him to help advance her brother Tom who works under Bounderby and is made to be a selfish character. Louiza’s marriage to Bounderby seems to be a perfect match. Louiza does not love him and he does not believe in love. This marriage is a symbol of failure. It is the final defeat in the Gradgrind’s system of education. Whereas, Sissy’s father was an unlearned person but Dickens conveys through him the message of the novel.
        The story of Stephen Blackpool runs side by side with the main story. Stephen is the main representative of the oppressed and miserable working classes. With a hopelessly drunken life, he refuses to join the working union and gets into trouble with it. Blackpool imbodies the struggle of an individual against an industrial society. Stephen dies by falling into an old mine. The mine is a symbol of industrial society and this incident symbolizes the cruelty of industrial life.
        Dickens represents the world of fancy by the people of the circus. The circus is a symbol of a good society where a person is defined by his role and by his feelings for his fellow men. It is in the circus that Louiza finds a tender heart, Sissy, and learns that fact can not live without fancy. It is the symbol against Cake-town. Another symbol is Sissy; she is a highly symbolic figure in Hard Times. She symbolizes every thing that is good and generous. Her actions are not motivated by pure utility but symbolize art, imagination and every thing that Gradgrind’s teaching banished. She seems like a ray that shines on every one.
        The scene at the fireplace, in ‘The never wonder’ chapter, can be considered as a disloyalty on the children’s part to wonder at their father’s fireplace. A place where fanciful imagination has been banished long ago. Louisa’s imagination has been starved and it is the image of the dying fire that gives her a sort of motive power. In comparing herself to the fire, she feels that the fire can burst out while she can not. The scene is highly symbolic of Louisa’s repressed passions. Another symbol is Cake-town. It is a town of  ‘redbrick’ that was hidden by smoke and ashes; a town with smoke coming out of its chimneys. This is used to symbolize the suffocating effect of industrial life on the values of humanity. No discussion of Hard Times can ever be complete without the great symbolic nature of the novel. Stephen also reveals the tragic crushing of heart and fancy. Stephen Blackpool, therefore, embodies the struggle of an individual against an industrial society.
        Dickens is great on the subject of childhood. His novels, in general, are full of children. Usually, they are mall-treated, lost or dying. This is part of Dickens’ protest against the denial of the rights of childhood. Hard Times deals, mainly, with the corrupting influence of a philosophy on children and how children can be victims of their parents. The Gradgrind children have every thing the material world can offer, yet, they lack the imaginative and the spiritual side. Gradgrind may be considered a good father. He gave his children a comfortable life and was careful about educating them but his main defect was threatening their innocence. The idea of killing the children’s personality is clear through the character of Louisa. She is a sort of an aged child who has never known childhood because of her father’s denial of love and imagination. The fire she keeps contemplating is a symbol of her inner repression and her needs to express the life of the imagination. As a result, she marries a person she does not love and almost has a relationship with young Harthouse. At last, she leaves Bounderby and returns to her father to teach him the emptiness and inhumanity of his system. Dickens is teaching parents the same lesson. The final confrontation between the father and his daughter is very important. Dickens attacks parents like Gradgrind by making Gradgrind realize the folly of his system. His daughter falls at his feet accusing him of teaching her, only, his philosophy that can not save her. She asked him to give her some other means by which she can be saved. Thus, Dickens attacks parents who apply rigid philosophies in bringing up their children and show that love is more important than materialism.
        Dickens applied certain characteristics to Hard Times. These characteristics are cleared in the detailed symbolism, specially, the name of characters such as Gradgrind and Harthouse. The good characters are rewarded and the bad is punished. Moreover, the titles of the chapters are symbolic such as ‘Key note’ and the title of the book itself.
        The main cause of Dickens’ popularity has always been simple comedy. Hard Times is still full of the comic element. Characteristically, Dickens achieves comedy by close observation of unusual modes of behavior. Dickens is an optimist. He believes in the essential goodness of human nature. He believes that human and social vices could be corrected. Like many of the twentieth century, Dickens believes in God and that God punishes evil and rewards good. That is why at the end of Dickens’ novels the good characters are often rewarded and the evil ones are punished. Dickens encourages the idea that if the rich people are kind and loving in their attitude to others, the problem of society will be solved. All the readers of Hard Times admire Sissy Jupe’s kindness and love of mankind.
        The Humanitarian novel is the result of the injustices of the social system of the time. Hard Times reveals Dickens as a great Humanitarian for the rest of his life. He was to attack workhouses, law officers, prisons and schools. His themes are always about the downtrodden and the oppressed. He was their advocate. For them, each of his novels deals with one of their problems.
  
JANE EYRE
THE PLOT
Jane Eyre is the story of a poor, orphaned girl's search for love.  In the first part of the novel, Jane is ten years old and living at Gateshead House with Mrs. Reed, her uncle's widow, and the three Reed children--Eliza, Georgiana, and John.  John is a bully, and when Jane fights back Mrs. Reed blames her for starting the fight and lying about it.  As punishment, Jane is shut up in an empty bedroom--called the red-room, where she has a terrifying experience that she interprets as a visitation from the ghost of her dead Uncle Reed.  A few months later, Mrs. Reed turns Jane over to a gloomy clergyman, Mr. Brocklehurst, who runs a charity school for the daughters of poor churchmen.  She tells him to watch Jane carefully, because the girl is a liar.
Lowood, the school, is a dismal place. There is never enough to eat, and the girls are forbidden even the smallest pleasures in the name of teaching them Christian manners.  Jane makes friends with a sweet girl named Helen Burns, who tells her that they must bear their sufferings at the school with patience.  Helen never shows resentment, even when she becomes the favorite target of the school's teacher, Miss Scatcherd.  But when Mr. Brocklehurst humiliates Jane by repeating Mrs. Reed's charge against her in front of the whole school, she rebels.  She asks the school for a letter from the Reed family that clears her name.
When spring comes, the school is swept by a typhus epidemic. About half the girls fall ill, and some even die.  Helen, too, is ill.  When Jane sneaks into Helen's room for a visit, she is shocked to find her friend has only a few hours to live.  Helen dies in Jane's arms.
As a result of the epidemic, Lowood comes under investigation, and conditions at the school are improved.  Jane stays on, as a pupil and later as a teacher, until she is nineteen years old.  Jane has become a dear friend of Miss Temple, the school director, and when she leaves her job to get married, Jane decides that the time has come for her to leave as well.
Jane is hired as a governess by a Mrs. Fairfax, who lives in a gloomy country manor house, Thornfield Hall.  Only after she has moved in, Jane realize that Mrs. Fairfax is only the housekeeper.  Jane becomes quite fond of her only pupil; a little French girl named Adele Varens.  Yet there is a mystery about the housemaster, Mr. Edward Rochester. He is seldom at home, and from time to time Jane hears laughter coming from one of the locked rooms on the third story of the house.  Mrs. Fairfax tells her that this is Grace Poole, a servant who spends much of her time sewing in that part of the house.
One wintry night, Mr. Rochester returns unexpectedly to Thornfield.  He is a dark, brooding man in his late thirties.  Jane first meets him on the road, after he's been thrown from his horse, and offers him help without realizing who he is.  Later, back at Thornfield, when Rochester asks her if she thinks he's handsome, Jane says, truthfully, "No, sir." Instead of being offended, Rochester is charmed by the boldness of the new governess.  There is already something developing between the two of them when, one night, Jane awakens to the sound of the laughs just outside her bedroom door, smells smoke, and discovers that someone has set fire to the hangings around Mr. Rochester's bed.  She puts off the flames with water.  The way Rochester holds Jane's hand after he awakens suggests feelings that go beyond gratitude, but she slips away and returns to her room.
The next day, Rochester is gone.  He stays away two weeks, and when he does return he brings with him a party of houseguests for an extended stay.  Among the guests is a Mrs. Ingram and her two daughters, Blanche and Mary.  Its obvious that the handsome Blanche is doing her best to gain the affections of Mr. Rochester, but Jane can only suffer her jealousy in silence.  One day during the house party, two strange things happen:
  1.  Mr. Rochester disguises himself as a gypsy woman, and pretending to tell her fortune, tries to find out whether Jane cares for him.  She is wary, however, and doesn't reveal her true feelings.
  2.  Jane is awakened in the middle of the night by calls for help coming from the third floor of the house.  The calls are from Mr. Richard Mason, an unexpected visitor who had arrived from Jamaica earlier that day.  Mr. Rochester asks Jane to stay with Mr. Mason while he rides to town for the doctor.  Jane observes in horror that Mason is bleeding heavily from stab and bite wounds.  Judging by his frantic cry--"She sucked my blood!"--he's been attacked by Grace Poole.
Before the house party ends, Jane is called back to Gateshead to the bedside of the dying Mrs. Reed.  Mrs. Reed confesses that three years ago the brother of Jane's dead mother had written from Madeira saying that he wanted to adopt Jane and make her his heir.  Out of spite, Mrs. Reed wrote back to the uncle, John Eyre, telling him that Jane died of typhus at Lowood School.
Jane returns to Thornfield, where it is expected that Mr. Rochester will soon marry Blanche Ingram.  On Midsummer Eve, however, when Rochester tells Jane that he will have to find her another job after his marriage, she breaks down and reveals her love for him.  Then he admits that it's she whom he's loved all along and asks her to marry him.
Two nights before the wedding, Jane awakes to find a strange woman standing over her bed--not Grace Poole, but someone far more frightening, with a frightening face and wearing a shapeless white shift.  The strange woman tears Jane's bridal veil in two. Rochester assures Jane that the stranger must have been Grace Poole and that her appearance was only a nightmare.
It's the day of the wedding.  The ceremony has already begun when it is interrupted by two men--Richard Mason and a lawyer from London, Mr. Briggs.  Briggs announces that Rochester already has a wife, Bertha Mason, who is already living at Thornfield!  Rochester confesses that his wife, hopelessly and violently insane, lives in the locked rooms on the third floor of the house. Mr. Briggs then reveals that he works for Jane's uncle, Mr. John Eyre, who knew the Mason family and was determined to keep his niece from making a wrong marriage. (Jane wrote to tell him she was getting married.)
Rochester tells Jane that he never loved Bertha and only married her at the urging of his father, who wanted his son to have a rich wife.  Because the symptoms of Bertha's insanity were concealed from him before the wedding, he feels that the marriage was never valid.  (Under the laws of England he cannot obtain a divorce.) He asks Jane to run away to France with him and live as his mistress.  She refuses.
Early the next morning, Jane flees Thornfield, traveling as far away as she can on the little money she has.  Hungry and destitute, she is taken in by two sisters, Diana and Mary Rivers.  Their brother, St. John (sin'jun) Rivers, gets Jane work teaching at a charity school where he is a clergyman.
Fearful of scandal, Jane has not told her new friends her correct last name.  Some months later, when St. John discovers her true identity by accident, he realizes that she is his missing cousin, Miss Eyre!  What's more, he tells Jane that her uncle John Eyre has died and left her a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. Jane decides to share the money with St. John, Diana, and Mary, who have been so kind to her and who are the family she has always yearned for.
St. John is a pale, cold man who tells Jane that he is overcoming his nature in order to prepare himself for a life of missionary service in India. Among the temptations he overcomes is his love for Rosamund Oliver, a beautiful and wealthy girl who wants to marry him.  He thinks that Jane would make a better missionary's wife and proposes to her.  Jane rejects this offer of loveless marriage and decides that the time has come for her to find out what has become of Rochester.
But when Jane returns to Thornfield, she discovers that the house has been destroyed in a fire.  Mad Bertha died from the burning roof of the house and Rochester, who was trying to rescue her, lost his left hand, one eye, and the sight in his remaining eye.
Jane seeks out Rochester at Ferndean, the isolated hunting lodge where he has been living.  Reunited, they realize that they are still deeply in love and decide to marry. In the concluding chapter of the story, we learn that Jane and Rochester have been married for ten years and are idyllically happy.
 
Jane Eyre: An Introductory Analysis
Jane Eyre is the story of one young woman, told in her own voice and as it happened. In the 1840s, when Jane Eyre was written, there were very few ways in which an educated woman could earn her own living.  Poor girls might go to work as a house servant or in a factory, but the conditions in these jobs were so bad and their status so low.
At the beginning of the novel, Jane is a poor orphan.  Her only known relatives (The Reeds) do not want her. She isn't a pretty girl, and perhaps more important, she doesn't have the talent for pleasing people.  As a child Jane needs affection.  "If others don't love me, I would rather die than live!" she tells Helen, her only true friend. Part of her problem in winning the love of others is that she is "too passionate". Yet, she is not ready to settle for a man's love. Jane believes in God and has a strong sense of pride and self-respect. Her search for a way to reconcile her need for love with her search for a way of life acceptable to God is the most important idea in the story. In a wider view, Jane Eyre is a story about the problems of growing up as an outsider without the support of family or a recognized place in society.
 
 
 
 Jane Eyre is the "I" of the story, the person whose voice we hear as we read, and everything that happens is seen from her point of view. We know only what the main character tells us. Yet, sometimes the author reminds us that Jane tells the story as a mature woman, looking back on events that happened some years earlier and sometimes Jane addresses the reader directly.  Moreover, there are occasions where we find long stories that are told to Jane by other characters as Rochester's accounts of his past. We could also read conversations that Jane overhears between other characters, and even accounts of Jane's dreams.
The structure of the novel is very simple. It could be compared to a five-act play, divided according to the five different places where Jane lives during her life.  Each time Jane goes to a new place she's ready to begin another stage in her emotional life, and her journeys are described in a way that builds the reader's suspense. These parts add variety to the style and make the reader feel the truthfulness of the narrator.
On the other hand, the plot of Jane Eyre is very complicated.  Suspense plays a large role in the story.  In chapter after chapter, Jane finds an answer to one question that has been bothering her. The style of Jane Eyre is full with emotions. We can find sentence after sentence full of adjectives and images. For example, in Chapter 15, we read a long list of adjectives of Mr. Rochester like "Pain, shame, impatience, disgust, large pupil, ebony eyebrow." In another situation, Jane was watching a brilliantly described crimson sunset. The icy cold, moonlit night creates an atmosphere of suspense surrounding Jane's first impression of Mr. Rochester. The weather echoes Jane's moods and sometimes the words seem as an uncontrolled rush of feeling. Bronte's style draws readers into the conflicts of the story. In addition, Jane's long-lost uncle, John Eyre is a character we're never told about in the beginning of the story, and who never appears in person. The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, makes us see what she sees, never leaves us for a moment or allows us to forget her.
  It could be said that Jane Eyre is a novel that deals with horror, the supernatural, and the secrets of the human heart.
 At the end of the novel, the reader is shown that Jane Eyre finds her happiness only through love and marriage.
 
 
 
 
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding was the first educated novelist in the 18th century. He belongs to a changing age where the industrial revolution started to take place. This age witnessed a lot of questions about philosophy, mythology, education and other different fields. Through this age, Fielding appeared as a moralist and an artist. Although he was a moralist, he did not allow his moral purpose to dominate his artistic scenes. Being, mainly, a journalist gave him some characteristics. He notices every minute detail around him in order to reach a better understanding of the human nature. Fielding criticized corruption in society, searched for truth and wrote facts not inventions. He studied law that, also, enabled him to criticize the legal system. Fielding belongs to the upper class society; consequently he represents the corruption in this class in a very realistic way.
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Joseph Andrews as a comic epic in prose:
         What Fielding was attempting was a new kind of writing. The comic epic in prose portrays a variety of characters. He uses a light tone to give a satirical and an ironical exposition of what is ridiculous. Behind this light tone there is a strict moral responsibility that Fielding shares with serious epic writers.
         Fielding takes the exposition of the ridiculous as his special field. In the preface of his comic epic, Joseph Andrews, he says that pretence is the source of the ridiculous. This pretence is a result of either vanity or hypocrisy. Vanity affects a false character in order to gain praise, while hypocrisy covers vice by pretending to virtue. In Joseph Andrews, Parson Adams is not free from vanity. He flatters himself and he feels that he has a great knowledge of human nature but, actually, he is ignorant of the ways of the world. Parson Adams insists that knowledge must be obtained only from books. More over, he is fond of his written speech about vanity and he thinks it is his masterpiece. He is also proud of his skill as a schoolmaster. Fielding tells us that “Adams thought a school master the greatest character in the world, and himself the greatest of all school masters”. Other characters like Peter Pounes, the surgeon and the lawyer are either vain (proud) or hypocritical and they all contribute to the comedy of the novel.
         In relation to the idea of the epic, the reader can notice the parallel structure between the plot of the Odyssey and that of Joseph Andrews. The first shows a man who is subjected to the displeasure of Poseidon, the god of the sea, and faces a lot of trouble on his way home. Similarly, the second shows a man who is displeased by a lady who is his superior and, also, faces a lot of misfortunes on his way home.
         Although Joseph Andrews is not really an epic; it involves irrelevant looking tales, but with a slight difference. In an epic, the insertion of these tales is for the sake of decorum. On the other hand, in the novel they could be related to the main theme.
         Fielding makes use of the idea of discovery written by Aristotle. This discovery could be clearly noticed in the scene where Joseph is recognized as the child of Mr. Wilson by the strawberry mark on his chest. At this point of the novel, Fielding refers to Oedipus under similar circumstances.
       Henry Fielding never thought of the novel as a source of entertainment. He considered it a very serious form of literature with a moral purpose as an epic. He felt that a novel could influence human thought and behavior. In Joseph Andrews, he accomplishes a successful attack on hypocrisy and vanity; the most common of the human follies.
The character of Parson Adams:
          Although the novel is titled Joseph Andrews, it is Parson Adams who is the center of the interest. Fielding himself proves this idea. He called his novel The history and the adventures of Joseph Andrews and his friend Mr. Parson Adams. When creating this character, Fielding had his eyes on two models; Don Quixote the naive character and Fielding’s own friend William Young who loves the state of absentmindedness.
         Adams imagines himself living in the vanished world of Greece and Rome. He is ignorant of the real world of his own day. “as an infant just entered into it could possibly be”. He is not familiar with the indirect ways of contemporary mankind and he can not detect hypocrites. He is amazed in seeing so much cruelty coming out from the words of well-mannered men and women. His words reflect his exclamation “Good lord! What wickedness is there in the Christian world!” Although he receives a lot of shocks, he is always optimistic and has faith in the essential goodness of human nature.
         Adams is always unaware of the realities of the world. He is the most absentminded of men. He leaves for London to sell his sermons but he leaves the manuscripts behind. Unfortunately, he does not discover the fact till he has accomplished half the journey. Moreover, Parson Adams has three vanities. First, though he is ignorant of the ways of the world, he flatters himself. The second vanity concerns his sermons. He is proud of his sermons against vanity and he thinks it is his masterpiece. The third is his vein of his skill as a schoolmaster.
         With his entire vein, Adams enjoys a noble personality. He has the spirit of old Roman joined with the innocence of a primitive Christian. In book three, he is ready to divide his last shilling with a stranger and feels disappointed when he discovers that he has no money with him. In addition to being noble and generous, Adams is a man of integrity. He affirms “ Though I am a poor person I will be bold to say I am an honest man”. In book four, Lady Booby orders him not to publish the banns marriage between Joseph and Fanny and threatens to remove him if he dared to; his nobility is proved when he says “ whilst my conscience is pure, I shall never fear what man can do into me”. In short, Parson Adams is skillfully drawn by Fielding and it is said that Adams alone proves the superiority of Fielding over all writers of his class.
Joseph Andrews as a Picaresque novel:
         The term ‘picaresque’ has been derived from the Spanish word ‘picaro’ which means a rogue or a villain. It usually represents a serious adventure, mostly on the road. This kind could be applied to Don Quixote. In fact, there is a marked resemblance between the character of Joseph Andrews and that of Don Quixote and that is why we expect Joseph Andrews to follow the picaresque tradition.
         If we examined Fielding’s novel we will notice that it contains the major characteristics of a picaresque form; but not in a regular way. The characters are, first, introduced in the country. There, Joseph and Lady Booby are taken to London. Then, Joseph is involved in two seduction scenes; the first between him and Lady Booby, while the second is between him and Mrs. Slipslop. As a result Joseph is dismissed and we are prepared for the roadside adventure.
         Starting from chapter ten in Book one the picaresque element is clearly noticed. Joseph’s journey starts in the moonlight; he is robbed, thrown in a ditch, stripped off his clothes and left in a half-dead state. Through the stagecoach episode, Fielding is able to expose the hypocrisy of the apparently respected people. The first Inn Joseph reaches introduces him to a surgeon and a priest. Each character is ignorant, proud and pretends to be the best of his class. We also meet the domineering landlady and her weak husband. At this point of the novel, Joseph gets acquainted with Parson Adams and the journey enjoys a humorous tone.
         Moving forward, Fanny is introduced to the main events and Adams takes upon himself the role of the hero while Joseph and Fanny are pushed into the background. Finally, the abduction of Fanny is planned and the novel returns back to its seriousness. Through out Book one and two, Fielding brings his major characters in contact with different categories of society and exposes the social evils and human follies. The picaresque nature of the novel ends with Parson Adams pumping out of the carriage.
 Joseph Andrews as a parody to Pamela:
         Henry Fielding’s first novel Joseph Andrews was published in 1742. It was, partly, written as a parody of Samuel Richardson’s first novel Pamela; which had appeared two years before. Pamela is a story of a servant girl who relates to her parents, in a series of detailed letters, how her virtue has been threatened by her master, how she resists his temptation and how, gradually, she fell in love with him. At the end of the novel she becomes his beautiful wife. In this novel, for the first time in English fiction, Richardson provided a psychological study of his heroine.
         As a matter of fact, what Richardson did was not taken as merit. The novel’s title is Pamela or Virtue Rewarded; the word ‘virtue’ was considered not as a matter of spirit, but as a commodity to be used by Pamela to climb on the social ladder. Richardson’s aim was to establish a principle of virtue and religion in the minds of the youth of both sexes; but to reach this aim, he gave his narrative a truthfulness which it did not have. These factors caused Fielding to write his parody.
         To Fielding’s observant mind, Pamela presents a false picture of the world of facts. The wide and real life of the eighteenth century humanity was reduced, in Pamela, to one silly gentleman and a handful of servants. The conflicts of good and evil were shrunk to a purely physical struggle and large and complicated issues of moral behavior were reduced to the single question of female virtue. It seemed to Fielding that Richardson took no notice of the evils of the world.
         In Fielding’s novel, Joseph is the brother of the clever Pamela. He admires her and desires to imitate her. When the novel opens we see him working at the service of a lady whom; after the death of her husband, tries to seduce him. Like Pamela, Joseph resists the lady and writes a letter which serves as a parody of the epistolary Pamela. In the scene that follows between Joseph and Mrs. Slipslop, the seduction scene is repeated. The two scenes satirize the pretension of a corrupt society. Joseph’s virtue triumphs but he is dismissed. He decides to leave London in order to meet his sweet heart Fanny.
         In spite of certain similarities between Pamela and Joseph Andrews, any observer could detect basic differences. Instead of Pamela’s literacy, Fielding supplies a heroine who can neither read nor write. More over, since Pamela betters herself by her virtue; Joseph refuses to have his virtue rewarded at the end. In fact, he keeps himself pure and poor for the sake of Fanny who is lower in the social scale than him.
          In book three, Fielding returns back to his ridicule of Pamela. He makes Pamela appears with her husband who is completely reformed. Fielding presents her as respectable and proud of this respectability. She looks down upon Fanny and tries to prevent Joseph from marrying her. Joseph, however, does not listen to her. Fielding’s mockery here is serious, clever and penetrating.
         Fielding’s serious criticism of  Pamela is through the kind of world he creates. This world with its squires, ladies, doctors, lawyers, innkeepers and rogues is a more inclusive world than Richardson’s. It is a world not only motivated by sex but also by avarice, stupidity, vanity, courage and love. Fielding’s world is spontaneous and alive. In contrast to Richardson’s world of morality, Fielding’s characters act upon impulse rather than from principle.
 
Lord of the Flies
The problem of evil and the conflict between good and evil, have been among the leading concerns of the twentieth century British novelists. In Lord Of The Flies evil is Golding’s major preoccupation. He does recognise the existence of good, but he seems to believe that evil is a more powerful force, and under certain conditions, it would dominate human life. The most obvious of the themes is man's need for civilisation. The story shows that laws and rules, policemen and schools are necessary to keep the darker side of human nature in line. When these institutions and concepts slip away or are ignored, human beings revert to a more primitive part of their nature. The existence of civilisation allows man to remain innocent or ignorant about his true nature. Although man needs civilisation, it is important that he also be aware of his more primitive instincts. Civilisation separates man from the animals by teaching him to think and make choices.
The title of the novel means The Lord Of The Dirt. In it a group of boys has been dropped on a tropical island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. A nuclear war has taken place; civilisation has been destroyed. The author never actually locates the island in the real world. He does this so that you can imagine most of the island in your own way. The reader will be exploring and getting to know the island in the same way that the boys have to, that is, little by little. Golding gives us a very strong sense of place, and the island shapes the story's direction. At the outset the boys view it as a paradise; it is lush and abundant with food. As the fear of the beast grows, it becomes a hell in which fire and fear prevails. The island setting works as a metaphor for the world. The boys are trapped on the island as we are trapped on this planet.
       The boys seem to be representative of human beings with their desires and needs and they serve as symbols of different powers that act within our inner nature. Ralph a tall, strong, and blond twelve years old boy who  delights in the fact that there are "no grownups" around. The boys have the entire island to themselves. Piggy, who is fat, and nearly blind without his glasses, trails behind as Ralph explores the island. When they find a white conch shell, Piggy encourages Ralph to blow on it. Ralph sounds the conch and the other boys appear. Throughout the novel, Piggy clings to civilisation and refuses to live the new way of life. The other boys mock his physical weaknesses, but Ralph learns to depend upon Piggy for intellectual guidance. Piggy's glasses  become a major focal point in the novel because of their ability to light the signal and cooking fires. Among the other boys is Jack Merridew. Jack, a tall, thin red-head, initially appears in the novel as the leader of the boys' choir. There are also the twins, Sam and Eric. Simon, short and skinny with black hair, joins the group. Many other boys who are never given names straggle in.
      The group elects Ralph as their leader even though Jack would like to be chosen. Ralph establishes himself as the leader of the boys when he blows the conch shell to call the first meeting. Throughout the story, he struggles to maintain order, forced to compete with Jack for respect. After losing the election for leader to Ralph, he voluntarily takes charge of hunting and maintaining the signal fire. As the structure of life on the island breaks down, Jack forms a tribe of savage boys on the far side of the island. Roger, the most savage of the boys, supports Jack's leadership in the same way that Piggy backs up Ralph's. Another important character that serves as a point of transformation in the novel is Simon. He is skinny with black hair and has a saint-like presence on the island, neither popular nor despised. Although he spends much of his time alone in the jungle, he is willing to help with necessary jobs such as building the huts. It is during one of these lonely journeys into the jungle that he speaks with the "Lord of the Flies," who confirms the belief that he has tried to share with the others that the "beast" comes from within them.
     Ralph, Simon, and Jack explore the island. It's hard for them to believe they are really on their own, but once they are convinced, Jack decides to be the hunter and provide food and the first attempt at killing a piglet fails.
      When the conch calls the group together again, they talk about the need for hunters. A small boy says he is afraid of a snakelike beast in the woods. Is there really such a beast? The boys cannot agree. However, the fear of the beast, of the dark, and of what is unknown about the island is very real and an important part of the story. Ralph convinces everyone that they need a fire for a signal in case a ship passes the island. Starting a fire is impossible until they use Piggy's glasses. Then the boys often abandon the fire to play, finding it hard work keeping the fire going.
      Jack becomes increasingly obsessed with hunting and the desire to kill. Jack and his hunters paint their faces to look like masks and they are able to slaughter a pig. Again the fear of the beast is mentioned, and the littlest boys cry about their nightmares while the big ones fight about the existence of the beast. Simon says that perhaps the beast is "only us," but the others laugh him down. Their fears grew when the twins, Sam and Eric who have a single identity, see something that does indeed look like the beast. Jack and Ralph lead an exploration and come back convinced there is a beast. Jack decides he no longer wants to be part of Ralph's tribe. He leaves, inviting the other boys to follow him. In spite of their growing terror, Jack leads the hunters into the jungle for another pig. He places its head on a stick, much like a primitive offering to the unknown beast. Everyone but the twins and Piggy abandon Ralph to attend Jack's feast of roast pig.
     Alone in the woods, Simon talks to the pig's head on the stick. In Simon's hallucination the head becomes the Lord of the Flies and says, "Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you?" A great storm builds over the island, and Simon starts back to where the other boys are. As he wanders through the jungle, he discovers the beast that the twins thought they saw. A dead person who had parachuted from his plane is caught on the rocks. Terrified by the sight, Simon loosens the lines and frees the dead man, then starts off to tell the others there is no beast.
      In the meantime, Ralph has given in and joined Jack's feast, Piggy and the twins follow. They share roast pig and find that the hunters are now treating Jack as a god, serving him and obeying his commands. Ralph and Jack argue over who should be leader. Jack claims the right because he has killed the pig, but Ralph still has the conch. Instead of fighting, Jack suggests they do their pig-killing dance. They begin to chant, "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!" , As the storm overhead gathers force, Piggy and Ralph join the circle to dance with the others. Lightning cuts the sky apart. Ofcourse the whole scenery seems to tend towards the evil part in the kids' nature. When Simon appears, the boys have ceased to be boys playing a game and have become a dangerous mob. They attack Simon, calling him the beast and killing him with their hunting sticks. Only then does the storm finally break and the rain begin to fall. During the night the tide carries the dead boy out to sea.
         The next night Jack and two hunters attack Ralph and Piggy and steal Piggy's glasses. Nearly blind without his glasses, Piggy decides that he and Ralph can do nothing but ask Jack to give them back. Sam and Eric, the only others who have remained with Ralph, go along. They take the conch with them. The fight that has been building between Jack and Ralph over who should be leader finally breaks out. The hunters drag the twins off. A giant rock is pushed over a ledge, breaking the conch and striking Piggy. Flung over the cliff, Piggy dies when he hits the rocks below. Jack declares himself chief.
       The next day, Jack and the hunters plan to cover the island looking for Ralph. He will be hunted in much the same way that Jack has gone after the pigs. Ralph hides and runs, becoming increasingly a cornered animal. To smoke him out, a fire is started that quickly spreads over the island. We can notice that at the same time, when the island society begins to break apart, Sam and Eric maintain their loyalty to Ralph, but eventually they side with Jack's savage tribe. When they reveal Ralph's hiding place to the hunters, the final hope for society and order is lost. At the very last moment, when all hope for him seems lost, Ralph suddenly appears on the beach and falls at the feet of a man in uniform. Ralph is saved. While the officer is disappointed at how poorly the boys have managed themselves on the island, Ralph can only weep "for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."
 
     In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, humans naturally live in savagery and ignorance, without any idea of how to live and how to live together. It is the story of boys stranded on an island who must develop government to survive. Every detail of the story holds symbolism. For example, each character represents an aspect of civilised humanity; those who represent human nature survive, and those who are scientists, religious, leaders, all die. The most terrifying death is that of Simon, who symbolises the eyes of blind people. He alone saw that the jungle, which represented freedom and the lack of civilisation, was not to be feared but to be understood; he alone knew that the Beast of the island, feared by all the boys, was in fact their own inherent savagery. The leaders they did choose, Ralph and Jack, boys of twelve years, were the symbolic representations of ignorance and savagery.
INNOCENCE AND THE LOSS OF IT
Different types of power, with their uses and abuses, are central to the story. Each kind of power is used by one of the characters. Democratic power is shown when choices and decisions are shared among many. Authoritarian power allows one person to rule by threatening and terrifying others. Spiritual power recognises internal and external realities and attempts to integrate them. Brute force, the most primitive use of power, is indiscriminate.
FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN
Fear of the unknown on the island revolves around the boys' terror of the beast. Fear is allowed to grow because they play with the idea of it. They cannot fully accept the notion of a beast, nor can they let go of it. They whip themselves into hysteria, and their attempts to resolve their fears are too feeble to convince themselves one way or the other. The recognition that no real beast exists, that there is only the power of fear, is one of the deepest meanings of the story.
 
 
  
Middlemarch
by
George Eliot
The writer of this novel is George Eliot who is a woman and her real name is Mary Ann Evans. She is an English novelist and one of the major nineteenth century writers. She was greatly affected by the scientific revolution that was current at that time. George was born 1819, at the same time of Charles Dickens’s birth. The age and its happenings affected them both. She lived in rural England; isolated from the industrial revolution in the city. Attending different schools, she, quickly, showed a gift or an attitude for learning. Eliot showed a very strong tendency to religion too. By the time she was twenty years old, she became aware of the recent discoveries of science. Like many other intellectuals of the age, she was one of those who found it difficult to reconcile scientific facts with their own religious beliefs, within a very short time. She lost her own faith and deserted the Christian church. She met and made friends from the contemporary intellectuals. She loved George Henry, eloped to Europe and lived a natural married life until he died. Surprising her friends and followers, she married at the age of  61  a young man of  40. Finally, she died 1880, eight months after her marriage.
         Eliot was primarily concerned with people’s moral choices and their responsibility for their own lives. Her novels include Adam Bede, her masterpiece Middlemarch and Silas Marner. In Middlemarch, George Eliot surveys the range of motives of her characters with an eye to past experience. In the novel, Eliot sets up a complex deterministic system governed by what she calls the train of causes, the force of circumstances, the rush of unintended consequences, or most probably, the irony of events which affects the individual wills of the characters. The world in which Dorothea, Casauban, and the surrounding characters live, convey how Middlemarch has made them what they are. We feel no temptation to abstract these characters from the society that contains them. Dorothea is not Saint Theresa. She is an intelligent and sensitive born into the English landed ruling class of the early nineteenth century, full of half-formulated dissatisfactions with the excessively polite life of the women of her class, seeking something beyond the narrow selfishness of her acquaintance and turning towards a religious Puritanism. She wants to satisfy her unfulfilled potentialities, finally and disastrously imagining that in marriage to Casaubon she will find the fulfilment of her ambition. George Eliot’s particular achievement here that she convinces us of a transformation against which all the cards of ‘Destiny’ have been stacked.
       In Middlemarch characters and events are linked within the realm of probability. Their interaction and the effects of this interaction are examined by an ironic, but sympathetic novelist-observer and by her reader, both of whom can detach themselves from their own obedience to similar laws or conditions. It is noticed that the conditions created by the irony of events stress man’s dependence on the actions of his fellow man. Yet, George Eliot reminds the reader that she is concerned with an artistic interpretation of truth and not with the formal expression of metaphysical ambiguity.
         All of the main characters in Middlemarch are defeated by Middlemarch, save Dorothea and Ladislaw and Mary and Fred. Mary and Fred are undefeated only because they have never fought a battle with the values of Middlemarch society. Mary and the Garths reject the more displeasing aspects of the nineteenth century morality; the money grabbing of old Featherstone and the hypocritical dishonesty of Bulstrode, but they accept as proper and certain the fundamental set-up of Middlemarch. Middlemarch does portray a gloomy process. It laments far a lost age of faith.
         George Eliot did not try to force abstract concepts on a part of life. Her method is to present most concretely a particular situation and then draw to our attention the moral issues involved in the choices that have to be made. Nevertheless, her standards of right and wrong are not adequate to the complexity of her social vision. George Eliot’s high-minded moral seriousness does have an unfortunate effect on the novel, not because it is moral or serious, but because it is mechanistic and unidealistical. In addition, like all mechanistic thinkers, George Eliot ends by escaping into idealism. In this study of bourgeois society, there are three rebels; Dorothea, Ladislaw, and Lydgate. Their aspiration led them to a profound dissatisfaction with the Middlemarch world. All three stand for, and wish to live by, values higher than the values of that world. They are the eager spirits who seek to serve humanity through science and art and common sympathy. Middlemarch defeats Lydgate through his marriage with Rosamond and the bitter story of his defeat is the finest and the most moving thing in the novel. However, it is significant that Lydgate, like all other failures in the novel, fails not through his strength but through his weakness.
         George Eliot’s masterpiece implies a confidence in man’s ability to surmount his enslavement to time and change. It finds in time present and time past a possibility of future and redemption. Middlemarch is neither tragedy nor comedy. It is the tragicomedy of human progress.
 
@     The novel is a complex one, and Eliot has been required to weave together strands of several plots, each of which contains characters whose lives intersect with others. There are numerous images of weaving, binding, and linking in Middlemarch. The book is representative of the most significant contributions which George Eliot made in English literature and in the development of the novel. First, it presents a vivid and accurate panorama of English life in the third decade of the nineteenth century; from the wealthier class of squires and managers, down through the middle-class pictures of clergymen and professionals, to the simple farmers and journeymen. There is an unmistakable truth in her description and psychology. Her scenes of provincial life help to recreate an era with authentic colour and movement. Moreover, the abrupt revelation of sudden or hidden incidents creates surprise and intensifies interest. George Eliot, like many Victorian novelists, often interrupts her story to comment on the significance of a character's thought or action. These observations are recognised by most critics as an explanatory or narrative technique.
 
@ By using carefully chosen imagery Eliot has intensified emotional aspects of characters and given insights into the planning of her novel's structure. Casaubon's life, for example, is usually described in terms of small, confining places. His rooms are dark, stuffy, and old. He reveals in one of his first speeches that he keeps part of his research materials in pigeonholes.
@ Eliot's gifted insight into human motivation is apparent throughout; the character act according to their natures and choices. Both Dorothea Brooke and John Raffles, for example, act the way we are led to believe they will act. The effective use of dialogue, suggestive imagery, autobiographical, ethical, and technical considerations also contribute to make Middlemarch a most valuable and artistic novel. The most important portraits in this extensive gallery of English life are of two idealistic people: Dorothea Brooke (Mrs. Casaubon) and Dr. Tertius Lydgate. Both are intelligent, and dedicated to the task of improving the lot of their fellow men. He wishes to succeed in an experiment to improve the effectiveness of the country hospital; while she is concerned with improving the living conditions of poorer working classes. However, we quickly find that ideas and ideals are no assurance of success. The way of the world is strong and full of complex obstacles. The marriages of Dorothea (her first) and Lydgate push them farther away from their goals. The chief concern of the novel is to present two thoughtful, sensitive, but who are forced continually to sustain their strength in the realities of living.
@ Other characters in the novel represent various levels of English society. Sir James Chettam and Mr. Brooke are typical of the wealthy, landed gentry; Mr. Vincy and Mr. Bulstrode are, respectively, the mayor and the banker of Middlemarch, positions which give their families the opportunities for educational and cultural pursuits denied the less prosperous working families. Even on the lower social levels Eliot makes distinctions in rank among  dozens of minor characters that help to give the novel its panoramic effects.
@ As in any novel, each of the four plots in Middlemarch is concerned with the problems which people face either because of circumstances or their own injudicious acts. Dorothea Brooke has romantically imagined marriage to Casaubon as a chance for her to fulfil an ambition to serve a great man in his work. On her honeymoon in Rome she faced the reality that her scholar husband married her for practical purposes, and is incapable of responding to her nature. She decides to remain loyal to him in spite of his shortcomings. That was  a difficult-even a noble-choice for her to make, considering how little joy she expects to receive in return from Casaubon. Moreover, Dr. Lydgate and Rosamond Vincy, like Dorothea Brooke and the Reverend Casaubon, have married for the wrong reasons. Rosamond's "theory" of love is that proximity breeds love. To her, Lydgate fulfils her superficial requirements for marriage. He has the education, position, manners, dress, and voice she admires; in other words, all the external necessities needed to fulfil her concept of "husband."
@ While, Mary Garth finds herself unable to accept Fred Vincy as a husband because of his careless, uncertain future. Unsure of a career and given to incurring gambling debts, Fred is able, finally, to correct his debilitating habits and to win her. Mary's common sense and realistic values prevent her from consenting to a marriage that promises little security. Unlike the other characters in the novel, who marry not for love but for some romantically specious reason, Mary is in love with Fred but refuses to risk union with him until she can be assured that he is capable of providing for a family.
 Telling & Showing in Middlemarch
(Dig. & Mem.)
 
The writer of this novel is George Eliot who is a woman and her real name is Mary Ann Evans. She is an English novelist and one of the major nineteenth century writers. She lived in rural England; isolated from the industrial revolution in the city. Attending different schools, she, quickly, showed a gift or an attitude for learning. Eliot showed a very strong tendency to religion too. Like many other intellectuals of the age, she was one of those who found it difficult to reconcile scientific facts with their own religious beliefs. She lost her own faith and deserted the Christian church. In her novel, she combined the classical methods of narrating or telling with the modern ones of showing. Eliot uses both the authorial voice and the indirect representation of her opinions through the characters’ points of view about each other.
The novel is a complex one, and Eliot has been required to weave together strands of several plots, each of which contains characters whose lives intersect with others. The book is representative of the most significant contributions which George Eliot made in English literature and in the development of the novel. First, it presents a vivid and accurate panorama of English life in the third decade of the nineteenth century; from the wealthier class of squires and managers, down through the middle-class pictures of clergymen and professionals, to the simple farmers and journeymen. There is an unmistakable truth in her description and psychology. Her scenes of provincial life help to recreate an era with authentic colour and movement. Moreover, the abrupt revelation of sudden or hidden incidents creates surprise and intensifies interest. George Eliot, like many Victorian novelists, often interrupts her story to comment on the significance of a character's thought or action. These observations are recognised by most critics as an explanatory or narrative technique.
Eliot’s authorial voice is clear in introducing to the reader the character of Dorthea. She gives the reader the fundamental basis of Dorthea’s character using her classical method of narration.  Dorothea is represented as an intelligent and sensitive born into the English landed ruling class of the early nineteenth century. She is full of half-formulated dissatisfactions with the excessively polite life of the women of her class, seeking something beyond the narrow selfishness of her acquaintance and turning towards a religious Puritanism. She wants to satisfy her unfulfilled potentialities, finally and disastrously imagining that in marriage to Casaubon she will find the fulfilment of her ambition. George Eliot’s particular achievement here that she convinces us of a character seeking for a transformation to the better and telling us the main features of this character in addition to the surrounding atmosphere.
In Middlemarch, characters and events are linked within the realm of probability. Their interaction and the effects of this interaction are examined by an ironic, but sympathetic novelist-observer and by her reader, both of whom can detach themselves from their own obedience to similar laws or conditions. This detachment is due to the technique of showing that Eliot employs. In order to achieve this aim, Eliot used free indirect speech that communicates the narrator’s view; leaving the reader to wonder whether its the characters’ thoughts or is it the authorial voice. It is noticed that the conditions created by the irony of events stress man’s dependence on the actions of his fellow man. Yet, George Eliot reminds the reader that she is concerned with an artistic interpretation of truth and not with the formal expression of metaphysical ambiguity.
George Eliot did not try to force abstract concepts on a part of life. Her method is to present most concretely a particular situation and then draw to our attention the moral issues involved in the choices that have to be made. Eliot represents the characters’ points of view. She lets each character illustrate her or his view in similar subjects so that the reader could notice the different faces of the matter discussed and also could interpret the way each character behaves or thinks. A clear example of this method is shown when the idea of Dorthea’s marriage to Casauban is represented through Dorthea’s view and also through her neighbour’s view. Another example is set through the character of Ladislaw who is represented through different views in addition to those of Eliot herself. This led to a sort of confusion on the part of the reader because Eliot’s authorial voice is mixed with other views. Moreover, the use of dialogues in the novel, stresses the technique of showing characters as they are and enables the reader to carefully and successfully judge each character and situation.
Eliot's gifted insight into human motivation is apparent throughout the novel; the characters act according to their natures and choices. Both Dorothea Brooke and John Raffles, for example, act the way we are led to believe they will act. The effective use of dialogue, suggestive imagery, autobiographical, ethical, and technical considerations also contribute to make Middlemarch a most valuable and artistic novel.
  
 
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe is a man of great and varied activity. He was a journalist and a reformer. His method of writing was affected by other journalists in their objective method. Moreover, working as a reformer affected his life and his character. Defoe belonged to the middle class and that was the reason he wrote about (250) novels talking about the middle and lower middle class. Defoe received a very simple education; this fact has its impact on his novels. Thus, we never have the classic elegance of his time.
         Defoe’s style is plain and simple; without figures of speech. There is nothing in his words to show any acquaintance to the classical culture. His style is the same used by common people. Thus, being a representative of the lower middle class, who lacks higher education, have a clear impact on his novel; especially in the matter of style. Furthermore, Defoe was quick at noticing things, he observed life and nothing could escape his notice. To him, it is interesting to create a realistic impression. He did not like to be a mere story-teller. He could know every thing about different kinds of individuals living in his society, and thus he excelled in portraying such individual characters in his novels.
As a result of Defoe’s sense of observation, almost every thing in his novels was based on either his own experience or on the personal experience of any of his acquaintances who always related to him their life stories or problems. In this way the novels of Defoe were based on  true facts. However, he is not so much obsessed by the need to tell the truth, as much as he excels in portraying real stories that he had heard or read.
The real name of Moll Flanders is Moll King, who was a pick-pocket; Defoe met at Newgate prison. The narrative of the novel is as simple as if it was a mere copying of the very words of Moll King, even in the grammatical mistakes that are found in the narrative. In writing about his villains, prostitutes and animals, Defoe makes sure to drop some moral teaching from time to time, like hints about the devil being responsible for driving his characters or about repentance; in this way he tries to satisfy his pious religious people.
Generally speaking, the element of realism in Moll Flanders can be divided into three main points. The first is that of the theme that is talking about corruption of society, the second is the characterisation. The characters are taken directly from life, it is the embodiment of normal people you can meet in the street. The third point is the language, it is directly taken from life and sometimes his language tends to be colloquial.
Accordingly, before January 1799 there was no considerable literary work in the world that was based on an intelligent and sympathetic understanding of unprotected women in contemporary society. The common attitude of writers before Defoe was a scornful representation of the criminal or the fallen being.
To Defoe vice and crime were subject not for scorn or mocking, but for sympathetic concern, this is because Defoe always viewed human experience with the eyes of a social historian, it was the society itself which caused the original crime, even in the attempts to correct other wrongs.
Moralism
The influence of foreign thought on England and the origins of the English novel can be found in the literature of the 16th century, and even earlier; but it was in the 18th century that it began to take shape.
To types of prose fiction emerged in the 18th century “The Moral Fable”, and the “Picaresque” which is the style adopted by Defoe. It is derived from the stories that came from Spain in the 15th century, spread through France, and reached England. In these novels the story is more important than the moral. They are usually shapeless, but full of vitality.
As the novel developed and became an established literary form, its two aspects “moral” and “fable”, gradually became united as in the great novels of the 19th century. Defoe was a versatile writer and although his works of fiction do not fulfil all our expectations of what a novel should be, his contribution to the development of the novel is a significant one.
In his preface to Moll Flanders, Defoe insists that the moral is more important than the fable, but in fact the opposite is true. In this respect the novel conforms to the picaresque tradition. It is a memorable story featuring vitality on the heroine’s part. Moll is morally reprehensible, yet she remains one of the most intriguing characters in fiction.
Moreover, Defoe dealt with the problem of beggars and other social vices as gambling. He pleaded eloquently for the higher education of women, he called for a human treatment of lunatics. Most critics consider the character of Defoe as morally questionable. Some of his contemporaries considered him a political traitor. Defoe was an extremely observant person, nothing escaped his notice and his curiosity was never to be satisfied.
Defoe accepted the narrow puritan morality of the middle class to which he belonged, but his real interest was in the richness and variety of life itself, and the strength of the human spirit to rise above his misfortune. In spite of what he says, his curiosity about life dominates his interest in morals because he has strong feelings about life and people, whereas morality is something he has merely accepted intellectually.
Although born in a strict puritan family, Defoe was not affected by the strict religious tendencies of his parents, yet his novels reflect that influence very clearly. Defoe was writing for the middle class to which he belonged; the middle class consisted of puritan industrious honest people who would reject the novels that do not reflect the religious views they believe in. Defoe was a man of wide experience and so he knows the common taste of spectators. This is the reason that made him insert religious hints and moral lessons in his novels.
Defoe was not primarily an outspoken moralist, yet he included a considerable amount of moralising in his novels in order to satisfy the popular expectation of a moral lesson in all tales specially those dealing with wicked people. In writing about villains and criminals, Defoe makes sure to drop some moral teaching from time to time, like hints about the devil being responsible for tempting the characters, or about repentance and in this way he is able to satisfy his readers. For instance, when Moll stole for the first time she was very sad and she was asking God to forgive and help her, as she was not going to steal for the sake of stealing, but because she was in a bad need for money. Even after she stole she was very frightened and was begging for forgiveness and thanking God for not being caught.
There is a frequent mention in the novel of the mercy of God, even the wicked characters are made to feel deep remorse. It is to be noticed that Defoe always pointed out the futility of crime and vice; every wicked action in the novel is made to end unhappily so as to serve as a reminder to the reader of its vicious nature. This is because Defoe had a keen eye on the vices and follies of these contemporaries, and being a social reformer he has sincerely involved in attacking the evils of society.
 
  
North and South
By
Elizabeth Gaskell
As its title suggests, the novel is about a larger contrast between cultures. The backward-looking life of the south is set against the progressive forces of the new industrialism in the north. The writer, Elizabeth Gaskell came to Manchester in 1832. She came as a young woman of twenty-two, married and was to have her home in Manchester until she died. She is one of the well-known short story writers. One of her most important works is The Life of Charlotte Bronte. North and South was published in a newspaper and it reflected the effect of industrialization on the English society.
In North and South, the heroine Margaret Hale, a girl from the South of England comes to live in the city of Milton-Northern, a pseudonym for Manchester. In broad terms Margaret Hale's situation in North and South represents that of Elizabeth Gaskell; she too came to live in Manchester as a young woman. It was on her first stay in Manchester itself that she met the man who was to be her husband. Gaskell presents the novel as objective as possible. She did not abstract herself from the novel. Gaskell's voice intervenes to clarify certain points to the reader. She gives a psychological presentation to the characters, without imposing a judgement or a point of view. She represents a poor heroine who is not able to pass a judgement on others.
Elizabeth Gaskell was interested in boundaries and borders. Her title, North and South, makes the point of course, but the contrasts were not only those of region, but of time as well, exemplified most effectively by the changes that have taken place within an individual life. The heroine has suffered by the move to the north. When she is within a natural setting she is happy, emotional and gathering flowers. When Margaret returns to the city she gives the flowers she has gathered to a dying mill-girl she has befriended; the girl is dying because her lungs have been destroyed by the cotton-fluff she breathed in the carding-room when she was a mill-worker. Not only Bessie Higgins, the mill-girl, but Margaret's own mother eventually surrender to her useless life. Gaskell never loses her sympathy for working people in the novel. Their condition is shown through Margaret Hale's involvement in the lives of the trades-unionist, Nicholas Higgins, and his daughter Bessie. The author presented the problems figured in real life in the 19th century England. She gave the masters' point of view and the view of the poor. The dramatic presentation complements with the psychological insight to form a novel very close to drama.
Gaskell presents the life that she lived with no idealization. There is a sense in which Margaret Hale, replicates Gaskell's own experience. This experience is reflected in the development of its heroine, who is transported from southern case to northern energy, and who has to revise her whole scale of values. The change experienced by Margaret Hale in North and South is sudden, and thus fearful. She was calling for respect of human and dignity regardless the class that people belong to. The story is one of pride and prejudice in an industrial setting.
Gaskell was not a romantic writer but she gave special importance and space for emotions with no exaggeration. Even in her description; she does not give clear-cut opinions, yet the impression that we get is the pollution of the atmosphere. In the novel, approaching the city by rail, the Hale family sees a deep lead-colored cloud hanging over the horizon. Not only inside but outside too the atmosphere is poisonous: as Gaskell says, "the air was so different." Through the actions and outlooks of Margaret she urged the poor to accept the limitation of their poor class. Margaret Hale had no intention of spending the rest of her life in the city. Yet, at the end of North and South, Margaret Hale marries the industrialist John Thornton, and she accepts her new life.
The use of dialogue reflected the situations in a dramatized form. Moreover, by means of punctuation, Gaskell's writing flows with sensibility so that sometimes emotions could reach the extent of melodrama. Yet, there is a balance between the expression of feelings and melodrama, the psychological analysis and the dramatic presentation, in addition to a very brilliant descriptive gift. North and South was the last of Elizabeth Gaskell's Manchester fiction.
 
 
Elizabeth Gaskell
 1. Elizabeth Gaskell's came to Manchester in 1832, the year of the First Reform Bill. She came as a young woman of twenty-two, married and was to have her home in Manchester until she died. The Gaskells, as middle-class families do, moved house as their family increased and their resources became enlarged.
 2. In North and South, the heroine Margaret Hale, a girl from the South of England comes to live in the city of Milton-Northern, a pseudonym for Manchester. The writer shows the beauties of nature to indicate how her heroine has suffered by the move.
 3. When Margaret returns to the city she gives the flowers she has gathered to a dying mill-girl she has befriended; the girl is dying because her lungs have been destroyed by the cotton-fluff she breathed in the carding-room when she was a mill-worker.
 4. Not only inside but outside too the atmosphere is poisonous: as Gaskell says, "the air was so different, so deprived of all revivifying principle." Not only Bessie Higgins, the mill-girl, but Margaret's own mother eventually succumb to its life-denying effect.
 5. In broad terms Margaret Hale's situation in North and South represents that of Elizabeth Gaskell: she too came to live in Manchester as a young woman. It was on her first stay in Manchester itself that she met the man who was to be her husband.
 6. She was interested in boundaries and borders. Her title, North and South, makes the point of course, but the contrasts were not only those of region, but of time as well, exemplified most effectively by the changes that have taken place within an individual life-span.
 7. The change experienced by Margaret Hale in North and South is sudden, and thus fearful.
 8. She never loses her sympathy for working people in the novel: their condition is shown through Margaret Hale's involvement in the lives of the trades-unionist, Nicholas Higgins, and his daughter Bessie.
 9. As its title suggests, it is about a larger contrast between cultures. The backward-looking life of the south is set against the progressive forces of the new industrialism in the north.
 10. The process is reflected in the development of its heroine, who is transported from southern case to northern energy, and who has to revise her whole scale of values.
 11. The story is one of pride and prejudice in an industrial setting.
 12. The impression that we get is the pollution of the atmosphere. Approaching the city by rail, the Hale family sees a deep lead-colored cloud hanging over the horizon.
 13. There is a sense in which Margaret Hale, replicates Gaskell's own experience.
 14. At the end of North and South, Margaret Hale marries the industrialist John Thornton, and she embraces her new life. North and South was the last of Elizabeth Gaskell's Manchester fiction.
 15. Margaret Hale, she had no intention of spending the rest of her life in her adopted city.
  
OLIVER TWIST By Charles Dickens
Satire and Criticism:
Dickens chose the new poor law as a subject of his satire. He was taking up one of the most violently disputed issues of the time. In submitting it to ridicule, he was tending a stand in opposition of a certain segment in society. In early Victorian England, the condition of the poor and the prospect of revolution were current. The authorities seemed to be ignorant to the degrading social conditions. The moral energy of the first pages of Oliver Twist is not only turned to condemn the management of the workhouse; it also condemns the principles behind the law. In a general way, this trend served as a corner stone of the early Victorian social system, "The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men”. When Oliver rises against Noah Claypole, Bumble is very solid and official. Institutional humanity looks to the rebellion not as a result of bad treatment or injustice, but as a consequence of indulgence. Most of Dickens's charges are directed against the mall-administrations of officials. He meant to expose the abuses of both the old law that stayed under the new authorities, and the failure of the new authorities to fulfill their promises to improve conditions.
Criticism:
The reader of the novel could easily notice how complete and utterly degrading poverty could be in England. This is clear when Oliver and Mr. Sowerberry go to the dead woman's house. Determining effects of poverty, it is strange how misery and poverty can dehumanize people. The death of the old pauper in the streets is a matter of amusement for the workhouse officials. When news is brought that an old animate of the workhouse is about to die, it arouses Mrs. Corney's wrath rather than her sympathy. The poor die in an agony of wretchedness but their death leaves the Bumbles and the Corneys utterly unaffected.
Characterization:
Dickens gives the exterior shape of a character a great importance. He is more like a dramatist giving the shape and the action of his character. He, also, goes to extremes in his description for a character. He gives too much laughter or too much sadness like caricature. The characters are more like dramatic figures. We can see them because Dickens pays quite a great attention to the description of the outward appearance. Dickens's approach to a character was that of an actor and not of a philosopher. He was like a fine artist who observed from the outside and then built up the character very boldly. It is one of Dickens's weaknesses that he was attacked because his bad characters are more realistic and convincing than his good characters. His characters are very sentimental and thus they became very unrealistic.
 
 OLIVER TWIST
Critics believed that Dickens is, at least, the greatest comic novelist and great poetic novelist beyond dispute. He is likely to remain the classic in all-English literature; he was most acceptable to readers of all ages and of wide different mental capacities. Actually his popularity is an advantage and a disadvantage; the chief advantage leads to a chief disadvantage because he is an object of criticism and the rubbish of his works genius exist side by side in the same novels. In this aspect Dickens is a unique man.
Dickens’s novels have a lack of organic unity; it is usually believed that Dickens cannot effectively handle his plots. His plots lack organic unity, they are not organic wholes of which every character and incident may form an integral part. Dickens freely indulges in humorous conversations, and after pages of talking he is reminded of the main thread of the story so comes back. His novels lack intellectual strength that failed to impose any form or discipline on the discursive matter of his novel.
         As for Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, it falls into three parts; the first part consists of the first twenty-seven chapters. In this part the chief characters are introduced and the two worlds of Mr. Bumble and Fagin are gradually interwoven with each other. The central section is comparatively short and covers nine chapters beginning with chapter twenty-eight. It is dominated by the Maylie family and it serves to provide an interlude and to ranify the plot. The third section, the conclusion begins with chapter twenty-seven. Here the whole action gathers to a climax and all the characters are brought together. The various puzzles are solved and a satisfactory ending is provided to Oliver’s story.
Charles Dickens was best known by his talent of a detailed description. In fact, nothing escapes his notice and his detailed description helps to portray the idea of the novel. Dickens gives a detailed description of every character, so that we can almost see the character in front of us as if in a dramatic play. When Oliver starts another stage in his life, the description of his journey to London and his sufferings on the way where there only a few people helped him was fully described where he also criticizes the social behavior. When Oliver joined the gang of thieves there is a very detailed description of the boy Charles Bates, who was one of the thieves and who made Oliver join him. Dickens pictures his appearance and behavior in a funny comic way. Oliver could serve as an example of Dickens’s misery. In Dickens’s life, his parents used to let him work even after their financial affairs improved; so as to get them more money. Dickens, as a child, did not feel the presence of his parents as he used to work all day. He is exactly like Oliver who did not have parents and missed them. In this new part in Oliver’s life, he lives under dark conditions, treated roughly, given the dog food to eat and pushed to sleep among the coffins. These darkening conditions reminds us of Dickens’s own life when he used to work in a factory for blacking bottles in an underground place. Dickens criticized the bad conditions of that time. As an example, a man could be hanged for steeling a piece of bread while, adultery may go unpunished. Dickens gave this picture clearly and that is why he used children because they are simpler and would affect the reader much more than adults. We can say that Dickens’s books mirror the transformation in society.
Dickens uses symbolic names of characters, and of scenery. His good characters are angelic and his monsters, or bad characters, are more convincing. The strength of the opening scene and other different convincing parts contributes to dickens’s symbolism. We have a sad atmosphere and dullness in nature being always foggy and that the whole city is covered with darkness as a result of dense fog. Fog is physical as well as spiritual, so all the atmosphere in nature is suitable to the situation of man inside him.
The contrasted relation of the two worlds, the under world of the workhouse, the funeral, the thieves kitchen and the comfortable world of Brownlow. It is this pattern of contrasting relations that stem the novel in our minds; what we do remember is the vision of the underworld of the first eleven chapters. This is clear in the horror of the Fagin, the fate of Mr. Bumble, the murder of Nancy and the end of Sikes. We notice that Dickens collects all the evil characters and describes them, their deeds and their bad behavior in four or five chapters. After this we have, in chapter twenty-nine, the description of the tender and good-natured people. Through the character of Nancy, Dickens wants to show that ill treatment and lack of love and generosity forces some good natured people to the road of criminals, and that some thieves are as criminals as such against their will in order to be able to live they steel. So there is a call for love and generosity. If Nancy and Oliver have found a good orphanage where they can eat and be comfortable, they would have been brought up to be useful citizens having a profession and working for their country.
When Dickens came to write his novels, he gave a very realistic picture. This realism over shadowed the ill-constructed plots. He experienced life at the first hand and this enabled him to write in this convincing manner. The early scenes of Oliver’s life are so realistic that they seem torn off rather than composed. The scene of his birth and his first cry which advertise, to the uni-mates of the workhouse, the fact of a new burden.
Dickens uses irony to indicate folly and evil. When Oliver is represented to the board; Mr. Bumble gave him a tap on the head with his cane to wake him up, and another on the back to make him lively. Humor is the sort of Dickens’s work, it is satirical at the cost of the workhouse officials, the social exploitation, the magistrate and lawyers and ruffians. Dickens is remembered mostly for the sake of his genial humor. There is a touch of sarcasm all over the novel and it starts from the beginning of the novel when the doctor says, “Oliver Twist would have cried louder if he knew his fate”. Dickens, also, says that England is so kind to allow the orphans to sleep. Beside, Oliver Twist was considered a criminal because he asked for more food. These are all sarcastic comments drawn by Dickens to clarify his satire or criticism on all feeble situations in the Victorian age.
 Oliver's Additional Notes
Oliver Twist was so popular because Dickens understood what his audience wanted to read and was willing to write it.  He gave them sentimental love scenes, a horrifying glimpse of the criminal underworld, a virtuous hero in Oliver, and nasty villains in Bill Sikes and Fagin. Yet, even though he was young and hungry for fame, Dickens wanted to do more than just entertain.  He challenged his readers to consider things they would rather have ignored.  He drew for them a picture of London's slums that was shocking in its realism.
The criminal underworld of Fagin, Nancy, and Sikes in Oliver Twist was as well known to Dickens as the workhouses and debtors' prisons. As a court reporter and journalist, he had met hardened criminals like Sikes and women like Nancy.  He had little sympathy for criminals like Fagin, who abuse and corrupt others, yet he knew that there were others--like Nancy and Charley Bates--who were criminals only because of their environment, and who might still be reformed. Dickens' sympathy for Nancy is clear in Oliver Twist.  Typically, he was motivated to get involved, to try to change conditions for girls like her before it was too late.  The 1830s were a time of growing concern about social issues and reform.  As a popular writer and public personality, Dickens had a power to do good.  Oliver Twist was the first of Dickens' novels to increase social concern and help bring about reform.
Dickens choice of Oliver's name is very revealing, because the boy's story is full of "twists" and turns.  These twists are eventually unraveled, and the truth about his family is discovered.  Oliver is a powerful character who symbolizes all abandoned and mistreated children who can be rescued by love. Dickens uses his skills at creating character to make Oliver particularly appealing. Everyone agrees that Oliver's moment of greatest glory comes when he announces to the master of the workhouse:  "Please, sir, I want some more."
Nancy is the hapless product of the slums, the pupil of Fagin, and the abused mistress of Sikes.  Although she is a prostitute and an accomplice of crooks, she has the instincts of a good person.  She protects Oliver as soon as she sees the threat to him, even though it means landing in trouble with Fagin and Sikes. For many readers, Nancy is the most important character in the novel. They argue that the most memorable scenes are the ones she is in--when she visits Fagin's den, when she waits for Bill to come home, or when she meets with Rose Maylie and Brownlow to help save Oliver.
The major action of Oliver Twist moves back and forth between two worlds: the filthy slums of London and the clean, comfortable houses of Brownlow and the Maylies.  The first world is real and frightening, while the latter is idealized, almost dreamlike, in its safety and beauty. The world of London is a world of crime.  Things happen there at night, in dark alleys and in abandoned, unlighted buildings. We can find examples when Oliver is kidnapped, and when Fagin meets Monks.  Such darkness suggests that evil dominates this world.  The rain and fog enveloping the city seem to intensify the dismal atmosphere.  You'll notice that Dickens often uses weather conditions to aid in setting a scene.  In Oliver Twist bad things often happen in bad weather.
In contrast to Fagin's London, the sunlit days and fragrant flowers of the Maylies' cottage or the handsome library at Brownlow's teem with goodness and health.  Many readers feel that the scenes set in these places are less memorable than those in the slums. The setting changes frequently, in no predictable pattern, but the greatest number of scenes are set in London.
Oliver Twist is written in many different styles.  At times the dialogue is lean and dramatic as, for instance, during Nancy's murder.  The story develops quickly and there are very few descriptive details that aren't directly related to the murder. His comic exaggerations, in descriptions of Bumble or the Bow Street Runners for instance, make most readers chuckle. Dickens' language can also be very sentimental as at the love scenes between Rose and Henry or the description of Oliver at the beginning of Chapter thirty. On the other hand, Dickens makes use of some street slang, especially the slang of thieves, which adds a distinct flavor to the story. The way Artful Dodger talks is a good example of Dickens' use of slang.
The language in Oliver Twist isn't hard to understand, and neither is the imagery and symbolism.  Evil people are described as dangerous animals or as typical stage villains.  The weather is usually cold and rainy when bad things happen.  This simplicity has helped to make Oliver Twist a very satisfying book to read.
Oliver: The Plot
Oliver Twist is born an orphan when his pretty mother dies in a parish workhouse to the annoyance of Bumble the beadle.  Oliver is raised by parish charity, unloved and overworked.  At the age of nine, after he dares to ask for seconds at dinner one night, he is sold to a local undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. Insulted by another partner, Noah Claypole, about his unmarried dead mother, Oliver gets into a fistfight and is eventually locked in the cellar for punishment.  Then, taking matters into his own hands, Oliver runs away to London.
The first person he meets in London is the enthusiastic Artful Dodger, who offers him a home with a "gentleman" named Fagin and his group of boys.  Oliver is happy there, until he discovers that they're thieves.  One day, while being trained by other boys, Oliver is arrested for picking an elderly gentleman's pocket.  In the courtroom Oliver collapses.  He attracts the pity of his accuser, Mr. Brownlow, who takes him home.  Oliver gets his first taste of kindness and wealth there as he is nursed back to health.
The first time Oliver leaves the house, Fagin's gang kidnaps him so he won't give evidence against them.  Back in the London slums, Oliver earns the affections of a young prostitute named Nancy who sticks up for Oliver when Fagin and her lover, Bill Sikes, try to abuse him. Unfortunately for Oliver, he's just the right size to help Sikes commit a robbery, and he is taken along on a dangerous job.  But, Oliver is wounded in the attempt and is taken in by the Maylies, the people Sikes wanted to rob.
In the months that follow, Oliver stays with Mrs. Maylie and her niece Rose and grows to love them.  He's sad that their attempts to find Mr. Brownlow are unsuccessful, but otherwise things seem perfect. Rose falls seriously ill but recovers. Rose has other troubles, however; her romance with Henry Maylie is impeded by the fact that, because she thinks she is illegitimate, she's unwilling to damage his political career by marrying him. Safe as he feels, Oliver dreams one night of his troubled past.  When he wakes, the evil Fagin and an unknown companion are outside the window.
One of Fagin's group named Monks, visits the Bumbles to buy the evidence of Oliver's parentage, a locket left by his mother.  Monks throws the locket into a river, then presses Fagin to recapture Oliver and make a thief of him.
Even though Oliver has been away, Nancy often thinks about him.  When she overhears conversations between Fagin and his strange friend, Monks, she becomes worried that Oliver is in danger.  She drugs Sikes and seeks out Rose Maylie who happens to be passing through London. Nancy reveals that Monks is Oliver's half-brother, and that, in order to keep an inheritance for himself, Monks may cause harm to Oliver.
Rose finally finds Mr. Brownlow and asks for his help.  They meet Nancy on London Bridge to learn more about Monks.  When they offer Nancy refuge, she refuses, insisting that she must go home to Sikes, whom she loves even though he is brutal to her.  What she doesn't know is that Fagin has had her followed and that her conversation has been overheard.  Angered by Nancy's betrayal, Fagin encourages Sikes to such fury that he beats Nancy to death.  Brownlow, using Nancy's information, locates Monks.  Evil Monks is, ironically, the son of Brownlow's best friend, and Oliver Twist is his illegitimate younger brother. Their father, who hated Monks' mother and loved Oliver's, wrote a will leaving most of his money to the younger son, Oliver, unless he turned out to be a criminal. That is why Monks plotted with Fagin to make Oliver a thief.  After wandering around for two days, Sikes is finally tracked down and surrounded by police in a hideout.  He hangs himself accidentally while trying to escape.  The threat to Oliver is eliminated.
Brownlow forces Monks to reveal the rest of his information: not only is Oliver entitled to a fortune, but also his mother was Rose Maylie's sister!  All at once, Oliver has money and a family too. The questions about Rose's parents are answered, and she can marry Henry Maylie.  Fagin is arrested, convicted, and hanged.  His gang is scattered.  Monks goes off to America, where he later dies in prison. Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver and they all live happily in the county.
 
 
PAMELA by Samuel Richardson
         Samuel Richardson is considered the first major English novelist who exercised a profound influence on the development of the novel. His novel Pamela is written in the epistolary form; in it, he combines sentiment and realism. It is often regarded as the first English novel to deal with the psychological bases of character. The story, narrated entirely through Pamela’s letters to her parents and friends, concerns a pretty servant girl’s successful resistance to the sexual assaults of her master. Her virtue is rewarded by marriage to her would-be seducer, who is reformed by her example of chastity. Through Richardson’s use of the epistolary technique, a kind of revolution in novel writing has been presented. He was able to give us that consciousness part in the mind of his heroine. Richardson claimed that he was not the writer of these letters, but they were actually written by a young maid and that he was only the editor. In his preface he told us the reason of editing these letters. The main reason is to delight and instruct the reader; he wanted to teach people, especially young maids, a moral lesson.
         The technique that Richardson used has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages of this epistolary technique is that we are aware of the feelings and the mood of the heroine at the time of their occurrence. For example, when Pamela wrote her first letter, she, innocently, trusted her master and did not expect him having any desire for her. She was very faithful in narrating and dramatizing incidents. We trust her because she always tried to give a sincere right and correct picture. When she suspected him, again, she was a very good observant. After her parents opened her eyes; she saw, for example, that her master was not a good person and that his offers (clothes, money, position) were not innocent. She recognized that he was trying only to win her favors in order to ask her for something else. The reader is aware of her feelings in a fresh way. More over, being more experienced, we can notice her innocence. Through her narration of events we are aware of things that she is not aware of.
One of the disadvantages of the epistolary technique is that in order to narrate the whole story, the writer has to produce a great deal of letters. That is what happens with Pamela; in her first letter, she tells her parents about some important things, but she also writes about trivial matters. For that reason we cannot say that the novel is written in a well-tight kind of writing, but there are so many irrelevant things. As a matter of fact, Richardson tried to make every thing relevant, but through using this style it is very difficult to do so. That is why the novel is bigger than if it is written directly.
   Richardson wanted to teach young girls how to deal with the temptations of their masters. The main reason for what he did is the age itself. At that time it was usual for masters to take their maids as mistresses and not marrying them because of the gap between the classes. The aim of the novel was to show that not all the girls are bad, but there are virtuous examples such as Pamela who knows how to protect her virtue. At the end of the novel, she convinced her master that she is really virtuous and he rewarded her by marriage and by accepting all of her conditions.
PAMELA, A GENERAL VIEW
         The novel is written in letterform. Richardson based his novel on a true story. He once heard about a widowed country gentleman who often repeated unsuccessful attempts to seduce one of his pretty maid servants and the story ended up by marrying her. Richardson’s aim in writing Pamela is to divert and entertain and at the same time to instruct and improve the minds of the youths of both sexes.
         After the death of her mistress, Pamela Andrews, a favorite servant, writes to her parents that her lady’s last words urged her son to care for “my poor Pamela”. This first exchange of letters between Pamela and her parents reveals an assumption that Pamela’s master will attempt to seduce her. This becomes clear when the father cautions his daughter against her master’s goodness. On Pamela’s side, she promises never to disgrace her family.
         The characters are well and lively portrayed. In the first place, we find Pamela’s father a religious and wise man that is really concerned about his daughter’s virtue. Mrs. Jervis serves as a trustworthy person. She is like a mother to Pamela. On the other hand, Pamela is pictured as simple and naive. She finds pleasure in the gifts she receives from her master. Although she seeks advice from her parents and Mrs. Jervis, she does not find her parents really justified in their fear for her virtue. She is somewhat proud when she mentions her beauty and how her master and lady Davers praise it.
         The novel is written in the realistic manner. It deals with real and actual people. The novel shows them in their real station of life. We enter into the minds of characters and reveal what is inside. This is best illustrated in Pamela’s reaction to her master’s gifts and the way she always seeks the advice of Mrs. Jervis and her parents. Any girl in her place would have done the same. The novel is also written in the first person singular rather than the narrative style and this gives a realistic depth to it. More over, the form of the letters always helps us to reveal the inner life of the character and not only the external part.
         What Richardson really invented was the dramatic novel; not merely the idea of writing letters. The epistolary technique is a mean not an end. It provides us with the means to know characters directly and not through a narrative vision. The letters are full of dialogue and description of action to convey the effect of watching a dramatic scene. Pamela, in her letters, conveys the actual words spoken by other characters. Besides giving us an element of realism, they help us discover things about the characters that they do not know about themselves.
         The element of probability plays a great part in Richardson’s novel. He uses this technique in order to prepare us for the coming action and at the same time to secure our credibility. He also makes use of details to add to the realistic atmosphere of the novel. Pamela is meticulous about every thing she describes. She gives accurate details about her relations with others, about her way of thinking, her reactions and the gifts she receives. This gives us more knowledge about her and others. Further more, we come to know Richardson’s characters by their vocabulary. Personal style becomes as important as personal action.
         Richardson’s choice of the epistolary method was a successful one; since it provided him with the means to develop, distinctly, different characters speaking directly to the reader. Since Richardson seeks refinement, his style is also refined.
 
 
Pride & Prejudice
Characters:
Elizabeth is able to attract the reader from start to end, as she combines both softness and hardness. There is a masculine strength in her character, clarity of vision and depth of thought that raise her above ordinary heroines. She understands the elements of human personality and that is why she is able to judge other characters as Mr. Collins. Although she makes mistakes, she is always able to correct herself.
 
Her idea about marriage is that it must be based on love, understanding and mutual respect. This was the reason for her refusal of Darcy at first. She refused his pride and his sense of superiority. However, when she discovers that he is not bad, she changes her opinion and accepts to marry him. Actually, she wins the affection of all readers.
Darcy seems to be very proud. He shows pride and speaks carelessly and insultingly while Elizabeth was hearing him, and thus deserves her coldness. Yet his strange behavior and pride may be justified; he is naturally awkward in company and shows shyness that may be taken as pride. Nevertheless, in the course of time, both Elizabeth and the reader discover the truth that is his sensitivity and intelligence. After his detailed explanation to Elizabeth, she changes her opinion about him
Mrs. Bennet is an empty-headed woman whose main business in life is to get her five daughters married. She is responsible for Lydia’s carelessness and bad manners, as she is negative in her treatment to her ill behavior. Her foolishness always causes Mr. Bennet to ridicule her. She also fails to see the virtues in Elizabeth and Darcy.
Mr. Bennet is intelligent, knowledgeable and always sarcastic. His main mistake is that he is always detached from the problems of his family; he simply lets his foolish wife bring up their daughters in her own foolish manner. He understands that he is responsible for the failures of his daughters. Yet, he does nothing to change their behavior, especially Lydia and Catherine. In a word, he is a weak father.
Jane is the most beautiful daughter among the Bennets. She is more beautiful than Elizabeth is, but she lacks Elizabeth’s wisdom, depth of vision and strength of character. She is portrayed as a character that reacts rather than acts; she is rather passive.
 
Mr. Bingley is a handsome, friendly and attractive young man. He seems to fall in love with Jane at first sight. He is able to make others like him but he has little strength of character to the extent that his love affair with Jane is controlled by Darcy’s views. He matches Jane very well.
Wickham represents the figure of the villain in the novel. He always tries to conceal his true character and is obsessed with the idea of finding a rich wife. He is simply a fortune hunter. He always uses his charm and wit to affect others; specially women.
Collins is a stupid man whose foolishness and artificiality arouse the reader’s laughter. His work as a clergyman has not spiritualized him and he is deeply affected by worldly matters such as money, position, and prestige.... Etc. he is morally empty, pompous and stupid.
Mary is a complete caricature. She is unable to establish normal relations with people around her, she retreats into her world by books, and even her communications with her family are limited.
Lydia and Kitty, both are stupid, empty-headed young ladies. Their main interest in life is men and parties. They have no values and no sense of responsibility as they are devoted to the life of dancing, dresses, gossip...etc.
Charlotte Lucas is Elizabeth’s friend. She is so practical and realistic that she realizes that she is not beautiful enough to attract a handsome, rich husband and this is why she accepts to marry the stupid Mr. Collins.
Lady Catherine De Bourgh is an aristocratic woman whose money and position encourage her to control others. She is very conceited and pompous.
 
The Theme of Love & Marriage
in
Pride & Prejudice
Jane Austen is called a family novelist. Her area of interest was to point “picture of domestic life in country villages”. In her novels, most of her characters had to be important members of a family. The reason for this is that Jane Austen’s own family was important to her. She never married and most of her life was devoted (given) to her family and her relatives. She appears to have used her family in more than one situation. In Pride and Prejudice, the importance of deep understanding and love, is reflected in the portrayal of marriage relationships among the different characters represented.
The theme of love and marriage is one of the major themes in Pride and Prejudice. Through five marriages, Jane Austen tries to define good and bad reasons for marriage. Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins, Lydia and Wickham, Jane and Bingley, Elizabeth and Darcy and the old marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet.
Mr. and Mrs. Bennet constitute a very ill-matched couple. It is clear that Mr. Bennet married her only for the physical beauty without knowing her own character and personality and without love and understanding. She is not able to understand people or life and she is rather narrow-minded and foolish. Consequently, Mr. Bennet had to pay the price of this unsuccessful marriage. Love, respect, understanding and confidence, vanished from his life forever. He becomes an irresponsible man and seeks peace of mind in the solitude of his library. He always makes fun of the foolish behavior of his wife and he fails as a father. His failure is reflected in the way he treats his daughters.
Concerning Charlotte Lucas we can notice that she has her own conception of marriage. To her, marriage is important only as much as it provides a home and financial security. She is not worried about whom she will marry as she is worried about if he will provide a security of home or not. Like her is Mr. Collins who is not sensible at all and capable only of conventional thinking. He thinks according to his society’s traditions. He wants to marry just because every man must marry. As a result of Charlotte and Mr. Collins’s marriage neither of them gets real happiness, on the contrary, Charlotte feels relieved and happy when Mr. Collins left the home. Ofcourse, their marriage failed.
The third marriage is between Lydia and Wickham. They eloped before getting married and their marriage is a very complex affair. Lydia is attracted by the external glamour of Mr. Wickham’s personality. She thinks that she is passionately in love with him. However, he married her only because his need of money. When Darcy meets them in London, Lydia is very serious about her marriage; while Wickham cannot resist the temptation of the financial relief. Their marriage has a weak base and is bound to fail.
Jane and Bingley are suitable to each other. They are similar and both are sweet and gentle. They are simple and they love each other very much. Jane feels that she is happy and she is emotionally in love with Bingley. She is mainly concerned with her own feelings. They never think ill of any body. They will be happy because Bingley is too good to offend and Jane is too good not to forgive.
The most significant marriage is that between Elizabeth and Darcy. When Darcy made his first proposal, he had no doubts of a favorable answer. He thinks that he is offering a prize that no reasonable woman can possibly refuse. Nevertheless, Elizabeth rejects his first proposal because of his way was bad and rude. Elizabeth and Darcy begin with prejudices and gradually move towards understanding. Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage is a strong one. She feels that she is happy and that means that she loves Darcy both emotionally and mentally. Their marriage is the most successful one in the novel because it is based on emotions as well as reason and mind.
Thus Jane Austen wants to convey that if you fail in marriage you will never be happy in your life. Moreover, this will have a damaging effect on your children. Her moral idea and opinion is that a successful marriage should be based on love, respect, and mutual understanding.
 
 
 
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: THE PLOT
In the neighborhood of the Bennet family's estate of Longbourn, Mr. Bingley, an attractive young bachelor with a good income, has moved into the neighborhood. He falls in love with the oldest of the five Bennet daughters, Jane. But his friend, wealthy and aristocratic Mr. Darcy, disapproves of Bingley's choice. Darcy considers the Bennet family to be socially inferior, and he plans with Bingley's sisters to separate the lovers. Meanwhile, Darcy is finding it hard to resist his own increasing attraction to Jane's next younger sister, the lively Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is prejudiced against Darcy because he seems so proud. She also suspects that he has interfered between Jane and Bingley. She is even more put off when she hears that Darcy has treated a young man, George Wickham, cruelly and unjustly. Wickham tells her that Darcy has denied him the inheritance that his godfather, Darcy's father, left him. Wickham courts Elizabeth, and his good looks, charming manners, and story of injustice at Darcy's hands win her sympathy and deepen her prejudice against Darcy.
Because Mr. Bennet has no son, his nearest male relative, Mr. Collins will inherit his estate. This man comes to Longbourn seeking a wife. He proposes to Elizabeth, who rejects him; even though marrying him would be the one way to keep Longbourn in the family. But he wins her best friend, Charlotte Lucas, a plain young woman who marries Collins to escape from spinsterhood into a safe, if loveless, marriage.
The story continues with an interweaving of plot and subplots. Elizabeth visits Charlotte, now Mrs. Collins. Darcy visits his aunt, Lady Catherine, who is Mr. Collins's patron. Darcy and Elizabeth meet constantly, and at last he proposes to her, saying with more honesty that he does this against his better judgment. She angrily rejects him, accusing him of destroying Jane's happiness and Wickham's legitimate prospects. Later, in an earnest letter, he tells her the truth on both counts: he did interfere between Jane and Bingley, but he did not treat Wickham unjustly. In fact, he says, Wickham is a thoroughly bad character. Elizabeth believes Darcy for once, and her prejudice against him begins to weaken.
Elizabeth goes on a trip with her aunt and uncle, the Gardiners. They come to Darcy's estate in his absence and are shown through the house. His housekeeper praises him for his goodness and generosity, painting a very different picture of him from the one Elizabeth has had. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Darcy himself arrives. He is full of courtesy to the Gardiners and very attentive to Elizabeth.
Bad news comes from Longbourn: The youngest Bennet girl, giddy sixteen-year-old Lydia, has run away with Wickham. Such a scandal must disgrace the whole family, and Elizabeth decides that now, just as her feelings toward Darcy have begun to change, any hope of his renewing his proposal is lost forever.
Darcy feels partially responsible for Lydia's elopement; he feels he should have warned the Bennets that Wickham once tried the same thing with Darcy's own sister. Besides, he is very much in love with Elizabeth. For her sake he searches out the fugitive couple, makes sure that they are legally married, pays Wickham's debts, and buys him a commission in the army. All this he does secretly. But, though sworn to secrecy, Lydia reveals Darcy's part in her rescue and Elizabeth realizes at last how wrong she's been about him all along.
Bingley, with Darcy's encouragement, proposes to Jane and is accepted. Soon Darcy makes his proposal again to Elizabeth. By now she has abandoned her prejudice and he has subdued his pride, and so they are married and all ends happily.
 
 
 Wickham first comes on the scene as the most attractive man Elizabeth has ever met. He pays attention to her and tells her about growing up in Darcy's estate. He claims that after Darcy's father's death, Darcy refused to provide for him. Elizabeth doesn't doubt Wickham's story for a moment. In fact, Wickham is the only real villain in the novel. He is a gambler and fortune hunter, forever in debt and forever seeking to marry a girl with money. As Elizabeth later learns, he once tried to elope with Darcy's sister. When he runs away with Elizabeth's sister Lydia, he is in fact running away to escape his debts, and he lets Lydia come along because she wants to go with him and he doesn't mind having a female companion.
Wickham tells Elizabeth that Darcy was jealous of his father's affection for him. In fact, Wickham has always been jealous of Darcy, who was born to wealth. Of course Wickham could have made a life for himself as a clergyman, or in the army. But his desire for pleasure and excitement makes it certain that he will never behave in a mature, responsible way.
By running off with Lydia, Wickham seems at first to have destroyed all hope of happiness for both Jane and Elizabeth. In the end, though, his behavior actually helps bring both pairs of lovers together.
 
  
Robinson Crusoe
By
Daniel Defoe
         Daniel Defoe is a man of great and varied activity. He was a journalist and a reformer. His method of writing was affected by other journalists in their objective method. Moreover, working as a reformer affected his life and his character. Defoe belonged to the middle class and so was his hero Robinson Crusoe. That was the reason he wrote about (250) novels talking about the middle and lower middle class. Defoe received a very simple education; this fact has its impact on his novels. Thus, we never have the classic elegance of his time.
         Defoe’s style is plain and simple; without figures of speech. There is nothing in his words to show any acquaintance to the classical culture. His style is the same used by common people. Thus, being a representative of the lower middle class, who lacks higher education, have a clear impact on his novel; especially in the matter of style. Furthermore, Defoe was quick at noticing things, he observed life and nothing could escape his notice. To him, it is interesting to create a realistic impression. He did not like to be a mere storyteller.
         Robinson Crusoe was based on the experience of a Scottish sailor who had been rescued after enduring over twenty-four years over a deserted island. To help giving his novel the air of truth, Defoe gives special importance for details. In Robinson Crusoe we know that the details create the illusion that the whole thing is a true account given by an observer or a witness. In the novel, many things are described minutely; the ocean, the ocean current, the cave which Robinson built, various kinds of fruits, vegetables, trees, the birds he catches, the animals he hunts and how he made his own cheese, butter, bread, chair, table and his umbrella. The details, also, covers the activities of the cannibals. These details give the novel the exact appearance of reality and also show Defoe’s knowledge of the men and women belonging to the lower middle class like Robinson Crusoe, his hero.
         Defoe’s characters are true to life; they are neither saints nor devils. People, for him, are just normal people who have vices and virtues. For example, this applies to Robinson and Friday. Friday is a cannibal, he is wicked but brave. Robinson, Defoe and the reader cannot blame him for being a cannibal. Friday was born a cannibal because nobody taught him which kind of flesh must be eaten. Defoe believes that there is a great amount of wickedness in man that is why he filled his novels with thieves, cannibals and highwaymen.
          As a realistic method, Defoe, in handling the ugly side of human nature, does not show humanitarian feelings. This means he is an objective writer in the sense that he does not sympathise with the characters he is presenting. For instance, he is representing Robinson as a man who is suffering a lot and in spite of that, he never shows pity for him. Although he is a representative of the lower middle class, exactly as Defoe himself is, Defoe never sympathises with his hero. To balance his attitude, Defoe has a rational out-look, he does not curse mankind and accepts human nature as it is. He says that if a person is wicked he must be forced by different circumstances to be so and that he did not shape himself. In the novel, Defoe does not even curse cannibals; he points out that these people has no contact with civilisation. They had no system of government or any revealed religion. That is why they are born cannibals; so we cannot blame them. Friday, although he is a cannibal, he is a human being who has human passions that any other human has.
         As a matter of fact, Defoe represents people as they are and not what they should be. However, once Robinson Crusoe teaches Friday who is a cannibal, and taught him that religion forbids eating human flesh, Friday becomes a religious man. Defoe believes that any bad man can be brought back to the path of goodness.
         Finally, the novel is a full account of Defoe’s realism in style, by using details and representing real characters. Moreover, it shows Defoe’s simple style in language that was a result of his weak higher education. Defoe, tried to represent his point of view and his beliefs, as a person who belongs to the lower middle class, through Robinson who is made to be part of the same class he belongs to.
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Moralisation and Characterisation
         During the eighteenth century people were pleased when given a moral idea or lesson; especially those who belonged to the middle class. In  Robinson Crusoe, whenever the hero achieves any success; Defoe attributes it to the mercy of God and makes Robinson regret his previous sins. Defoe had shown interest in social problems, vices and follies. He draws the attention to the vices of society and the dangers of industry. He warned that money should not be an end in itself. He discusses the idea of utility of things, by this, he is, once more, talking about money. His idea is that; if money is useful to you, that is right, but, if it is an end only, it is of no use. The moment Robinson is isolated on an island he is so miserable and pessimistic. He finds a large amount of money on a shipwreck; but money now is useless. Defoe says that money is good as far as it is going to be used. He is careful to point out the morals and instruct the reader, the necessity of a society is
 emphasised throughout the whole novel. Defoe emphasises on the fact that man needs company to live.
Robinson Crusoe is a self-made English man, he made himself by himself. He is wise, strong and brave. He is a man of action. He faces all the physical problems that a civilised man has forgotten. His mind guides him to God, he starts to think and realises that God exists in actual life. Robinson was the only survivor on an island, he has to make difficult decisions, solve many problems and discovers, at the end, that he is not happy and that he needs God and society.
         Robinson Crusoe is a hard worker. He becomes a great capitalist who owns a lot of money, but, still, he is a modest, honest and clever. He rescues a native from the cannibals and civilised him. Finally, he is allowed to leave the island and go back to society. Thus, the practical and the religious sides of his character come together at the end of the novel.
 
Realism in Defoe’s Robinson C.:
         The structure of the novel is typically realistic. It portrays life. The novel is written in the first person narration and the writer is considered the first witness and narrator of events. He represents one central character. The background about Robinson’s birth, family and where he lived is given to us. Events became more complicated when Robinson is shipwrecked on the island, and he starts to lead a very practical life.
         It is a one man novel where the hero appears in all the events and all other characters are minor. Robinson is a realistic character in the sense that he is not the same all through the novel, but he is capable of change and development. It is Robinson who represents a man conquering nature and who fills the picture as a truly heroic figure. He is capable of taking action and he is an active and dynamic character. He does his self-evaluation the moment he thinks of God and his past life, strange situations that he faces, and the resolutions that he takes.
         The method of characterisation is realistic in the sense that we see Robinson from the out and the inside, he tells us about his thoughts and feelings so we understand him better as events do not show or give us all the information. The writer deals with the psychology of Robinson, and that shows Defoe’s realism.
         There is a gradual sequence of events, it means that the novel is well organised with a beginning, middle and an end, in which the beginning bares the way for the middle and the end. Therefore, the novel would be a whole organic unit. There is neither shift of time nor digression in the novel. Events are related to each other. The novel is characterised by a straight forward direction of events, according to its internal laws.
         The setting of the novel is the physical environment in which actions take place. The novel is not limited to one setting and each setting has its own time and place. For example, we have the first setting in London in 1550. Another setting is when Robinson is on board of a ship bounded for London. The third setting in 1651 when he is on board of a ship bounded for the coast of Africa, and so on until he is shipwrecked on an isolated island where he spends most of his life. This is the central setting of the novel. Being precise about the dates adds to the realism of the novel and the writer.
         The novel represents the details and accurate description of objects and events. The shipwrecking, the storm in the sea, the weather, Robinson’s daily life on the island and the things, which he built, are all described in precise details. Defoe used a simple and clear language to suit Robinson’s ordinary life. All the time, Defoe puts the stress not on the island or on the dangers surrounding his hero, but on Robinson, the man himself. Daniel, sometimes, has to use repetition to make his words appeal to us in their exact and particular meaning.
 
 
 
Sense and Sensibility
by
Jane Austen
Introduction:
         Jane Austen is called a family novelist. Her area of interest was to point “picture of domestic life in country villages”. In her novels, most of her characters had to be important members of a family. The reason for this is that Jane Austen’s own family was important to her. She never married and most of her life was devoted (given) to her family and her relatives. She appears to have used her family in more than one situation. In Sense and Sensibility, the deep understanding and love between Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra, is reflected in the loving relationship between Marianne and Elinor.
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         This is the story of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood; sisters who represent the ‘sense’ and ‘sensibility’. They live with their mother, their sister Margaret and their stepbrother John and they form the Dashwood family. In Sense and Sensibility, the truth about people is the subject of Jane Austen. The theme of her novel seems to lie in the difference between the conduct of life of the secret, quite, good sense, and excessive sensibility. Jane Austen had a high standard of the human behaviour, she was not a social reformer but she recorded what happened around her through a medium of satire. She shows man in relationship to his society, failing or succeeding to carry out his duties. Her characters are not expected to support reform or to fight against poverty, but they have to be polite to others.
         In the novel, Elinor, the elder daughter has strength of understanding and a coolness of judgement. These features qualified her to be the councillor of her mother and to oppose to the advantages of the whole family. Elinor, simply, knows how to govern them. On the other hand, Marianne is never prudent, she is always eager whether in her sorrows or her joy. Her lack of common sense is shown when she objects to Edward Ferrars as a suitor for her sister just because he is not handsome enough. Soon, Marianne makes it clear that she regards Colonel Brandon as a man past all possibility of love. She is sensible, clever, generous and admirable. She has sense as well as sensibility, but, unlike Elinor, she is unable to use it for the proper control of her emotions. Throughout the novel, we compare and contrast the two sisters. Since they are constantly together, we are always aware of their individual responses to their company and surroundings.
          It is easy to see the contrast between the two sisters. When Marianne teases Elinor on her affections for Edward, she regrets having revealed her feelings and tries to explain the real case to her sister. Nevertheless, Marianne has no patience with her sister. We see the two sisters reacting very differently to uncertainties in love; Elinor keeps her unhappiness to herself, while Marianne develops her sensibility to the extent that her whole family is made miserable. The behaviour of the two sisters is directly contrasted. When Elinor realised that Edward has long been engaged to the vulgar Lucy Steele, she wept for him rather than for herself. On the other hand, when Willoughby behaves coldly towards Marianne, early, the next morning we see Marianne writing a letter of reproach to Willoughby who replies in an insolent letter. He informs her that his affection has been directed to someone else a long time ago. We soon realise that Marianne’s lack of self-control and self-knowledge is accompanied by an inability to understand people’s motives. She expected from other people the same opinions and feelings as her own. Marianne ignores society and acts only according to her own feelings. Finally, Marianne comes to see that Elinor acts courageously as well as correctly. She comes to acknowledge her faults and makes up for her previous selfishness by accepting her social obligations and marrying Colonel Brandon; not because his taste is similar to her own, but because she has grown up.
         In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen seems to have majored her characters against the standards of ideal behaviour; to say how far they are very close to these standards or at a distance from it. This moral concern with man in society was so great that we see it in her control and ironic treatment of minor faults. She criticised people who neglected their obligation to society. At the end, Marianne learns that the individual must obey some sort of morals and social behaviour. Jane Austen judges manners and morals by the standards of good sense. Generally speaking, her novel deals with faults that are not generally amusing. She gives a picture of society that, however narrow, it consists of different types of people leading a very ordinary life. Jane Austen believes that human nature is revealed in small incidents. Her novels where often described as epic of common life.
 
 
 
Silas Marner
by
George Eliot
The hero of this novel is Silas, who is a simple and trusting person. Silas has a deep love of God and his fellow man. George Eliot has chosen such a hero to make us feel sympathy for ordinary human beings as well as for the great tragic figures. Silas has grown up in the town and he has joined a small religious community called the Lantern Yard group. He is a weaver who works hard and receives very little money. However, he is contented and happy, because he feels secure. Any extra money he may have he gives to the Lantern Yard community. This gives his life a purpose; he works hard to support not just himself but also his fellow men and his religion.
         Silas has complete faith in God and in the community. That is why it was terrible for him to be betrayed by the man he believes to be his best friend and also, seemingly, by God. This caused a change in Silas’s character from a loving tender person to another who avoids his fellow men. This change was not self-willed but it has been caused by what has happened to him. He has a bitter feeling and a loss of purpose in his life.
         After what has happened he moves to Reveloe. With no one to love or work for, Silas turns to his money and becomes a miser. Because he has no joy in his life he slowly withers away and looks much older than he is. This is the way George Eliot shows what happens to man when love is withdrawn and a sense of belonging is lost. Through the events and after Silas has been a miser we find out that he has not completely changed. The suffering of Sally Oates arouses his sympathy and he helps her. However, he refuses to pretend that he has knowledge when he has not, he was and remains an honest man. Still there are signs that Silas’s feelings are not dead.
         These small incidents prepare us for Silas’s reaction when his money is stolen. He could not depend on himself and he turned to his fellow men. This is his first step towards recovery and belonging to the human community. The second step is the entry of Eppie into his life. Through her George Eliot shows the power of a child to restore a lost soul. Silas changed from a person feared by people to another one who is loved and respected. However, the most important thing that has happened was regaining faith in God and man. Silas’s life shows the need in each of us to love and be loved and the destructive results when this love is lost or rejected.
 The Characters of Godfrey and Dunstan Cass
In the novel, Godfrey Cass is not an evil man but rather weak and a moral coward. Godfrey will never intend to harm anyone, (unlike his brother Dunstan), but he is not strong enough to put  another person in front of himself, he will not sacrifice himself for others. For example, he will not declare that Eppie is his daughter for he fears to lose both his inheritance and Nancy Lammeter. At this stage, he tries to convince himself that Eppie would be living happier among the villagers than at the Red House. Later when he decides to declare that he is her father, he points out how undesirable it is to live with the villagers. At this stage of the novel, fate turns against Godfrey, Eppie desires to live among the villagers and would not like to live with him.
         Although George Eliot has represented some excuses to Godfrey, as the early death of his mother and the spoilt way used by his father to raise him up, but these excuses do not give a suitable reason for his actions. No clear or direct changes happen to Godfrey’s character; he confesses to Nancy not because he has gained courage or moral strength, but because he felt that his secrets and sins would be revealed eventually.
         Godfrey neglected his duties and rejected the love of his child. He, also, expressed a lack of human sympathy and understanding. This lack made him think that Silas would be happy to leave Eppie and let her live at the Red House. Godfrey thinks that it is Silas’s duty to see that Eppie lives in best possible circumstances.
         There is almost no change in Godfrey’s character except a little of self-realisation. At the end of the novel, he realises that rights and duties cannot be separated and the fate he suffers now is the result of his own actions many years earlier.
         Dunstan Cass is set in direct contrast to Godfrey. Godfrey may be weak, but he is not evil like Dunstan. Godfrey does not place other people in front of himself but his intentions are good and will not harm any one willing to do so. As for Dunstan, he has all the vices. He drinks too much, gambles, leads a loose life and gets happy by making other’s life miserable. He is trying to destroy Godfrey because he rejects the fact that Godfrey is his eldest brother. Dunstan is a flat character who shows no development. He has different evil deeds and faces his destiny as a villain.
 The Difference Between
The Country and The Town
The difference between the life in the country and the life of the town, is stressed clearly through-out the novel. Raveloe is a representative of rural England, it is untouched by industrialisation. It is situated in one of the most beautiful parts of England surrounded by a beautiful nature. The village people are described as simple and homely people, it is a well-connected community where everyone knows everyone else. People in the country help each other in time of need or distress. They showed a lot of kindness to Silas when he asked them for help. Even, their main reason for doubting the character of Silas, was his rejection of their company.
         On the other hand, the town is a place where nature is excluded and destroyed. Capitalism and industrialisation alienated people and had the spirit of individualism. Unlike the country that depended mainly on the spirit of co-operation. For Silas, the life was completely different; in Raveloe there was life in every activity and especially in religious celebrations, where, on the contrary, the town had no signs of life. When Silas went to the town, he was unable to find his own home. This shows how alienation is a main feature in the town’s life. When Eppie saw the town she said “O, what a dark ugly place....How it hides the sky!”.
         Eliot is pointing out the difference between the beauty of nature and the grimness of  the industrial town. The individuality of the town and its competitiveness, to the well-connected community and its belief in mutual help. The country is a place where religion is part of the social order, while the town has destructive beliefs, and in it Silas “isn’t in a hurry like the rest”.
 
 
SILAS MARNER
BY
GEORGE ELIOT
The writer of this novel is George Eliot who is a woman and her real name is Mary Ann Evans. She is an English novelist and one of the major nineteenth century writers. She was greatly affected by the scientific revolution, which was current at that time. George was born 1819, at the same time of Charles Dickens’s birth. The age and its happenings affected them both. She lived in rural England; isolated from the industrial revolution in the city. Attending different schools, she, quickly, showed a gift or an attitude for learning. Eliot showed a very strong tendency to religion too. By the time she was twenty years old, she became aware of the recent discoveries of science. Like many other intellectuals of the age, she was one of those who found it difficult to reconcile scientific facts with their own religious beliefs, within a very short time. She lost her own faith and deserted the Christian church. She met and made friends from the contemporary intellectuals. She loved George Henry, eloped to Europe and lived a natural married life till he died. Surprising her friends and followers, she married at the age of  61  a young man of  40. Finally, she died 1880, eight months after her marriage.
         Eliot was primarily concerned with people’s moral choices and their responsibility for their own lives. Her novels include Adam Bede, her masterpiece Middlemarch and Silas Marner. In Silas Marner, Silas is the name of the hero. Although, the hero, like George Eliot, faced the experience of losing faith in God and in man, we cannot say that the novel is an autobiography. Eliot uses completely different people and jobs. The main theme of the novel is a very religious one. Silas’s life begins in the city, but he picks up a new life in the country village. After some years of living there, he decided to return back to the city. Facing reality and changes that occurred in the city, he found out that every thing has become different. He was unable to find his own friends, his home and his church. Instead of finding both, his home and church, he found a factory.
 
 
 
A Sentimental Journey
L. Sterne was born in 1713, a grandson of an Anglican bishop. He studied at Cambridge. He wrote Tristrum Shandy which had an immediate success. His novel A Sentimental Journey was published 1768 and he died at the same year. With Sterne the sentimental novel reaches the extreme limit of its principle. Sterne threw a bomb shell scattering the well-made-plot into sand fragments. He wrote Tristrum Shandy with no plot at all, no heroine and no action and obeying no other law than that of caprice and random association. Sterne was a rebel in thought and style. He achieved an easy conversational manner in his prose. Sterne proved that ideas could take the place of episodes that were no less entertaining than action. He is influenced by Locke’s Essay on Understanding which propagated a theory of association of ideas. Sterne came to be responsible for a new school in the history of the English novel which followed the stream of consciousness technique. It is a phrase used to characterize the broken flow of thought and awareness of the human mind. In application to this theory we find that Sterne in A Sentimental Journey follows the technique of association of ideas and dissociation of time. That is why it does not follow the logical sequence of narration. For example, the novel begins in the middle of a conversation and ends in a middle of a word. The incident of the passport and the preface which should come at the beginning are recounted in the same order as they came to his mind. Moreover, there are no punctuation marks and the conversation proceeds making it hard to find the end of the sentence. With Sterne, time stresses the relativity of all existence. To Sterne time as well as external happenings are unimportant. What is of great importance is the interior emotion. He comments on the action to move us to tears and to show us the darkness of life. Sterne says “When the heart flies before the understanding it saves the judgment a world of pain”. He also gives humorist comments on the action to show the absurdity of life as in the dead ass’s incident. Sterne cannot be accused of being unrealistic in his sentimental philosophy. Between every now and then he gives us a link with his present situation. Sterne is considered a pioneer in giving us a psychological prospect of the human mind which is not systematic.
Although Sterne is an 18th century writer, he is considered as a modern one. Sterne took his method, largely, from the picaresque tradition. He is not much interested in stories. With little plot, the reader is left with the flow of casual and intimate conversation. The design of the book was to teach us to love our fellow creatures better than we do. Sterne’s technique was followed by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce and his style was considered important in the novels relying on the association of ideas. Any shapeless novel reminds us of life.
Sterne is a humorist and all what he does is the providence of a picaresque novel. He wants to stress on the moment we live. Time for him is unimportant, external happenings are unimportant, the inner situation of man and his sentiments are the most important. Instead of logical arguments of ideas Sterne offers us impressions.
A Sentimental Journey appears to be a literal diary of travel but it contains something of autobiography fiction because he puts so much of himself in the novel. Sterne made an original contribution to the technique of fiction. As he was influenced by Locke, one of the ideas he adopted from him was that time is a subjective relative thing governed by succession of our ideas, moving swiftly or slowly in response to our moods. As a characteristic of the picaresque we see Yorick speaks to himself when he addresses things of France mentally, he is not speaking to anyone. He reacts according to the mood.
In the novel, he starts a train of philosophical argument. When he is riding the coach he starts thinking as we might get lost in his thoughts, a journey through a sentimental mind not a physical one. He wants to link the interior monologue with actual reality that is there. A Sentimental Journey narrates the journey of an English man, Yorrick, to France, and Italy as an answer to an impulse. He undertakes the journey without any preparations. It is not a description of different places but his reaction to scenes and people. It is not a physical journey but a sentimental one. Sterne is responsible for a new trend in the history of English novel because he introduces a new level of human experience; the whole emotional life of man.
 
 
 
TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES
THOMAS HARDY
THE PLOT
 
In a valley in Wessex lives a teenage girl, Tess Durbeyfield, her six younger sisters and brothers, and her parents, John and Joan.  One day Tess was dancing in the local club-walking festivities. There was an important male at this all-women dance; Angel Clare, a young man on a tour with his brothers.  He notices Tess but doesn't dance with her, which hurts her feelings.
Mr. Durbeyfield spends most of the night drinking, and one morning he is too hung over to take his produce to market.  Tess, a very responsible young girl drives the goods to market herself.  Unfortunately she is not used to controlling the horse, Prince, and she is also very sleepy. When she falls asleep, Prince runs into a passing wagon and dies.  Prince's death makes Tess feel guilty, as if she were a murderess. She does not want to go begging, but her guilt over Prince's death and her family's need push her on.  She comes to the d'Urberville estate and is taken in by Mrs. d'Urberville's son, Alec.  Innocent Tess has no idea that Alec is not her cousin, which makes it easy for him to take advantage of her.  He gives her a job tending his mother's chickens. Finally one night in the old wood known as The Chase, he rapes her.
For reasons that are unclear, Tess remains with Alec for a few weeks after the rape.  She hates herself for staying with a man she cannot love.  Tess leaves without giving him a chance "to do the right thing" and marry her.  Tess learns she is pregnant.  She has the child, but it dies soon after birth.  She never tells Alec about their baby until they meet again at Flintcomb-Ash.
In disgrace at having a child without marriage (a heinous crime in Victorian England), Tess hires herself out as a dairymaid in the distant Var of Froom.  Here she hopes to forget the past.  Tess begins to recover, when she meets Angel Clare. She fears he will recognize her, but Angel does not remember seeing her at Marlott on that club-walking day so long ago.  He is a gentleman and his eyes are on the future and the farm he hopes to start someday.  The youngest son of a preacher, Angel refused to become a clergyman because he believes in following the spirit of the Bible rather than the letter.  Angel is a near-atheist who lives in dreams of an earthly paradise where humankind and nature form their own harmonious religion.
Tess and Angel fall in love, but Tess refuses to marry Angel.  She believes that because she is not a virgin she would be an unfit wife for such a wonderful man. Tess keeps trying to interest Angel in the other girls whom she is sure are worthier than herself.  Finally Tess gives in and agrees to marry Angel.  Several times before their wedding she tries to tell him about Alec and her dead baby, but either Angel would not listen or something happens to interrupt her confession.  On their honeymoon night, the two lovers trade confessions.  When Angel tells Tess of a brief affair he had, she forgives him.  But when Tess tells of her affair with Alec, Angel refuses to forgive her.  Angel is a romantic idealist and is afraid that the innocent woman he married is not the real Tess at all.
Although Angel loves her, he is convinced that they must separate.  Tess is heartbroken but agrees to her husband's will.  She returns to her parents.  Angel goes off to Brazil, hoping that a foreign culture will change his.  He hopes that someday he and Tess can live there together.
Tess cannot stand living with her family and feels like a failure.  Leaving them half the money Angel gave her, she sets off to work on a farm called Flintcomb-Ash. After sad incidents she meets Alec d'Urberville, who has become a preacher. As soon as Alec sees Tess he forgets his high ideals and wants her back.  This time he tries to combine duty and desire by asking her to marry him.  Of course Tess refuses; she is already married to Angel.  In addition she would never consider marrying anyone she did not love.
Alec becomes obsessed with mastering Tess. When Tess' parents become ill and her father dies, the Durbeyfields lose their shelter and are out on the streets.  Alec again tries to convince Tess to live with him.  He promises to educate her beloved brothers and sisters and to protect her dear mother.  Still Tess has the strength to refuse his proposition, thinking she will find a way to support her family herself.  The Durbeyfields set up camp at the ancient d'Urberville burial vaults.  Alec follows Tess here, and we feel that she is too exhausted to resist much longer. She has written Angel a few pleading letters but has received no response.
Meanwhile, Angel, who has been seriously ill in Brazil, realizes that People should be judged by their intent as well as by their deeds. He believes that Tess has always tried to do the right thing but that circumstances were against her. Angel returns home to forgive his deserted wife.  He learns from Mrs. Durbeyfield that Tess is at a luxurious sea resort.  When he arrives he begs her forgiveness and asks her to come home with him.  Tess is shocked to see Angel, for she had given up all hope of ever seeing him again and had accepted Alec's offer of protection.  Tess tells Angel the truth and demands that he leave.  He refuses.  Driven by frustration and remorse, she murders Alec, whom she considers the source of all her unhappiness. Tess then runs after Angel, sure that he will forgive her now that she has eliminated the root of all their problems.  Angel does not quite believe that sweet Tess could kill anyone, but he takes precautions and they flee.  Angel and Tess celebrate their wedding and honeymoon in a deserted mansion.  Within a few days they sense that their hiding place has been discovered and once again move on.  Tess is fearless now.  Though Angel is tender with her, she feels that their relationship could never stand all that passed between them.  She would be happy to die.
Angel and Tess find themselves at Stonehenge, where pagan gods were worshipped, and Tess falls asleep on the sacrificial altar.  The police find her sleeping there.  When she awakes, they arrest her. Tess is tried for Alec's murder.  Before she is hanged, she requests that Angel care for and marry her innocent younger sister Liza. Angel and Liza watch the hanging and then trudge off together, hand in hand.
 
 Tess of D'. Criticism
Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset 1840; he spent his childhood in a fertile rural region, full of old folk superstitions, ballads, and fatalistic beliefs. At the same time, modern industrial life was creeping into Dorset and its old-style farming life was fast fading.  In many ways, Thomas Hardy lived between the Old World and the new, trying to balance between the two in his fictional creations. The Victorian Age in which Hardy lived was alive with contradictions and conflicts.  While people were supposed to live in accordance with the Bible, they took the sacred words in a harsh, literal sense rather than with a spirit of mercy and compassion. The novel shows how unjustly Tess is treated by a society that obeys the letter rather than the spirit of the law.
Tess is one of the few tragic novels in the Victorian fictional tradition.  A tragic novel is one in which a noble character is pitted against unfavorable fates and fights for her ideals against a world that is primarily beyond her control. Few novels concentrate as completely on one character as does Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Hardy traces Tess' life from the age of sixteen until she dies in her early twenties. Tess is an unusual girl, full of contradictory emotions and actions. On the one hand she is independent; on the other she is shy and easily victimized.  It is helpful to see her as a character caught between the old and new social orders, independence and dependence, spirituality and passion.
Most readers are divided into two camps on Tess; they see her either as a victim of fate and society or as a heroic figure responsible for her own tragic fate.  In his portrayal of Tess, Hardy begins with the Victorian type of the innocent seduced girl whose life is ruined by those less sensitive than herself.  But Hardy takes his heroine beyond this popular Victorian type, by beginning the book with her "fall" and dealing with her will to survive. Instead of committing suicide, Tess tries to go on living and loving, staying true to her intentions and feelings.
Tess blames herself harshly for innocent mistakes. She wants to better herself, not socially but as an individual. This is what attracts her to Angel Clare. Although she tries to live a modern life, she finds herself attached to beliefs in fate and omens.  When we compare her to Angel and Alec she seems fresher and even wiser.  Unlike these men, she tries to combine thought and feeling.  She is a daughter of the earth rather than of the intellect.
Tess is often described as a very beautiful girl and men are always pursuing her, either for purely sexual reasons or because she represents an unformed life waiting to be formed.  People are always judging, pursuing, or rejecting her.  Tess does not try to change people; she respects their dignity and lets them make their own choices, though she is there to help them in times of need.
Tess' relationships with Angel and Alec are major points in the novel.  Alec reflects her sensuality but she rejects his love because he does not seem to care sincerely for people. Angel, her true love, is forever trying to reach the highest and best in life.
Angel calls Tess a heathen (atheist), and Alec treats her like one.  Tess is religious, though not in a conventional way.  She believes in being good but refuses to believe that God would care more about the letter than the spirit of the Bible. She takes tender care of the wounded animals left in her charge. Tess also has a violent side. It is this part of Tess that comes out against Alec and eventually drives her to murder him.
Her attitude with Angel is the complete opposite of her anger with Alec.  Angel brings her sweet nature. One of Tess' big mistakes is to let Angel's disappointment in her affect her so deeply; it nearly drives her insane. Tess is a tragic heroine; she has a soul that is destined to suffer and die. From the start of the novel we sense that she's playing a losing game, though we can't help but hope for her each time she picks herself up from despair and moves bravely on.
Most important, Tess is herself.  She never tries to be more than she is.  Tess always reminds Angel and Alec that she is a poor, simple dairymaid.  She's not trying to become a grand lady.  Tess' goals are to be happy and to make those she loves happy, to try to live a good and giving life in a difficult world.
Tess' story is that of a woman who tries to respond to the changing world around her with honesty and integrity.  She can be viewed as an independent, active heroine who chooses suffering.  She can also be seen as a victim either of society or of her own nature, who has no choice but to let herself be destroyed.
TESS: Additional Notes
  Tess takes place in rural southern England in an area called Wessex. The countryside is almost a character in Tess.  Much of the time the settings reflect what's happening to Tess and the characters who influence her life. Each station or place where Tess stops is a testing place for her soul. Hardy's Wessex is so varied that it can be seen as a microcosm of the world.
 The novel is about Tess--her personality, trials, growth, and development. Tess of the D'Urbervilles concentrates almost single-mindedly on the life of its heroine.  The other characters are important only insofar as they affect Tess' fate.  Tess can be viewed as the symbol of challenge against the morality and religious dogma of the old order, and the skepticism of the modern world.  Tess' story is that of a woman who tries to respond to the changing world around her with honesty and integrity. Tess as a social novel represents the old agrarian order against the new industrial order. Alec represents the new middle-class rulers of Britain.  Men like Alec have much money and power, but unlike the old rulers, their power comes not from the land but from industry.  As a symbol of the new order Alec is estranged from nature, irresponsible, unfocused, and insensitive.  On the other hand, Tess is seen as warm, charitable, in harmony with the land, but also exhausted.
  In the novel, we can notice how nature reflects the characters' emotions and fortunes.  For example, when Tess is happy, the sky is blue and birds sing.  When events turn out badly the earth appears harsh to her agony.  Nature is also depicted in the many journeys that take place in Tess. We can notice that nears the end of Tess's life she doesn't want to move at all. Tess' life begins and ends in the spring, that she falls in love during summer months, and she marries in the dead of winter.  Even her story is divided into seven phases. Rather than calling these sections of the novel parts, Hardy uses the word phases to emphasize that Tess' life is part of a cycle that includes all of nature.
  Many readers think that Tess describes a world in which people are at the mercy of circumstances beyond their control.  They point to the fact that, regardless of what Tess does, everything and everyone turns against her.
 
 
 
The Pilgrim’s Progress
by John Bunyan
         John Bunyan was a member of a very poor class in society, he was not highly educated, and he led an ordinary life that could be considered neither sinful nor a life following the path of God. He married twice and that was a main cause for his sense of being sinful. At a certain stage in his life, he felt that God is angry with him. After suffering for a long time, and after tending towards reading the Bible, he started to find a way out. As a result of his suffering, and, consequently, after reading more, he found out that God forgives us for all of our sins. God is merciful and forgives those sins committed out of ignorance. The Bible, also, affected Bunyan’s language; it taught him how to write an English novel. As a result of his suffering and his reading he felt that it is his duty to relief people and teach them that they must not be desperate, and that God is merciful. Being an ordinary person and not a priest or a churchman, he was imprisoned for his preaching. During twelve years of imprisonment he started, unintentionally, to write a novel about salvation and the path of God.
         Bunyan, in his novel, and affected by the Bible, wrote it in the same style. He used the same direct straightforward language together with the same kind of imagery. He used the same kind of personification, the same symbolism and the same use of allegory (Allegory in literature, is a symbolic story that serves as a disguised representation for meanings other than those indicated on the surface. Its characters are often mere embodiments of moral qualities). He wanted to reach millions of people and to convey his sermons in the form of a novel. Through the novel and through the use of allegory, we find that the concrete form of meaning or the surface meaning reveals another hidden meaning, which is the spiritual.
         The names used in the novel are the names of the Bible. For instance, we have Evangelist ( adjective from Evangel = Bible) which is a personification of the Bible. Moreover, the name Christian has its clear significance and reference to the Bible. Furthermore, the end of the journey is the same end mentioned and described in the Bible. As a matter of fact the influence of the Bible could be summed up in the directly taken verses, the names, the end of the journey, the style with its imagery, personification and symbolism, the moral philosophy in the novel, and the logical sequence of the theme.
         In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian, the hero, became aware that he carries a heavy burden on his back and he wishes to run away from his native city. Allegorically, he is in a spiritual progress to reach salvation for his soul, and his burden that he carries on his back is a
 symbol of his sense of sinfulness. The Evangelist who supports Christian is another symbol of the Bible supporting men on their way towards salvation. Christian leaves his home and his family in order to seek eternal life in the kingdom of heaven. The first difficulty that Christian meets is when he falls into the Slough of Despond which signifies despair and the loss of hope but he is able to get out of it by the help of a man called Help. Help shows him how to climb up symbolising faith in Christ. After that Christian is misled by a man called Mr. Worldly Wiseman, who leads him to a village called Morality where a man called Mr. Legality lives. This is a symbol of the established church in England that Christian should follow. However, once more, Evangelist shows him the right way and is able to guide him to the wicket-gate that symbolises Christ and Mr. Good-will opens the gate. Further, on Christian’s journey he arrives to the Interpreter’s house where he sees pictures, each with a valuable lesson. Soon, afterwards he arrives at a place where he sees the Cross and he feels that the burden he carries felt off his back. This symbol shows that Christ had secured a pardon for him from God but still he has a long way to attain salvation. After covering some more distance, Christian is allowed to enter the Palace Beautiful, armed from head to foot to face any danger, and he meets some young women and maidens each symbolises a kind of virtue. The palace is also a symbol of a church where the followers of the Lord gather to discuss religious matters. Then, by entering the Valley of Humiliation, Christian fights the devil symbolised as a monster called Apollyon and defeats him by faith symbolised as a sword. After that, Christian enters the Valley of the Shadow of Death where many pilgrims have failed to pass but he succeeds by praying to God. (The significance of The Valley of the Shadow of Death will be discussed later).
         On his way to the Celestial City, Christian gets company of a man called Faithful and on their way they meet Mr. Talkative, who is a symbol of those who talk and do not act, and so they have no way for salvation. Going further they enter Vanity Fair where they neglect all the merchandise because they are seeking truth only, while the merchandise are all the worldly pleasures that face human beings. They are imprisoned and in a trial, Faithful is sentenced to death. Christian, now, gets another companion whose name is Hopeful. They meet Mr. By-ends who represents people who act like religious men to get different kinds of benefits, and they also meet a man called Demas who tries to tempt them by offering all the silver they can get out of his mine. After that, and through a mistake, Christian and Hopeful enter By-path Meadow where they fall in the hands of a giant called Despair who imprisons them in Doubting Castle. He urges them to commit suicide but Hopeful plays an important roll in helping Christian not to fall into despair and commit the evil deed. Christian, then is able to unlock the prison’s gate with a key called Promise that symbolises the promises
 assured by Christ to his followers. By this stage, Christian has passed the most difficult part in his journey toward the Celestial City and the worst is now over.
         Christian and Hopeful reach the Delectable Mountains and they feel greatly refreshed, then they overcome the temptation of sleep on the Enchanted Ground and finally they reach the River of Death. Christian finds it hard to pass the river but he is able to succeed by the help of Hopeful. Finally, the two pilgrims enter the Celestial City or the heavenly Jerusalem, which is their destination.
         The whole story, through allegory, asserts that by faith, hope, and determinism; man can reach the salvation of his soul. Through his journey towards salvation, man must overcome his spiritual doubts, despair, and all kinds of desires. Moreover, man cannot attain salvation except when he gains the grace of God.
The Vanity Fair Episode
         On their way to the Celestial city, Christian and Faithful arrived to the town of Vanity. Previously, and before they reach this town, Evangelist warned them that at this place they will face a lot of troubles and many unpleasant situations, and that one or both of them might be put to death by the people of that town. The fair is called Vanity Fair because it is full of trivial and worthless merchandise. It was built in this place to attract the attention of the pilgrims on their way and to prevent them from reaching their destination. The merchandise sold at this fair included houses, lands, trades, places, honours, promotions, titles, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures and delights of all sorts such as whores, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, gold, pearls, precious stones and a lot more.
         Both pilgrims avoided these pleasures and they explained that they were on their way to the heavenly Jerusalem and that they did not wish to buy any of the things that were on sale at that fair. Consequently, they were humiliated by the traders and imprisoned in a cage. The people of the country were divided into two groups; one is sympathising with them and the other sees that they deserve what is happening to them. As a result, a quarrel broke between the two groups and the two pilgrims were put on trial as they are considered the cause of these acts of violence. After the trial, Faithful, who cursed the devil and his followers, was tortured and then he was burned and met his death.
         In this episode, Bunyan shows the difference between the material world and the spiritual one. The Vanity Fair with all of its merchandise, symbolises the material world and the material comforts and pleasures. The material world offers all sorts of tempting articles and pleasures to human beings, but the spiritual world demands self-sacrifice and self-denial. In Bunyan’s view, even the family relations have a commercial value. There is a high contrast between the values of Christian and the values of the town and its people. Even, the judge’s name is Lord Hate-good, and the names of the jury are Mr. Blind-man, Mr. No-good, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty and other similar names that are clear in their significance.
         The whole episode illustrates the necessity of choosing one of the two modes of life, the life of physical pleasure, and the heavenly life meant for those who can keep away from worldly temptations of all kinds.
 
Pilgrim’s Progress, Part 2
         Part two describes the pilgrimage of Christian’s wife whose name is Christiana. First she refused to go with him, but on knowing that her husband has reached the Celestial city she began to think of going in a similar pilgrimage. After that a man called Mr. Secret comes to her house and tells her that God is ready to forgive her and that God wants her to go to Him so that He might feed her with the meat of His house. After that, she takes her four sons on their way to the Celestial city. Even when a neighbour called Mrs. Timorous accused her of being mad, she continues on her journey. Another neighbour called Mrs. Mercy offers to accompany them on their pilgrimage.
         When Christiana reaches the Slough of Despond she benefits from her husband’s experience and passes it carefully. She follows the same route until she reached the wicket-gate, passed it and escapes the danger of two ugly and dangerous men by the help of a good man. When the group arrives to the Interpreter’s house, they receive many instructive scenes. Before they leave, the Interpreter sent with them Mr. Great-heart who will guide them on their way on, and then they reached the Cross. At the Cross there is a moral lesson pointed out by Christina, this moral lesson is that the sinners should Seek God’s forgiveness in order to be relieved of the burden of their sins.
         While the journey is in progress, they face a giant called Grim. Christiana faces him in courage, Mr. Great-heart fights him, and they continue on their journey. Christiana and the others reach the Palace Beautiful where they are warmly welcomed and she is provided with a chart that would help her on her sacred journey. The journey continues and all the dangers of the journey are overcome because of the protection that Mr. Great-heart provides.
         Other pilgrims join Christiana on the way; one of them is Mr. Honest who tells her about her husband and his journey that proved that he is faithful and courageous. At the inn of Mr. Gaius, her elder son marries Mercy and her other sons, who grew up during the journey, got married too. On moving, they arrive to a place close to the Celestial city, which is called the land of Beulah. At this point, a call comes from the lord of heaven for Christiana to enter the Celestial city, and finally she reaches her destination.
         Through Christiana’s journey, we can notice that she did not face the same dangers her husband faced. Yet, she showed that she is a determined, willing to learn, receptive to instruction and has an excellent temper. This led her to the Celestial city and the salvation of her soul. Just like her husband with the support of Evangelist, she went through the way by her faithfulness and the guide provided by Mr. Great-heart.
Pilgrim’s Progress, Synopsis:
Christian’s victory over Appollyon:
The monster stands for the Devil, who is always trying to win human beings and to let them leave the path of God. Christian is able to defeat this monster with a sword that symbolises faith. Christian’s victory shows his rejection of the Devil’s temptation. (This happened in The Valley of Humiliation).
The Valley of The Shadow of Death:
It is a fearful place full of ghosts, dragons and strange creatures. The place is also full of traps and deep holes. Christian also sees blood, bones and skulls of the pilgrims who passed before him and were killed by two giants. Unable to use his sword he used a weapon called All-prayer. The place symbolises the spiritual doubt that could be overcome by faith and praying to God.
 
 
The Mayor Of Casterbridge
by
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy lived till the 20th century. He had his doubts about religion. He lived in an age where the belief in religion was threatened. According to him, if there is no God, there is no one to care about humans. That is why the universe created in Hardy’s novels is very pessimistic. For him, if there is no one to look after the human beings, then there is no hope, and nature is not generous; it does not care about human beings, on the contrary it is evil. In Thomas Hardy’s novel, it is the individual and nature, or the individual and fate. According to him, the individual is not capable of changing anything. Hardy was attempting something very different from the aims of most Victorian novelists. His characters stand in relation to other things; the weather, the seasons, nature and fate. Hardy’s faith in Christianity went early, and it went mainly through the apparent challenge of science. He lived at a time when the belief in Christianity was more difficult than it has ever been. In his novels, man is tossed here and there in ruthless struggle for survival in which the talented and strong spirited suffer more as they proudly try to resist the sweep of destiny. Nature, fate, and destiny are not sympathetic with man. If we lost faith, it is a total loss and there was no alternative than to be miserable.
 In The Mayor Of Casterbridge, the central character is punished because he has aspirations. Hardy was scarcely a moralist.  In his universe, between the forces of nature and man’s aspiration, there could be no reconciliation, they were eternally opposed. From the human view, the working of nature appeared aggressive or indifferent. Nature is malevolent with Hardy. Thomas Hardy’s novels are always seen as a triangle with nature as one of its ends, the other is destiny, and the third is man facing both. Man’s chances are very little, faced with destiny, which is coincidence, fate, and things that he cannot control, and nature which is blind to man. According to him, those who abide by nature and follow its rules, are the ones who are going to live to the end, but those who challenge or try to change are the ones who are not going to succeed at all. For Hardy, there is no hope with the character that tries to rebel against order and nature.
The Mayor Of Casterbridge is a dramatic novel, in which a number of characters interact upon one another in a complex pattern of different lines. The novel opens with Henchard, his wife and baby daughter arriving at Weydon-Priors fair.  It is a scene.  Here Henchard gets drunk and vents his bitterness and frustration at being unemployed on his marriage. Henchard was a tragic hero, but he was not of noble birth, he was of noble nature. He is honest and courageous but his only defect and flaw of character was his hostile destiny. Henchard is faced with an evil fate. His death is the end of the tragic hero.
At the heart of The Mayor of Casterbridge ‘there is a sense of the cruel irony of life Hardy sums up his philosophy  in the last paragraph.  It is the key-note of The Mayor of Casterbridge.  Life gives bitter blows . The sense of an evil fate overlooking man’s life hangs over the novel. It is a novel of helplessness in the face of the circumstances of life.’  There is a consistent emphasis on the helplessness of individuals, of the hopelessness of the human situation. The Mayor of Casterbridge is said to be the most hopeless book ever written. The phrase “they do not come out of their experiences finer than they went in” is repeated like, a silent accusation of Hardy’s Godlessness.
 
 
The Return of the Native
by
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy lived till the 20th century, he came after George Eliot. Both, Hardy and Eliot, had their doubts about religion, but the response of each is different. They both lived in an age where the belief in religion was threatened. George Eliot’s loss of belief in God gave her more belief in man. She represents Humanism, that is why her Dorthea could still achieve something, and that is why at the end of all George Eliot’s novels we still see such rhyme. On the other hand, Thomas Hardy had a different response towards the loss of belief in God. According to him, if there is no God, there is no one to care about humans. That is why the universe created in Hardy’s novels is very pessimistic. For him, if there is no one to look after the human beings, then there is no hope, and nature is not generous; it does not care about human beings, on the contrary it is evil. Whereas ,George Eliot and most of the Victorian novelists represented the conflict between the individual and society. In Thomas Hardy’s, it is the individual and nature, or the individual and fate. According to him, the individual is not capable of changing anything.
         Hardy was attempting something very different from the aims of most Victorian novelists. His characters stand in relation to other things; the weather, the seasons, nature and fate. Hardy’s faith in Christianity went early, and it went mainly through the apparent challenge of science. He lived at a time when the belief in Christianity was more difficult than it has ever been. In his novels, man is tossed here and there in ruthless struggle for survival in which the talented and strong spirited suffer more as they proudly try to resist the sweep of destiny. Nature, fate, and destiny are not sympathetic with man. While, as for Eliot, those who were talented were appreciated. In her novels, the individual who really succeeds is the one who manages to be sympathetic to other human beings. In Middlemarch, Dorthea, from the very beginning, was supposed to be more religious, but her sympathy was very limited and she was self-centred. As she learnt more, she became more humanitarian and expanded her sympathy to other human beings. In George Eliot’s novels, she tries to say that even if we lost faith, then we can be more sympathetic towards each other. Whereas, with Thomas Hardy, it was a total loss and there was no alternative than to be miserable.
         David Cesil said about Hardy “Christian teachers have always said that there was no alternative to religion but pessimism, that if Christian doctrine was not true, life was a tragedy. Hardy agreed with them.” Here lies the difference, between Hardy and Eliot. In The Return of the Native, the central character is punished because she has aspirations, whereas Dorthea as she starts learning, becomes more sympathetic and learns from experience. She will be rewarded not punished. The loss of faith compelled George Eliot to stress faith in man and the individual’s responsibility for his actions. For Eliot, moral choice is the central and most important feature of human life, but Hardy was scarcely a moralist at all. In his universe, morals were beside the point. Between the forces of nature and man’s aspiration, there could be no reconciliation, they were eternally opposed. From the human view, the working of nature appeared aggressive or indifferent. Nature is benevolent with Eliot, and malevolent with Hardy. Thomas Hardy’s novels are always seen as a triangle with nature as one of its ends, the other is destiny, and the third is man facing both. Man’s chances are very little, faced with destiny, which is coincidence, fate, and things that he cannot control, and nature which is blind to man.
         What is sometimes called the chief character of the story is the Heath. The Heath possesses a distinctive personality that has an influence over the lives of all its inhabitants. Nevertheless, to describe it as a character is inaccurate since what it represents is the impersonal forces, or the eternal force that overshadows the foreground action.
         In both novels, Middlemarch, and The Return of the Native, a comparison could be drawn between Dorthea and Eustasia. Through out the later, Hardy uses the image of the victim or the prisoner. According to him, those who abide by nature and follow its rules, are the ones who are going to live to the end, but those who challenge or try to change are the ones who are not going to succeed at all. Eustasia is a clear example, while she and Dorthea have aspiration and both try to change, yet, Dorthea succeeds with George Eliot and she is accepted, and Eustasia dies at the end. Once Eustasia tried to escape from the Heath, she drowns and dies as a punishment for trying to change.
         From the beginning of Hardy’s novel, we are introduced to nature and its prominent feature that man is insignificant. He introduced Eustasia at the highest place and above her is the sky, as if she was penetrating it. This is very significant because he wants to show that Eustasia is someone who is aspiring and shows that from that height she is going to fall. This is very similar to Dorthea as she had her aspirations. Eustasia wanted to marry Clym because she believed that he was away from the Heath and that he will marry her and takes her away too. She tries to escape with a former lover and the result is that she is going to drown. The character here is responsible for its choice. Eustasia is the one who has the aspiration to move and she is going to be punished for her will to change.
         Dorthea’s aspirations are similar to those of Eustasia. Dorthea had her illusions with her husband the same as Eustasia. Each had a different aim in life, but both had their illusions about the partner they choose. Eustasia thought that Clym would take her away with him to France, while Dorthea thinks that Casauban is her hero and will take her to another world of knowledge. George Eliot believes in the individual and that he can, and must make changes however small. At the very beginning, Dorthea is very religious and very limited in her sentiments, where at the end, she accepts others, even those who do mistakes like Lydgate. The difference between Dorthea and Eustasia is actually the difference between Eliot and Hardy. Whereas, for Hardy, there is no hope with the character that tries to rebel against order and nature, for George Eliot, the character can change and this is actually the main achievement of Dorthea. She changes and goes against everyone else, starting with Lidgate and ending with Ladislaw. No one appreciated him except Dorthea, because he is not like them, she felt that others do not appreciate him because they do not understand his character and not because he is bad.
         Eustasia, more than Hardy’s protagonists, seems to intend to be grandly heroic. She wants to exist on a higher level of significance than the other characters in the novel. Her flow was her pride, her dissatisfaction and her idea that she cannot achieve what she wanted because of the external circumstances. She marries under the illusion that her husband Clym will fulfil her dreams and helps her to escape for life and from Edgon Heath. Yet, her pride revealed for her that Clym is not good enough for her and that she, also, hated the place. Like Dorthea, once Eustasia knows that this is not the truth she attempts a desperate flight. The result is that she drowns in her attempt to escape. *. Dorthea had a chance to change. At the end of Middlemarch, the sun rises because nature is benevolent. In George Eliot, Dorthea started to gain the same thing Eliot wanted, which is her approval. She gained George Eliot’s approval when she starts to enlarge her sympathy and limitations. On the contrary, Eustasia is punished when she tries to enlarge her horizons.
 
 
The Return of The Native
The Return of The Native reflects Hardy’s mind and art more than any other novel. The theme of nature is dominant; the setting of the natural world dominates the characters. It opens with famous pictorial description of Edgon Heath, where nature is embodied in the Heath. The Heath is an all powerful force; it broods over all, and universalises the author’s conception of life. Hardy described the Heath with the eye of a romantic poet. Hardy’s man is shown as a plaything in the hands of fate; an invisible, ruthless and indifferent power. It is only when a person conforms to its laws, that he escapes its wrath and hostility and suffers least. However, whenever he tries to express his own will, he is doomed. The human inhabitants of the Heath are described as part of the Heath. The protagonists struggle in vain and suffer endlessly and uselessly to cope with the difficult situations they are caught in.
Eustacia is a born romantic. Hardy has put in her all his powers of evocation, a romantic figure, and a Greek goddess. She is cut from the society of Edgon Heath. She says ‘there is a sort of beauty in the scenery, but it is jail to me’. Having given up hope of Clym’s ever returning, she walked in utter desolation, every thing in nature seemed to share her despair and gloom.
Clym had in him what she lacked ‘The gift of content’, ‘he was an enthusiast about ideas and careless about outward things’. He was an idealist who was keenly aware of what Hardy called ‘The ache of modernism’. He was revolted by the hollowness of modern life seen in Paris. Nevertheless, despite Clym’s attachment to the Heath, his efforts ended in futility, his aims were thwarted. He fancies himself strong and determined, but he suffers a loss of power of the will. Yet, his failure, disappointments and despair, like Eustacia’s, are due not only to inner influences, but also to outer ones, over which they had no control.
In Clym, we see how nature shares his feelings, the weather is meant to be symbolic of the human difficulty. Nature seemed in a rage because of the struggle between Clym and his mother, while everything seems beautiful when Clym and Eustacia are married. The characters are also seen against a landscape. The Heath and the characters are interrelated. Both Eustacia and Clym have some of its aspects, mainly remoteness and strangeness. The Heath shows its malice and wrath only in the case of individuals who are cut off from nature and do not conform to its rules. According to Hardy man is shown as a plaything who ‘between the forces of nature and the forces of his own nature, and man’s aspirations, there can be no reconciliation’.
 
 
  
 Wuthering Heights
By Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights is the story of the love of Catherine and Heathcliff. The portrayal of Heathcliff is one of the most remarkable features of the novel. There is no doubt about Heathcliff’s villainy, but at the same time, he manages to win some of our deepest sympathies at certain points in the story.
 We meet Heathcliff first when Mr. Earnshow brings him up to Wuthering Hights from Liverpool. From the very beginning, this child experienced bad feelings in the house. Catherine became rapidly intimate with him, but Hindley would miss no opportunity of treating him in an unkind and even cruel manner. Heathcliff’s vindictive nature is shown to us when he says: “I’m trying to settle, how I shall pay Hindley back. I don’t care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last”. On overhearing Catherine that it would be degrading to her to marry Heathcliff, he feels so offended and disappeared. Three years later, he returns a changed man. Now, he wants to take revenge of Hindley, and when Edgar refuses to treat him as a social equal, he is filled with hatred for Edgar too. From now on, his career is one of a series of cruel deeds showing his beastly nature in which there is no place for any human feelings.
He takes his revenge upon Hindley when he acquires the property called Wuthering Heights. After that, when he agrees to the marriage of his son Linton to Edgar’s daughter Catherine, he also becomes the owner of Thrush-cross Crange. In this way the child who had started as a guest soon becomes the master of the two huge properties.
One of the devices by which he takes revenge upon Edgar is to pretend that he loves Edgar’s sister Isabella, who elopes with him. After marriage, he begins to treat her in such a brutal manner that she has to run away from home. She says to Nelly: “I hate him,.... Don’t put faith in a single word he speaks”. Heathcliff himself tells Nelly: “I have no pity”.
The manner he brings up Hareton, the son of Hindley Earnshow, is another example of Heathcliff’s brutality. He does not teach him to read or write. He tells Nelly how he feels happy when he brings Hareton up as a complete brute. On the other hand, Heathcliff does not even have the ordinary parent’s love for his son. He forces his son to write letters to Catherine in accordance with his wishes his soul object being about a marriage between them so that he may obtain the property at Thrush-cross Crange.
 Finally, one can say that the portrayal of Heathcliff has given rise to much controversy. One thinks that Heathcliff’s cruelty is the result of his passion for Catherine having been thwarted and also a result of the ill treatment he had received as a child. As a result, one can say that he is not an unredeemed villain.
 
The device of the two narrators
 
The story of Wuthering Hights is told partly by Nelly Dean, the servant of the Linton family, whose mother came to Wuthering Hights  after the birth of Hindley and partly by Mr. Lockwood who takes Thrush-cross Crange on rent after  Edgar’s Linton death. Such a method serves two purposes. First, it ensures that we witness the drama in all the fresh reality in which it would have shown itself to its spectators; and second, since its spectators are normal, we witness it as it really was, undistorted by the emotions of those persons who were involved in it.
Nelly is the right person to narrate the story. She is not just a family servant who identifies herself with the family and is personally involved in all that happens, but also her own feelings are part of the drama. As an example, we could mention her anger with Cathy at the later’s temper when Edgar Linton turns Heathcliff out of the house. Moreover, she is always present at each of the crucial moments. Nelly also comments on the various characters. She expresses a favorable opinion of Edgar, an unfavorable opinion of Cathy, and a strong disapproval of Heathcliff. She speaks of the deterioration in the behavior of Heathcliff and she brings out the contrast between the crude Heathcliff and the refined Edgar. She did not have any praise for Cathy when she was a proud teenage girl. Nelly wanted the girl to be chastened. A little later, Nelly tells Lockwood her opinion about Hindley who had become confirmed in his bad habits. Nelly also gave vent to her feelings about Heathcliff when she saw him kissing Isabella.
Mr. Lockwood is one of the two narrators in Wuthering Hights. He is the man who hears the story from Mrs. Ellen Dean or Nelly. The novel opens with Lockwood as the narrator and he remains the narrator for the first three chapters. First, he gives us a description of the house ‘Wuthering Hights’. Lockwood, then, gives us his impression of Heathcliff. He said that Heathcliff is a dark-skinned man looking like a gypsy but dressed like a gentleman.
In the first two chapters, Lockwood gives us evidence of his sense of humor, which is evident from his account of his own love affair, and his description of the various persons he has met. Lockwood’s effort to escape from Whuthering Hights is also quite amusing.
Finally, one can say that both, Nelly and Lockwood are essential to the meaning of the book. Each provides his own judgement of the values involved.
 Additional Notes On W. Heights
There are only two houses in this novel Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.  The first is associated with the stormy side of life, while the second is associated with the calm side.  Physically, there is a great contrast between these houses.  Wuthering Heights is a strongly built farmhouse.  When Linton first sees it the "carved front and lowbrowed lattices, the straggling gooseberry bushes and crooked firs" frightens him. The building is attacked by severe winds during the frequent storms.
Thrushcross Grange, a large estate, is much more protected from the elements.  It lies in a valley, and the park around it is enclosed by a stone wall.  When Heathcliff first glimpses the drawing room through a window, he thinks it's heaven--all crimson, gold, and silver.
Yorkshire, where these houses are located, is a wild spot.  There are few trees; slopes of black rock and little streams tumble everywhere.  There's a lot of rain, a lot of mist, and a lot of snow.
This book is full of doubles.  There are two generations, each occupying half the chapters.  There are two households, each with distinctive qualities.  And the actions revolve around pairs of children (Heathcliff and Cathy, the younger Cathy and Linton, the younger Cathy and Hareton).
Wuthering Heights has always been controversial.  Some readers believe the novel's most significant theme is revenge.  Until just before the end of the book, Heathcliff's revenge against those who have wronged him taints all the relationships at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. You can also see Wuthering Heights as principally concerned with the conflict between stormy and calm sides of life.  Wuthering Heights generally represents the stormy side, Thrushcross Grange the calm side. The conflict between these two ways of life causes great suffering until the marriage between Cathy and Hareton; a marriage in which both approaches to life are recognized and accepted.
Emily Bronte's language is both spare and dense, which is why it's often compared to poetry.  When you finish the novel, you have a firm sense of the bleak beauty of the moors, yet there are remarkably few descriptions of the landscape.
Her prose is also unusually rhythmic, often violent and abrupt.  The verbs themselves are almost hysterical, until the final paragraph, in which the moths "flutter" and the soft winds "breathe." Her two sources of imagery are nature (animals, plants, fire, the land, the weather) and the supernatural (angel/devil, heaven/hell).  These are evident in the words she uses and the mental pictures she evokes.
None of the other Victorians can successfully describe a death scene. But Emily Bronte's eagle imagination gazed with as undaunted an eye on death, as on everything else.  The light she sheds on it is the same light that pervades her whole scene, and it is the light of day.
Emily Bronte represents totally different ideas of love and her characters are speaking different languages. What we do in reading the book is learn to understand the two architectures, and begin to measure the full and complex implications of their opposition, revealed to us with careful objectivity.
 
 
 
  
Women Writers
 
         The 18th century was the age that witnessed an approved style of women writings, as compared to male writers. Before this time, women were modeled as passive, submissive, obedient, self-sacrificial and tender. This image of ideal womanhood controlled and suppressed women for ages. Virtue in women meant that she must repress her sense of individuality. A woman was not allowed to achieve any kind of progress outside her house or she will be subject to the society’s anger and scorn. Women were viewed as weak by nature and incapable of looking after themselves, they need protection and the only field where they are allowed to make progress was that of caring for the family. Thus, any attempt, on the women’s part, to express them selves and achieve independence, is condemned by society as immoral or vicious.
         The new woman was seeking to develop her brain rather than restrict herself to the domestic work as an entire purpose in life. But, many problems faced women during this era of development. Writing was considered a threat to the woman of losing her goodness in society. These difficulties were represented on three different levels. First, is the psychological level; a woman has to take care of her domestic life and adhere to the family life with all the obligations of child bearing and family needs. Woman was unable to express herself freely because she has to write what is expected from her. The second level is that of the social circumstances. This is, mainly, due to the educational system. Men were sent to universities, while women were either self-educated or get private teaching sessions. A woman, hardly, had time to read and when she decided to write she could not find the privacy needed. Thirdly is the economical situation. Women were not allowed to work for pay, property or to have an income of their own.
         However, a woman writer was accepted, in the 18th, by the male culture, under certain circumstances. Mainly, that her main concern and subject would be emotions, feelings and passions. Her main characters, also, would be female characters. It was believed that woman knew nothing except this world and if she begins to think and try to be like males, she will probably go mad or have a mental retardation. World,  according to men, was divided into two spheres; the private sphere of emotions and feelings, where women belong, and the public sphere of work, professions, politics, wars and economics.
         The rise of the woman writer in the 18th century prevailed romances, articles and novels, all written by women. The 18th century women writers are acknowledged in history books as contrasted with male writers in the
 18th century. With the rise of the women writers there is an emergence of new image as Fanny Burney, Hester Thrale and Marry Wollstonecroft.
Burney was a famous woman writer, this was because of her success and achievements. She managed to be accepted from male writers by a means of an arrangement with society that is allowing her to write. She decided not to shock her readers and to write in the subject she is permitted to write in. She kept her modesty and traditional appearance of a proper woman and she clarified the proper lady in her writing. She enjoyed popularity and the acceptance of society. Critics took her art into consideration because she managed to maintain a balance between female submission to the conventions and her private literary ambition. She started to write in private and used her stories for family entertainment. She managed to insert moral concerns and high ideals in her works. Her concern with women’s position in society is masked with her concern with human nature at large. Her interest was mainly in how to create a better world. Burney achieved a place in the profession of letters in spite of the restrictions placed on her as a woman deprived from the right to learn, understand and the right for education. Moreover, she wrote about the question of marriage. She had to be skillful in the judgment of characters. Her opinion was that woman must find a suitable way for education and that the question of marriage should not be considered sentimental or a concern with romantic love and would be under valued.
         Fanny Burney’s diary reveals what she was not able to reveal in her fiction. She knew she was writing at a risk. She was conscious of the obstacles in the way of women writers. These obstacles were because intellectual and clever women were regarded with doubt and she was always frightened to be ranked among them.
         Hester Thrale is a woman writer who is always troubled about her place in the world as a gifted female. She rejects the double standard of judgment from which she suffers. Her journals reveal a concern with social forms. In spite of her rebellion against social institutions, she accepts the bonds of womanhood. She was an obedient daughter and wife; she devoted herself to her children and fulfilling the expectations of society. Yet, she complains that many men say that they prefer ignorant women to those with cultivated mind. These men get ashamed when their wives commit a mistake in pronunciation or the choice of words in social gatherings.
         Emotional attachments occupy an important position in the concerns of a woman writer. Thrale asks girls to marry for love and passion. She is against proposal marriages to which reason and rational calculations are
 more important than passion. The conventional qualities of women as passionate and sentimental became sources of power.
Mary Wollstonecraft is a pioneer of women’s rights. She criticizes upper class women for being superficial and unthinking. She also adds that society is committing a crime against women by excluding them from educational benefits. By relating women’s private circumstances to the social system at large; she links personal suffering with the social and economic conditions. For Mary. W, both men and women are created alike in the rational capacity and in their passionate abilities. She believes that order in society can be established only with the creation of an ideal family. She fought for women’s rights and the bases of her struggle are composed of fighting for the vote, admission to university and the reform of marriage laws.
 
A STREET CAR NAMED DESIRE
         A StreetCar Named Desire is a poetic play written by Tennessee Williams. He is a contemporary American writer who managed, in all his plays, to represent his characters on the border of lunacy. In this play, he is actually ending the whole American system with its materialism and animalism. According to Williams, time is a destructive element. He points out that there is a break between the past and the present.
         The relationship between time past and time present has created a dramatic conflict in Williams’s character Blanche Dubois. That is why he sets her away from others by her name, appearance and attitude to life. She is born in a transcendental time when all concepts have changed. She fails to bridge the gap between a past from which she originated and a present that was forced on her. As a result, she lies as a means of defense against the passage of time. In her case, lying is not evil. It is a symbol of her incapacity to face her reality. Her lies take the form of daydreaming. She re-lives the past at the present. She forgets her sad past and remembers, only the happy moments.
         In his plays, Williams criticizes his own society. His characters are mostly broken characters. He sympathizes with those who are not suitable to adjust quickly. According to Williams, the American society is mobile, aggressive, practical and down to earth. There is no sense of security and people do not know what to believe in.
         Williams wants us to pay attention to human needs in this mechanistic society. Blanche is tragic because time is her enemy. She is dead long before the play starts because she is a relic of the past. She has to pay the debts of the dead and so lost the house. The house “Belle Reve” is a symbol of Blanche’s glorious and romantic past. She kept on fighting although she knew she would not be able to save the house. She is merging the past and the present causing her world to be very complex. Therefore, she has no chances for survival; simply because she cannot conform to society. Being in white at the beginning of the play signifies that she is a ghost-like figure from the past. She cannot fit in a present devoid of human relationships, warmth and past romanticism. When she is forced to confront her reality, her only option is to go mad.
         Blanche is a symbol of the unfairness of society. Williams proves that she is only different but not evil or abnormal. Stella and Stanley represent the norms of the American society. Stella, Blanche’s younger sister, is the wife of Stanley. Both live in a shabby area known as the Elysian Fields where there are a lot of ethic groups. The Elysian Fields, unlike its connotation, turns out to be a hell to Blanche. Unlike Blanche, Stella is a survivor. It is in her character that she can adjust to her present. She saves herself by giving up her best part; her past for the
  sake of survival and thus she does not sink with Blanche. Stella dreams of a happy life and accepts Stanley with all his vulgarity.
         Stanley is the representative of the disgusting present with all its brutality and animalism. Yet, he is not wicked, he is a man driven by his physical desire as one of the mobile race. He is the only powerful character in the play. He forces his reality, power and brutality on the rest.
         Williams wonders how could man survive in such society. Stanley and Blanche represent two extremes. Stanley is the representative of sheer animalism. All his attitudes branch from his feeling of his sexuality. On the contrary, Blanche is sensitive, romantic, and a moth-like delicate figure. She lives in an illusion and cares too much for her appearance, trying by all possible means to hide her age and appear younger. She lies to please people. When she brings herself to say the truth, at the end, about Stanley’s rape to her; she is not believed by anyone and thus goes mad. She could not find any understanding, security and sympathy. Only the doctor knows the reality and nature of Blanche. He treats her as a lady and she immediately identifies with him and accompanies him out.
         Stella is able to make a compromise between romanticism and animalism. She gives up her past to make a happy medium in order to survive. She adjusts to the ways of her present and accepts them as they are. She tells Eunice, her neighbor, that she could not believe Blanche’s story of the rape and go on living with Stanley. This is the best way for her to live the battle for survival.
         In answer to the meaning of his play, Williams says “watch out or the apes will take over”. He actually means that we have a share of animalism in us. His message is that we have to overcome it by trying to formulate our lives in the best possible situation in which humanity can survive.
 
 
THE SCARLET LETTER  BY  NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
         Hawthorne was born in Salem in 1804 and his literary imagination was strongly influenced by his upbringing. Salem place was the seat of puritan colonizers; it provided him with a religious background, which shaped his attitude towards human nature. He is a sensitive artist who pictured the clash between sin, virtue, and self control against the desires of the heart. His father died when he was four years old and he grew up as a lonely contemplative child living with his mother’s family. During his college education, he decided to become a writer. He lived in Salem in seclusion for nearly twelve years attempting to write fiction. He had a few failures until the year 1837, when he published his collection of short stories Twice Told Tales. He continued publishing minor works; but he acquired at the Salem CustomHouse, as he needed an income. After three years only, he was forced out of this office by the administration and he returned to writing. He finished The Scarlet Letter in one year only and it brought him a great fame. This was the start of his real literary career, as he produced fiction, biography, history, gothic tales and magazine articles.
         The main trend of his work followed the pessimistic branch of romanticism. He portrayed the strife between human emotions and cold intellectual legislation. He used symbols in the form of moral allegory to reveal the narrow separation between good and evil and to portray man’s struggle against evil. Hawthorne was very well read, especially in Romantic literature of Germany and Britain. He, also, read history, social analysis and Latin and French classics. These provided him a well-developed, cool and detached style. In spite of the romantic sensitivity of his subject matter, Hawthorne has been accused of being too isolated, a social castaway and a writer haunted by his ancestors. Yet, he expressed a richness of fiction, a contemporary but timeless work, and he reflected the dilemma of human life.
         The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850 and was very well received by the public as well as the reviewers. It has remained popular; as it depicted the colonial culture and demonstrated the consequences of sin. Modern criticism has various approaches to the novel. It supplies a study of the Romantic Movement, the Gothic and the sentimental fiction. It also interests the psychologists as a study of repression, and moralists as an analysis of human nature and its confronting sin. On the other hand, the modern reader finds an appeal to his senses in its loneliness, the complexities of the human mind, and its skeptical approach to life.
         The novel is a romantic one where Hawthorne gives an overflow of imagination together with the realistic events. He defines the romance of the novel as taking place in a twilight world in the moonlight. The novel does not shy away from the truth of the human heart, yet it keeps within the frame of artistic laws. The story is a love story that reveals the truth, reaches the inner psychology and gives artistic form to a confused experience.
         The setting of the novel is in New England in the seventeenth century. It includes some real persons and events with alternations here and there. The novel has various touches of the super natural such as the letter ‘A’, the sun light that follows Pearl and avoids Hester, the gothic prison and also the presence of intrigue and mystery with every appearance of Chillingworth. Hawthorne was very skillful in creating a balance between the improbable and the probable so as not to fall into ambiguity. He often offered a rational explanation to any supernatural aspect.
         The novel deals with the consequences of sinful love after it has already taken place before the scene opens. Hawthrone’s treatment of sin is not simple; it is viewed as relative not absolute. The sense of guilt depends on what one has sinned against. It may be God, as in the case of Dimmesdale, or the law of order as in the case of Hester. Dimmesdale is destroyed as he feels himself estranged from God and pure religion; whereas Hester, in her humble silent endurance and self-sacrifice, is purified through her sin. It is as if her adversity and her passing through the valley of The Shadow of Death has taught her real redemption and love. She is conscious that her deed was wrong socially and is always worried about Pearl who seems a wayward child.
         Hester does not yield to a life of isolation, but she spreads the love inside her on others and is renewed and energized daily, as she helps all the needy and sick. Hester refused to follow the tide and live negatively, but she chose the difficult path of choice and self-individualism. She is able to endure adversity and confront the raging storms of the world. On the other hand, Dimmesdale lives in seclusion suffering great agonies and finding no relief till the very end. After long pinning, he makes a public confession. Chillingworth also is made more criminal and evil and becomes the devil incarnate who lives to murder and destroy. These three characters that form the triangle of the novel clarify this expression: “The same sun which melts the wax, hardens the clay.” Dimmesdale and Chilingworth harden and become stern and stiff, while Hester softens and becomes pliable to help others.
         Hawthorne’s sympathies were with Hester more than the puritans. They were righteous and religious but they emphasized human actions to discover purity and holiness rather than reaching God through worship and forgiveness. The vision is always focused backward on the past guilt and not on the future and God’s light of forgiveness even in pitch darkness. Hawthorne condemns the legislation that makes man move ironclad in laws and not aware of any ray of hope. He does not really accept the idea of man’s perfection; but he believes in human love and trust. Hester prospers because she combines the head and the heart with the balance tipped on the side of the heart. Hester’s happiness does not depend on external events; but on her calm mental state and her heart which wraps up the trouble wounds in love and forgiveness and hands them on her fellow human beings. The letter ‘A’ that she wears as a punishment can be regarded as ‘Angel’ or ‘able’ and not just a sign of adultery.
         The Scarlet Letter has one of the best and most artistic structures. The introduction is titled ‘The Custom House’ and it can be both, a part of the story and separated from it. The title is similar to the other titles of the chapters, and it also mentions the letter. Hawthorne this first chapter as an introduction to a realistic substantial world before moving into the realm of romance. The last chapter also has the same qualities of being linked to and separated from the main flow of action. It is a summary that ties all the threads together and relates what happens to the characters. The first and last chapters are related by a reference to the manuscript and to Mr. Surveyor. Both serve as a frame to the story.
         Another main element is the scaffold that is like a pillar of the whole story. It is important at the beginning, in chapter two, when Hester is taken up to it, and in chapter twelve when Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold and finally in chapter twenty three when Dimmesdale confess in the presence of Hester and Pearl. These are the main incidents in the novel that emphasize the importance of the scaffold. The whole style of the novel enjoys symmetry as well as balanced prose sentences.
         The book can be divided into five movements; the first three chapters are an exposition. Hester sees all her past in flashback. On the scaffold, she sees Chillingworth who forces her to be silent as he wishes for future revenge. Thus, past, present and future are exposed masterfully. After the fourth chapter, the second movement starts. It is more analytical narration. Hester lives lonely with Pearl, while Pearl is shown as a strange child of a wild nature. In chapter seven we are introduced to the puritan authority. After that, we see Hester fights to keep Pearl and Dimmesdale helps her. Then, chapter nine and eleven describe Dimmesdale’s agony and sickness and Chillingworth’s evil intentions as he moves in with him to revenge. Chapter twelve ends the second movement with the night scene as Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold thinking that the entire town has witnessed his shame. This scaffold scene is right in the middle of the novel. It forwards the plot especially as in chapter fourteen Hester tries to make Chillingworth have mercy on Dimmesdale and stop his fiendish deed.
         The third movement starts from chapter thirteen. Chillingworth refuses to have mercy on Dimmesdale and Hester, in her attempt to help him and save him, asks him to leave with her to America. This is in the forest scene in chapter seventeen; which reflects there past love affair and prepares us for the future. It also shows Pearl’s strange nature as she rejects her mother’s throwing away the letter ‘A’. It is a scene of a conflict between flesh and spirit, nature and reason. Starting the fourth movement from chapter eighteen, we find it a consequence of the forest scene. Hester restores the letter ‘A’ to pacify Pearl and to keep her moral history and identity. At the same time, Dimmesdale falls in a strange dilemma between escape penance, he is entrapped and feels doomed. The final movement starts by the public gathering in chapter twenty-one. It balances the first scene of gathering outside the jail. Hester and Pearl await the procession to the church and Hester meets the captain who is an agent of freedom. The scaffold gives unity to the structure of the novel as the main characters gather there. Dimmesdale gives a touching sermon in a musical voice. It is significant that Hester cannot hear the words of her lover since they belong to two different worlds. Then comes the climax when he takes Hester and Pearl to the scaffold and confess his sin.
         The American critic Cleanth Brooks has several remarks concerning the priest’s confession. He thinks that it destroys and thwarts all Chillingworth’s plans of revenge; it is an egotism on Dimmesdale’s side as he thinks he is the one sinner of the world and he does not reassure Hester that they will meet in after life. The priest is a typical example of rigid puritan belief that cannot yield to love or mercy.
         The Scarlet Letter is thus a typical example of a well-structured and balanced work of art, with its linking chapters, its ordered scenes, and the back scenes of the scaffold and the suitable division of the five movements.
  THE CHARACTERS OF ARTHUR DIMESDALE, ROGER CHILLINGWORTH and PEARL
A GENERAL INTRODUCTION:
         Hawthorne had a small gift for the creation of human beings. Therefore, it is noticed that the development of the novel is neither narrative nor dramatic, but expository. None of the characters in The Scarlet Letter really develops, as they would do in a normal European novel. They are transformed rather than developed in relation with their circumstances.
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ARTHUR DIMMESDALE:
         Dimmesdale is an Oxford University scholar. He is the most ambiguous character to understand in the novel. We always remember him as a pale, weak young man, trembling easily and holding his hand over his heart. He lacks energy and will. He is the pastor and Hester is his spiritual ward. Yet, he commits adultery with her. He is also, ironically, sermonized to by Hester in the forest. He is a man and Hester is a woman. Yet Hester has more courage than he has. He wants to confess his guilt but the words never come out; when they do, people deliberately misunderstand him. This is why there are conflicting views even about the hour of his death and his confession. Ironically, his congregation is affected by his sermons because he has suffered, while the other priests fail to reach the hearts of their listeners. He is humble; yet he wants to disappear from the village in a blaze of glory. He must deliver his Election Sermons before he goes. In the blindness of his suffering, he never understands Chillingworth as others do.
         Dimmesdale is a hypocrite, as Mistress Hibbins recognizes. As Hester’s scarlet letter gives her certain privileges, his minister’s black cloak gives him benefits. He can wear a mask and hide his real feelings in public. People of instinctive sympathy discover him easily. This is why he is uneasy in the presence of Pearl. After his return from the forest, he is in a strange excitement. He wants to utter blasphemies and makes his secret jokes with Chillingworth, all the time laughing privately.
         At the end, he is transformed. Hester, Pearl and Mistress Hibbins recognize saintliness in his new mood. After the success of his Election Sermon, he decides to bow out with a confession. Even the reports of his death are ambiguous. He never directly admits his guilt in his final confession. He utters a few words about God and sin and pardon before he dies. His grave is separated from Hester’s. As in life, so in death, we always remember him as a lonely, suffering, incomprehensible man.
 ROGER CHILLINGWORTH:
         Chillingworth’s name is a compound of ‘worth’ and ‘chill’ or ‘cold’. He is one of Hawthorne’s cold-blooded villains who destroy the human soul. His worth is that Hester and Dimmesdale have betrayed him. Yet he sins more than he is sinned against. His appearance suggests the devil. His cold efficiency and skeptical mind are in opposition to the conventionalized Puritan religious morality. Yet, his sin is that he is not sufficiently detached or scientific. His systematic destruction of the minister’s soul owes its inspiration to a motive of revenge. He provokes hatred and dislike. As Dimmesdale is a hypocritical minister, Chillingworth is a hypocritical physician and friend. In his role of friend and physician, he, ironically, does more harms than good to Dimmesdale. He has a diabolical insight into the human heart.
         Ambiguously, he is the wronged husband who may exact his revenge by Elizabethan standards. Hester admits his goodness and generosity in the past. His Ruling Passion of Revenge has now made a villain out of him. His goodness in the past may be attested by his generosity in leaving all his considerable property to his enemy’s child Pearl. As Hester is identified by her scarlet letter and the minister by his hand over his heart, the physician is identified by his stoop and his hunchback.
         Chillingworth’s revenge comes to engross his complete being so much so that he cannot live without his enemy, the minister. He feels betrayed when the minister makes a confession. He tries to stop Dimmesdale with promises of a happy future. He fails in saving the minister’s and his own life with his promises. He dies within a year of the minister’s death, following him even in death.
PEARL:
         Pearl is the most ambiguous character in the novel. She is a living embodiment of the scarlet letter. Therefore, she is like the scarlet letter, a symbol, and her meanings should frequently change through the story. We see her grow from a child in arm to a girl of three to a girl of seven. We later hear that she has married into an aristocratic family in England.
         To her mother, in her younger days, she is like the scarlet letter, a symbol of punishment. She reminds her mother of her sin. Pearl may often torment her mother with her antics, but she will also defend her against Puritan children. Pearl has an instinctive nature and feels an early sympathy towards Dimmesdale. Yet, she is the most cruel where she sympathizes the most. She always harasses the minister with the question as to when he is going to acknowledge Hester and herself publicity. She also understands that Chillingworth is destroying the minister’s soul.
         Pearl is considered the link between Hester and Dimmesdale. She is also the child of nature. She is compared with ‘the red rose’ and ‘the birds’ as symbols of hope in the story. Like other characters, she is transformed at the end. We hear that this complex child has grown up and married respectably.
 
 RELATIONS WITHIN THE NOVEL:
         Hawthorne reveals to us relationships between different characters. There are nine different relationships within the novel.
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1. Hester and Pearl, which is a strange mother and child relation.
2. Dimmesdale and Hester, a complicated moral, emotional and psychological relationship exists between them.
3. Chillingworth and Hester, which is a relation full of misunderstanding and hatred.
4. Hester and the Puritans, which can be divided into two sections; the authority and the village people. She has a more complicated relation with the authority than with the people who are sometimes in need of her and are not always concerned with moral matters.
5. Dimmesdale and the Puritans, where he is in conflict whether to confess and disappoint the clergymen or not to confess and remain a sinner.
6. Chillingworth and Dimmesdale, where Chillingworth tries to destroy him and he is a symbolic representation of Dimmesdale’s guilt until finally he himself is destroyed by the feeling of revenge that possesses him like a disease.
7. Chillingworth and Pearl. A strange relation exists between them including both fear and a sense of contact or unity, it is an exterior relation.
8. Pearl and the Puritans. The Puritans regard the child as a child of sin. At the same time they are worried about her and wish to give her a religious background.
9. Pearl and Dimmesdale. The little girl is surprised by the minister’s behavior. She senses that there is something between him and her mother and sometimes she becomes very close to him especially after his confession.
 
THE SUN ALSO RISES BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY
         Hemingway is one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. With the publication of his novel The Sun Also Rises, he was recognized as a leading spokesman of the ‘lost generation’ of American expatriates in post- World War I. Hemingway focused on courageous people living essential, dangerous lives. In 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. He later moved to Idaho, where, plagued by illness, he committed suicide.
         The novel depicts the life of expatriates living in foreign country but keeping their nationality. The effect of the war is reflected on the post-war characters that are defeated by war in so many ways. It shows the influence of war on some uprooted people from their homeland. They live their catastrophic lives in a foreign land (Paris and Spain) in order to re-enact the tragedy after the war and to come out of it with a new meaning and philosophy in life. Each one of them tries the best to work out his problem and find a solution for it, especially Barns and Brett.
         The Sun Also Rises is a great example of how fiction can be, at once, simple and complex. The bars, the drunkenness, the small talk, the promiscuity, and the apparent aimlessness of the characters bespeak the sad effect of the war on a generation and create an atmosphere for the action to take place in. The narrator-protagonist, Jake, is the worst affected by the war, being emasculated by a wound. His hopeless love for Brett, a nymphomaniac, who is also madly in love with him, but has to find satisfaction in other men’s arms, forms the central ironic theme of the story. There is irony in the fact that, while the characters drink, dance, make merry and are happy to all appearances, they are extremely unhappy in their hearts for some reason or other.
         The subject of the novel is the frustration and restlessness of a generation juxtaposed to the abiding earth as written in the epigraphs. The generation is like any other passing generation except that it is a post-war one inheriting the wounds left by the war. As Jake, the narrator, looks back at his experience, he finds that his was the acutest frustration, while Cohn had not yet had any. Mike and Brett had their misfortunes and were almost equally unhappy in their different ways. Bill was only an interlude. Romero was too engrossed in his bullfights to have any frustrations, and his preoccupation was working close to death in the form of the bull’s horns. Jake, Brett and mike, had to try to run away from themselves all the while. Their lot was one of unrelieved misery, in spite of their surface gaiety. Cohn might be good, frank and simple; but his fingers were not burnt and he could afford the luxury of a romantic attitude. He did not know that his attitudes and ways were irritating to Mike, Jake and Brett.
 
         Hemingway depicts the lives of his characters between Paris and Spain. He says that in Paris, they were trying to evade their problems by not facing them as were many people of the 20th century who were so buried in their problems that have no solution. We have the example of Barnes and Brett. On the one hand, Jake to fool himself by drinking and submerging himself in total unawareness and drunkenness to avoid facing the problem of his doomed love for Brett. On the other hand, there is Brett who suffered a lot in her life and knows that she loves Jake but she overcomes this doomed love by throwing herself into sexual activity. Thus, these characters kill time by drawing themselves into activities that can make them block out reality and face its sour end. Thus, Hemingway wants to say that although human existence is at its most intensive horror, we cannot escape it. The best way to face a problem is to go through it, courageously, because this is what counts. The saving element for both Barnes and Brett is that finally, after so much struggles they had the courage to recognize their problem and take steps towards solving it. Through the character of Barnes, Hemingway offers his readers a moral choice taken from his predecessors and it is basically taken from a religious concept or theological order.
         Love is another theme found in the novel. Love, here, is not used in the narrow sense of the word but it is a wide philosophical attitude that involves man\woman, God\creatures, man\man, in other words, humanity in general. Hemingway wants to convey the idea of the absence of love in the universe and this result in all aspects of life. Here it is reflected in the violence of war, which is an expression of hatred that violates humanity. Also, in the relationship between Jake and Brett, it cannot be consummated as a result of the war. Another example of the absence of love is Hemingway’s existentialist hero. Barnes who, trying to find meaning for his existence, tries to connect himself to humanity in a broken world, but, unfortunately he cannot do so.
         Although Hemingway groups all the characters in one setting (Paris), they are disjoined and not humanly related. That shows the absence of love and the lack of feeling for the problems and misfortunes of others. In fact, Hemingway’s message to his readers was that of John Donne who said that no individual can live alone for he is part of the whole humanity. If any person dies, it means that a part of the individual dies with him.
         Time is another idea found in the novel. Some say that time is the enemy of man, but Hemingway tries to express it; not as an enemy but as a natural thing that must happen. We have to face the fact that no one can stop time. Time, in this novel, is an important element in the lives of characters. The past is narrated to give them a background. It is relevant to the present and foreshadows the future. He tries to conquer time through the idea of memories which can make you re-live the past and this gives substance to the present. It helps the person to carve meaning for himself in life and never to fear death because time is running.
         The idea of rebellion is also depicted in the novel. It is noticed through the character of Jake Barnes, whom Hemingway depicts as a rebellious type. This idea of the rebel goes back to Hemingway, himself, who was a rebel against all traditional moulds and was, thus, in a sense, a romantic. He depicted all his heroes with the same sense of rebellion and need for finding a meaningful existence.
    TECHNIQUE IN THE SUN ALSO RISES
         Because he was a newspaper reporter, Hemingway followed the short, brief, concise, easy sentences and rendering of facts and maximum information used by newspaper reporters. This style became more complex as he progressed in his literary career and his simple language and writing uncompensated all the complexities of life that he was dealing with. His style shows that he had an urge to convey the tempo of the age as if he was in a hurry to give his message and make it alive. This does not mean that he was a shallow writer, but, rather that his simple lines needed a second reading below the lines to understand his message. He scarcely ever loses his control over his writing techniques. But, he is quite conscious of the possibility of the symbols carrying more meanings than intended. He thinks that what a writer makes truthfully may mean many things. A writer may not insert symbols artificially in his work, but, as his conscious mind is occupied with making real things, his unconscious may sort out things in such a way that the things, so made, have a symbolic or ironic significance. He thinks that all the writer’s intellectual and moral equipment including his training, tradition and honesty goes into this first creation.
         In the writings of Hemingway, he was affected by the use of romance of his American predecessors, the use of myth from classical literature and the use of ritual from the Indians whom he lived close to. In this novel, his use of ritual is exemplified when Jake digs for the worms near the river and when he goes to the fishing trip with Bill. This act of ritual is considered so in order to emphasize man’s need to live in harmony with nature and to be part of it even if he eventually dies.
         The religious theme in Hemingway’s fiction and the symbols he has employed are to express his theme. He uses predominantly Christian and Christological symbolism, especially the names from the Old Testament. He used Adam in earlier novels while Jacob in his new ones. In the novel, Brett says, “ you’ve a hell of biblical name, Jake”. Even the title of the novel comes from the Old Testament, the book of Ecclesiastics. The Sun Also Rises is a message of hope in a dark world. It says that nature or the physical world is the only thing that is constant and will live forever. Himingway was in the habit of taking the titles of his novels from either Biblical scripts or other artistic works.
         The story and characters of this novel can have a psychoanalytical interpretation. Jake is a typical Hemingway hero who struggles against the background of the earth that abides forever. He begins by being totally inteffectual, negative and unable to face his problems, but through the development of his affair with Brett, he is, at the end, transformed to be effective, positive and able to face his problems. Jake was represented as a leader. He is like one among three bulls who cannot restrain themselves over the female present. But, through his wound, he is capable to keep the control over the three men and also the woman. Although being a steer was a disadvantage it turned at the end in his favor.
         Some names and titles in Hemingway’s fiction have a symbolic or ironic significance. Jake Barnes is a barren Jacob representing the wasteland of past generation. Like the titles of some of his novels, the literary titles have the significance of either, containing the meaning of the narrative in a nutshell or of evoking the relevant emotions, which is necessary to a proper appreciation of the narrative. The post-war generation was trying to reconstruct a damaged world, putting together again the broken fragments. The “ruined world” is a major symbol in Hemingway’s novel. The scars the hero bears signify it. This attempt to salvage something from destruction is also a correlative image for the artist’s eagerness to come out with some experience from destruction and makes it endure. The mountain is also another elevated symbol of the abiding earth presented by Hemingway.
         The novel is divided into three books. The first book deals with the tragic love theme of Jake and Brett, and the seeds of complication are sown in this book. The second book details the complication itself, with the tempo of action and emotions rising till the climax is reacted in the Pamplona festival. The tempo relaxes slowly in the third book, the story comes full circle, and we come back to Jake and Brett; where Jake sounds maturer.
         The novel is a tightly knit pattern in which every thing said or done contributes to the effective presentation of the subject, and the author’s interest is intensely concentrated on the subject of the novel. Everything else in the novel expresses more than he states. The irony involved, be it the ironic tone of the narrator or the irony of the situation or the occasional verbal irony of a character, is only a mask for the pity of it all. Hemingway wrote that the book was not meant to be “a bitter satire, but a damn tragedy with the earth abiding forever as the hero”.
         This early novel is so compact that the concentration is on the total effect rather than on the development of character or intricacy of the plot. Plot, character, narrative mechanics, symbolist and stylistic techniques, all subserve the single total effect of the novel, signifying the vanity of human hopes and efforts against the background of the everlasting earth. It is patterned on tragedy and the heroic endurance in the face of serious misfortunes.
 
  
Short Story
The Lady With The Toy Dog
         The Lady With The Toy Dog was influenced by Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. It is a tale about adultery. Chekhov treats the subject in a way that shows his understanding of the precious of life, and also, his belief that no one can predict the moral terms. The Lady With The Toy Dog shows the love relation between Gurov and Anna. Love, in the story, leads them to a degree of fulfilment.
         Although the relation between Gurov and Anna is not rightful, Chekhov treats it in a sympathetic way. Gurov and Anna came to Yalta separately. The place, (Yalta) is suitable to the idea of the story. It is a place with no moral complications; where desires could be fulfilled.
         The story is composed of four parts; each part shows a stage in the relation between Anna and Gurov. The first stage shows their meeting and how they knew each other in Yalta. The second stage shows their adultery and their separation. While, the third stage shows Gurov in Moscow, unable to forget Anna and searching for her in the theatre. Finally, the fourth presents one of their meetings in a Moscow hotel. The changes in the scenery shows a change in the emotional state between Gurov and Anna. On the other hand, the melancholic winter in Moscow shows the idea of problems and difficulties that will face their relation.
         The scene in the theatre clears the contrast between the life of Anna and Gurov in Yalta, where they were free and alone, and their life now. The staircase symbolises the state of their love. Their love is in a middle position between the top and the bottom. They are not happy in their lives. Anna’s fear of being caught by her husband or seen by her friends is very clear in that scene. The last scene, in the hotel, shows their misery and their struggle to fulfil their desire.
         Chekhov’s opinion shows his rejection of the idea of fixed fate. He hopes that there is a possibility of people changing, and he defends his hope. The open-end of the story expresses this idea very clearly.
 A Rose For Emily
         An unnamed citizen of the small town of Jefferson, tells the story of the aristocratic Miss Emily Grierson. Going back and forth in time he narrates what has happened to her. Her father died and she could not accept the reality of it, to the extent that she refused his burial for three days. When he was alive he refused all her suitors as if he was rejecting the new methods of creating the future, and now he left her alone; a spinster in a large house.
         Miss Emily meets Homer Barron who is a Yankee who works in paving the sidewalks of Jefferson. They appeared together in the streets in a way that lead two female cousins, who came from Alabama, to attempt to persuade Miss Emilly to behave in a more respectable manner. To avoid the cousins, Homer leaves town. Miss Emily buys rat poison from the druggist. The cousins leave, Homer returns and he is never seen again.
         In 1894, the mayor, Colonel Sartoris, asks Miss Emily for her taxes that she did not pay. For about six or seven years, while in her forties, she gives china-painting lessons to the young girls of the town. Then for many years she is seen only at her window. Townspeople watch her black servant Tobe going in and out on errands. A new generation comes to power; they insist that Miss Emily pay taxes on her property. When she fails to respond, a deputation calls on her, but she insists not to respond.
         The narrator refers to Miss Emily as being like an ‘idol’ and to her great-aunts as ‘crazy’. It is a symbol of the aristocracy who cannot adopt themselves with the changes in life and society. Emily’s refusal to accept the fact of her father’s death suggests the refusal of some aristocrats to accept the death of the South even when faced with the evidence of its corpse. Yet the modern generations insist on burying the decaying corpse of the past. Miss Emily preserves all the dead; the townspeople are like Miss Emily in that they persist in preserving her as the last representative of the Old South. After she is dead the narrator preserves her in his story. The rose is a symbol of the age of romance, pure women are being a symbol of the ideal in every phase of life. Perhaps the narrator offers this story as a ‘rose’ for Emily. As a lady might press a rose between the pages of a history of the South, she keeps her own personal rose, her lover, preserved in the bridal chamber where a rose colour pervades everything. Miss Emily’s rose is ironically symbolic because her lover was a modern Yankee, whose laughter drew the townspeople to him and whose corpse has smiled for forty years, as if he, or Miss Emily, had played a joke on all of them.
 
  The Necklace
Using the word ‘short story’ implies that the writer must follow a certain style. The short story must concern itself with one single plot and a small set of characters. With one point of interest to be developed, the short story has a climax that serves as a turning point in its plot. It must, also involve one single effect that could surprise or shock the reader.
The Necklace is a story of a wife who is ambitious and looking forward to be rich. Her husband succeeds in getting an invitation to a high class party and asks her to get ready. For a moment she feels loss because she is not able to find any jewellery so that she can be ready for the party. She borrows a necklace from her friend, Mme. Forestier. She goes to the party and gains great attention and happily returns home. Instantly, she discovers that the Necklace was lost and tells her friend that she sent the Necklace to have its lock repaired. Her husband borrows a great deal of money and they succeed in buying a Necklace just like the lost one. After returning the Necklace to its owner, they became very heavily in debt and it took long years of work to return the money to the debtors. Ten years later and accidentally the wife meets Mme. Forestier and tells her the story. Mme. Forstier was surprised saying that the Necklace was a cheap false one.
The story shows a social criticism of the upper class who look only at appearance. They admired the false appearance of the Necklace during the party. Finally it ends with an ironical climax. The reader could notice the single plot of one woman who is ambitious and her dramatic story with the Necklace. This plot is controlled; it begins on the day of the party and ten years pass swiftly to reach the ironical climax. The story is concise, there are few events that lead to the climax producing a sharp effect on the reader. Each of the events contributes to concentrating on the climax. The events could be summarised in getting the invitation, borrowing the Necklace, success at the party, loosing the Necklace, a ten years to pay back and the sudden sharp effect of the cheap Necklace.
Irony frames the events of the story. The writer mocks the wife for her over ambition and attacks her ideas about appearance. Moreover, the people at the party were deceived by the false Necklace. The wife and husband paid a lot for buying a similar Necklace as if it is a punishment. Both the wife and the reader could be shocked when the truth is revealed and discover that ten years of hard work were actually of no use if they new the inner truth and were not deceived by appearance.
  
 
 Louise
Louise, is a short story that implies that the writer must follow a certain style. The short story must concern itself with one single plot and a small set of characters. With one point of interest to be developed, the short story has a climax that serves as a turning point in its plot. It must, also involve one single effect that could surprise or shock the reader.
The story is told to us by a narrator who is a direct friend to Louise and who knows nearly everything about her.  This relation was a deep and complex relationship where the friend was always loyal to Louise. Through the events of the story, we know that Louise has been married twice. Both marriages ended in the death of her husbands. The narrator tells us that when Louise was a child she got a fever that affected her heart; using this idea she acted as if she had a heart attack whenever anything was against her will. Both, her first and second husbands tried there best to satisfy her and to avoid hurting her feelings. All the time, the narrator has his doubts about Louise and she always does not give him a satisfactory reply. He thought she is always pretending her heart attacks.
The selfishness of Louise is stressed through the story by showing that her parents spoilt her by doing all that she wanted. In addition to her first and second husband who tried to make her happy. Finally her daughter Iris wanted to get married and Louise’s selfishness was extremely clear. This situation led to a confrontation between Louise and the narrator. He faced her with the truth that she is selfish, cruel and that she meant to act in order to reach her aims. The narrator was against the sense of guilt and responsibility that Louise wants Iris to feel.
The story does not end in  the marriage of Iris, but it ends by the surprise of Louise’s death. Through the story the reader expected that Louise will outlive all the characters, instead, she puts the blame on Iris’s marriage and use her selfishness to make her daughter feels guilty and finally dies.
It is clear that the story is framed by selfishness on the part of Louise and sacrifice on the part of all the other characters. It starts by her parents who gave her all what she liked, passing by her first husband and finally her second husband. Yet, she was not satisfied enough and she needed another sacrifice by her daughter but unfortunately she dies.
 Old Man At The Bridge
Old Man At The Bridge is a short story that depends on two main characters at the time of war. The first character is an old man introduced to us through the words of the second character who is a young soldier and the narrator of the story. Tyhe soldier’s job is to be sure that every body is leaving the town. The setting of the story is close to a bridge that leads out of town.
The old man is proud of his country and wants to be the last one to leave it. He cares about what he had to do before. We know that he had to care for some animals and that he hade to leave them alone. From his words “what about the others” we feel that he is concerned with others. Yet, he is lonely and alienated. The effect of the first person narration on the story is evident because the story has a sense of realism. From the events we know that the old man is not involved in politics, but he is hopeless, helpless, and suffers from the consequences of war as others.
 The Last Leaf
In a  ‘short story’ the writer must follow a certain system. It must concern itself with one single plot and a maximum of three characters. With one idea to be developed, the short story has a climax that serves as a crucial point in its plot. It must, also involve one single effect that could surprise or shock the reader. These features could be applied on both The Necklace and The Last Leaf.
In The Last Leaf the story centres around one main character that has no hope except in one single leaf. The hope of the protagonist was focused on an invaluable thing that proved to be of no significance. While, in The Necklace, the focus was on something that was supposed to be precious but proved to be of no worth.
The Last Leaf’s element of suspense is the leaf and when it will fall. The reader’s attention is focused on waiting for the end of the protagonist whenever the leaf falls. Ironically and suddenly the reader finds out that the leaf was tied to the branch and if it was not for this small thread, the leaf would have fallen a long time ago. The sudden effect of this revelation affects both the hero and the reader. Just as the effect of the false Necklace had done to the Heroes of its story. The leaf was a symbol of hope that proved to be worthless. The heroine of The Last Leaf finds out that if she wants to die, she is committing a sin and that her sacrifice is for nothing. Similarly, the heroine of The Necklace and her husband, found out that their sacrifice was for nothing.
Both stories adapt to the main characteristics of a short story. They focus on a small set of characters, have one point of interest, and a sudden and shocking event that affects the heroes and the readers.
 
 
 
Shooting an Elephant
 
 
Shooting an Elephant is a short story written by a modern British writer. During his age India was under the British colonialism. The story deals with the writer’s inner conflict between his sense of duty and his inner feeling that he is guilty in a certain way. He is serving his country and, at the same time he is treating Indians in a violent way. He shares the same feelings with almost all of the British citizens.
The idea of violence and the hatred of colonialism is expressed through the narration of the writer’s experience when he was in India. He describes the state of the natives and introduces an incident of shooting an elephant in a way that exposes the violence of the coloniser. The elephant was tearing the grass and seemed to be an element of destruction that must be killed. At this point, the elephant is a symbol of destruction and threat and that is why it is shot. Yet, the very same elephant could be compared to the state of the natives and could be a symbol of the violence used in treating them.
In the story the writer shows that the natives are expecting the colonisers to do so many things. By this the coloniser, also, loses his freedom of choice. He has to do what is expected in order to keep his image and authority. Although this is useful, yet it involves a lot of violence and actions against humanity and nature.
When the writer shoots the elephant, he realises that he did not act out of duty, but out of boast. He did what was expected from him and not what he desired. He, consciously compares this act to all of the actions taken by the British in India. He feels that duty is not the motive, it is pride. The moment of shooting the elephant is a moment of self-awareness that expressed the state of violence and blood that surrounds the atmosphere of colonialism and leads to the conflict between the sense of duty and that of guilt.
  
The Guest
 
Like the short story Shooting an Elephant, The Guest is a short story that deals with the idea of war, violence, and colonialism. The incidents are after World War II in Algeria. It describes the state of an Arabian prisoner who is tied from the neck and has to be delivered to the French authorities. The setting is in a school surrounded by the desert. The character of Daru, in the story, is a symbol of conflict. He looks upon the Arab as a guest. Yet, he is supposed to deliver the prisoner, but he is torn between the sense of duty and that of guilt. He has the feeling of brotherhood with the prisoner and, deep inside, he refuses to deliver him. His inability to take a decision is expressed through walking in circles trying to decide what to do.
Furthermore, the character of Balducci pulling the prisoner with a rope tied to his neck, is a significant symbol of humiliation and violence. Also the state of poverty in the country is shown through the idea of wheat arriving from France after a hard time of need and starvation. The whole country was ruined after the war. The state of violence is, also emphasised by showing how the Arabian prisoner has killed his brother for a grain. Violence surrounded all the characters and led them to behave in an aggressive and destructive way.
At the end of the story the prisoner is left to go to the authorities by himself. He started as a guest which is ironical because he is the native and Daru is the actual guest, and ended as a human being who is left as a result of Daru’s sense of guilt towards his fellowman. The story, successfully represents the idea of violence and war in a way that shows the inner suffering of the actual guests, the French, and of the Arabs who suffer the consequences of violence and war.
  
A Photograph
 
A Photograph is a realistic short story written by Naguib Mahfouz. It portrays the relations between people in society, using a simple and lively manner. The story shows a man and his wife, who is usually interested in the news about crimes and accidents. After the wife is described, the question of how anyone could kill or harm someone is clearly noticed in the sequence of events. Shalabiyya, a young lady, was murdered and the story examines this accident showing the relations between different characters and the murdered lady.
Shalabiyya has been working as a maid for five years, and she was obedient. Yet, she was dismissed with no good reasons. This incident was not objected by Shalabiyya’s mother, who thought about it as fated. The belief in fate is a feature of society that was quickly presented in the story. After the girl has left service she knew a man called Anwar who married her, got her pregnant and forced her to have an abortion. It is another incident in Shalabiyya’s life that shows her misery. After that she got divorced and got acquainted with a man called Hassuna but she ran away from him after a short time. Hassuna’s comment on the girl’s photograph was that she deserves what happened to her, and that her murder was a result of her deeds and behaviour. Finally, we are introduced to the character of Adel, who is a college student and had a relation with Shalabiyya. It is revealed that Adel was the one who killed the girl.
All the characters in the story played a role in Shalabiyya’s life till the moment of her death. The relations between characters is expressed in a skilful way within the concise medium of a short story. Moreover, the idea of fate is shown through Shalabiyya’s mother and her comments on what happened to her daughter. A Photograph is a portrayal of relations and beliefs in society that is governed by simplicity and a belief in fate, side by side with the representation of characters and their roles in the victims life.
 
  
 
Summer Flower
In this short story, death is the first thing to face the reader. It seems that the  writer is preparing us for a horrid experience. There is a man who would visit his wife’s grave. We come to know that the summer reminds the poet with what had happened in August and the flower reminds him of his wife. The flower is the only symbol of life in the story. It was the only symbol few days before the disaster. This beautiful flower is not going to exist for a long time. Its destiny is destruction and death.
The whole story seems to be a declaration of what happened after the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan. It is a document showing the hellish results of the atomic bomb. It took a beautiful part of the country and covered everything with blood.
The writer tries to depict exact pictures from reality to show the reader actual painful results of war. The incident of the man of the factory and how blood flow from his forehead is a typical scenery of the disaster. Red and black are the colours that covers the story. Red is the blood-shed and black is the colour of smoke and destruction. In order to give us an exact picture of the results of war, the writer goes into detailed description. He accurately describes people’s faces.
The short story presents a panoramic view of war and its results. War did not separate between animate and inanimate targets. It distracted all; humans, nature and hope. The writer is living in a nightmare. The writer’s search for his wife’s grave has failed. It is war, violence and destruction that caused this agony, physical destruction and loss of hope.
  
 Civil Peace
Civil Peace presents the theme of war from a social point of view. The story shows how war affects people’s behaviour and human relationships. The story depicts its incidents at the time of war in Nigeria. The writer documents the moral change due to war.
Jonathan is the protagonist of the story. An opportunist who took every single chance to increase his money. He used his bicycle as a taxi and charged people with six pounds each. He used people’s fear and their desire to escape and sucked their blood. His own life and survival are fulfilled through war. This man has used his wife and his children in order to gain money.
The writer shows the natural happenings during the time of war. This very man, who used everything that came to his hand to make money, was robbed during the time of war. Thieves had broke his door and robbed his money. The next day, the man starts working immediately, as he used to do daily. War changes the way people behave and affect their morals. Even the representative of war, the soldier who appeared at the beginning of the story, is bribed. This shows that even the soldier’s morals and his unexpected attitude is an accurate proof of the destructive effects of war. The story starts with the painful satire of the soldier’s situation and ends with the funny idea of the hero being robbed and returning back to work as if nothing has happened to him.
 
  
My Kinsman, Major Molineux
Hawthorne
Using the word ‘short story’ implies that the writer must follow a certain style. The short story must concern itself with one single plot and a small set of characters. With one point of interest to be developed, the short story has a climax that serves as a turning point in its plot. It must, also involve one single effect that could surprise or shock the reader.
My Kinsman Major Molineux is the story of young Robin, who makes his way from the country to Boston to live with his famous and wealthy kinsman, the Major. Hawthorne begins the story with the statement, “After the kings of Great Britain had assumed the right of appointing the colonial governers...” letting the reader know that during this time there is great political unrest in the New World. This happens at the time the Major is tarred and feathered and driven out of the colonies. In this story the historical details are mixed with the action in a skilful pattern. A lot of description and accurate details help in picturing the story in a realistic way. The clothing of a country boy is typical of that period, the interior of a barbershop, the advertisements on the tavern walls, the girls signal from the dark doorways and the awful humiliation of the Major, give the story a photographic reality.
Hawthorne sets the stage for the story in historical fact when the real aim of the story is to analyze the young man Robin in his effort to seek his kinsman. The basis for this story lies in Robin’s search of his kinsman and his fortune. He is becoming a man and is looking to find his place in the world, hoping that his kinsman, the major, will aid him.
His search is not only physical, but an emotional journey as well. Robin looks for a resting place in a strange land that offers him no comfort and no help. From the very beginning of the story, he is lost in a poor part of town and is uncomfortable. Hawthorne does not say that Robin is very wise, in fact he seems foolish for forgetting to even ask for directions. He describes himself as “shrewd” but still shrinks from the people whom he asks for assistance in his journey. The boy wanders onto the stage just as the plot is coming to a climax, he attempts to find out what is happening and encounters criminals, rebels, prostitutes, and friends in disguise. The story is concise, the events lead to the climax producing a sharp effect on the reader. Each of the events contributes to concentrating on the climax.
The story's high moment is the incident when Robin stops a passer-by to ask his way to the Major’s house, and finds that one side of his face is painted red and the other black and "There, in tar-and-feathery dignity, sat his kinsman, Major Molinuex! He was an elderly man, of large and majestic person... His face was pale as death." For Hawthorne, The truth of the human heart is often buried deep or hidden by the complicated world of fact.
The story could hold political significance. Hawthorne introduces Robin’s search with reference to the colonists of the new land who were denied the right to appoint their own governors. Robin is an eighteen years old boy and well grown. Thinking it is high time to begin in the world, he shows the same tendency as the colonists. Robin has had an appointed guardian and was determined to profit by his kinsman’s generous intentions. Yet, he is unable to make his own way, and is ready to accept another guardian, the kindly gentleman, who, at the end of the story, directs and controls Robin’s behavior.
 
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