John Dryden, England’s first Poet Laureate, is considered the archetypal literary figure of the English Restoration. Born in the East Midlands, Dryden was educated at London’s Westminster School and Cambridge University.
Dryden wrote several long poems praising Charles II and the new regime, including Astrea Redux and To His Sacred Majesty, and in 1668 he was appointed Poet Laureate, meaning that he was officially employed by the king to write poems in celebration or commemoration of national events. Many of these works, and his later satires and translations, were written in heroic couplets, a form he would bequeath to Alexander Pope, and which, at the time, signified symmetry, harmony and social order restored.
Dramatic Poesie:
Dryden's “ An Essay on Dramatic poesy” presents a brief discussion on Neo-classical theory of literature. An Essay on Dramatic poesy is written in the form of dialogues among four gentlemen : Eugenics, Crites, Lisideius and Neander. Neander speaks for Dryden himself. Eugenius favors modern English dramatists by attacking the classical playwrights. Crites opposes rhyme in plays and argues that though the moderns excel in Science, the ancient age was the true age of poetry. Lisideius defends the French playwrights and attacks the English tendency to mix genres. Neander speaks in favor of the modern English plays , but does not disparage the ancient. He argues that tragic – comedy is the best form for a play. Neander gives his palm to the violation of the three units because it leads to variety in the English plays. He supports the use of blank verse in drama and says that the use of rhyme in serious plays is justifiable in place of the blank verse. He defends the classical theory of drama saying that it is an imitation of life and reflects human nature clearly.
His definition of the play:
“ A play ought to be a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passion and humours, and the change of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind”.
Throughout, 'The Essay of Dramatic poesy' Dryden treats drama as a form of imagination literature and hence his remarks on drama apply to poetry as well. His definition first line word, "A play ought to be a just and lively image"
Aristotle's definition of Tregedy:
In chapter 6 of Poetics Aristotle embarks upon the most important subject of Poetics- the tragic drama. And in the following chapters he discusses the nature of tragedy and its constituent parts such as plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle and song. He also draws distinctions between various kinds of plots and introduces us to some technical terms namely reversal, discovery and calamity. Chapters 13 and 14 contain Aristotle’s well known discussion of what he means by his association of pity and fear with tragedy.According to Aristotle tragedy is a representation of an action that is worth serious attention, complete in itself, and of some amplitude. By the expression “representation of an action” Aristotle means the representation of a plot for in his language action and plot are synonymous. By ‘serious’ he means something that matters. Serious is concerned with important values as opposed to what is slight, trivial, transitory or of the surface. The action of tragedy must be complete. By ‘complete’ he means the action which has a beginning, a middle and an end which are causally connected. The action of tragedy must be long enough for the catastrophe to occur and on the other hand short enough to be grasped as a single artistic whole and not like a creature a thousand miles long.
Hello readers! I'm writing this blog as an activity given by Kavisha ma'am from the Department of English, MKBU. It is about Creativity and Critical thinking. In this blog I am going to write about creative task skit performance.
Jonathan Swift was a greatest Satirist of the Neoclassical Period. He wrote Satirical verse during his time. This is our first attempt to create satire out of this skit. We do not know if this is satire or not but we tried our best. I hope you like our skit's script. This is a group task. We are a team of seven Me (Insiya) Kosha, Payal, Upasana, Ghansham, Drashti, Aarti.
FIRST SCENE:
(Hardships on Male)
(Drashti,ghanshyam,insiya)
(One boy Decides to sit on the bench which is reserved for girls in the classroom and, a few moments later the teacher enters in class P-1(student-1, Ghanshyam) greets the teacher along with the rest of the students.)
Teacher:(Drashti)
(with surprise and a bit of anger temper) Why? Rishi, why are you sitting on the girls' part? I know you are completely aware of the school rule that no boy is allowed to sit with girls.(the stick which she uses to punish the students)
P-1:(ghanshyam)
(with fright)Madam I thought that if a girl can wear what i can, if she can eat what i can, then why can’t I Sit with her and have a word of word?
Teacher:(Drashti)
(with widened eyeballs and somewhat daunting tone)Never think of doing such a solent act boy, ever again! Know only that she is a girl and you are a boy!
P-1:(ghanshyam)
(he murmurs)it is the fact everyone knows (stand quietly)
Teacher:(Drashti)
Hey, what are you murmuring? Do you have anything important to say?
P-2:(Insiya)
(with teasing will and enthusiasm)madam, he just said that everyone knows the fact that who can be called girl and who can be called boy?(upon this whole of the class laughed except teacher she seemed tensed and furious on P-1(ghanshyam)
Teacher:(Drashti)
How dare you break the rule! How dare you insult me in front of all the principal’s cabin with your parents tomorrow.
(ghanshyam stands helplessly and sad)
SECOND SCENE:
(gender discrimination)
(payal,Aarti,upasana,kosha)
(At outside of jail payal(P-1), upasana(P-2), Aarti(P - 3), wait for their companion to get freedom from punishment.)
P-1:(payal)
(with a jealous voice)Are garlands and firecrackers ready?
P-2:(upasana)
(with the same joy)Yes, how can we forget them?
P-3:(Aarti)
(with consoling words)Ah, she is coming, having done great work!
P-4:(kosha)
(coming out from the gate of jail) Bravo! My mates! I am happy that god was given me the reward of my deed (laughs) that was raping an extra-racial boy before 20 year, i am very happy now as i am proud of my deed. Ah, I am so happy! (Eats sweets from Aarti(P-3) and upasana’s(P-2) hands)
P-1:(payal)
(to all the three) let us go home and live the life of pride and valor.
(All leaves)
THIRD SCENE:
(Male gaze)
(Drashti as Sati and ghanshyam as Mahadev)
(in lofty peaks of snow mountain) MAHADEV(Ghanshyam) is sitting in meditation then SATI (Drashti) comes and puts some recently plucked flowers at MAHADEV’S (ghanshyam) feet.)
Mahadev:(ghanshyam)
(made up in an angry manner) oh don’t you see i am trying to concentrate my focus on myself? Please do not appear here again! Do not let your presence distract me. Go away! (again sits in meditation)
Sati:(Drashti)
(In an angry tone) Oh, is that so? You and your practice are equally null and void! They are not as strong as they are supposed to be, if my presence affects your practice it shows that my presence has more power than your practice!
Mahadev:(ghanshyam)
(save silence for himself and adjusts himself back to meditation murmuring the obscure language) she is correct there is weakness in me! Not in her!
(End of our skit)
In this skit we try to explore the weaknesses of our society. It's our attempt to write satire. We will perform this skit on stage.
Hello readers! I am writing this blog in response to a Thinking activity assigned by Dilip Barad sir. In this blog I am going to discuss the novel 'Hard Times'.
Name: Charles John Huffam Dickens Boz
Occupation: Novelist, Journalist
Born: 7 February 1812
Died: 9 June 1870
Genre: Victorian literature
Charles Dickens was a British author who penned beloved classics such as ‘Hard Times,' 'A Christmas Carol,' 'David Copperfield' and 'Great Expectations.' Charles Dickens was a British novelist, journalist, editor, illustrator and social commentator who wrote such beloved classic novels as Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.
He was born in Portsmouth on 7 February 1812, son of John Dickens, a feckless and improvident navy clerk with a great love for literature. A happy childhood in Chatham, during which he read voraciously, ended with a move to London in 1822. Family poverty meant the young Charles had to earn money, and he spent a humiliating year labeling bottles in a blacking factory; during this period, his father was imprisoned for debt. Dickens is remembered as one of the most important and influential writers of the 19th century. Among his accomplishments, he has been lauded for providing a stark portrait of the Victorian-era underclass, helping to bring about social change.
Charles Dickens, an author witnessing firsthand the harsh impacts of the industrial revolution, wrote a novel that contains in it some of the themes still present in degrowth discourse today. His novel Hard Times demonstrates the invasion of utilitarianism and its economic implications into human relationships and education. Art is Dickens preferred form of dépense to replace the hegemony of utilitarianism. Dickens novels are
Fact vs Fancy:
The novel takes up the theme of Fact vs Fancy on its very first page. The opening words of the novel, spoken by Mr Gradgrind,
"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will everbe of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, Sir!”
Being a spokesperson Mr. Gradgrind denied any role for fancy or imagination. Imaginative or aesthetic subjects are removed from the curriculum of his school. No literature, music, or poetry. For Mr Gradgrind, the Circus represents the cradle of fancy. But Dickens portrays it in a favorable light. Sleary, the proprietor of a circus, believes that people must be amused. Not surprisingly, it is Sissy Jupe, who comes from the circus and is not apologetic about her imaginative faculty, who is able to lead an emotionally fulfilling and morally responsible life. Gradgrind’s own children fail in life and relationship. Louisa, trained to repress her emotions, enters and walks out of a loveless marriage. Upon returning to her father’s house, she almost suffers a nervous breakdown. Tom, her brother, also trained in analysis, deduction and mathematics, suffers a terrible moral decline and ends up in burglary. Bitzer, who has adhered to Gradgrind’s teachings as a child, turns out to be an uncompassionate egotist. The dynamics of human life cannot be reduced to a collection of material facts and statistical analyses. If the future citizens of a country are brought up on Gradgrind’s maxims, the result is a mechanized society and soulless individuals. Dickens seems to be emphasizing the need for a holistic personality which, apart from the capacity for reason and calculation, also possesses emotional sensitivity and aesthetic outlook. Through Hard Times Dickens also educates his readers about the miserable and exploitative working conditions of factories in the industrial towns of Manchester and Preston. Hard Times is set amid the industrial smokestacks and factories of Coketown, England. In Victorian England workers, referred to as “the Hands” in Hard Times, were forced to work long hours for low wages in cramped, sooty and dangerous factories. The Hands, exhorted by a crooked union spokesman named Slackbridge, try to form a union. The workers are caught between the devil and the deep sea. Dickens turns the lens of his art to focus attention on the plight of the poor and to awaken the conscience of the reader.
Hard Times is the greatest critique of industrial society in English literature before D.H. Lawrence. George Bernard Shaw called Hard Times a novel of “passionate revolt against the whole industrial order of the modern world.” Shaw also criticized the novel for its failure to provide an accurate account of trade unionism of the time, calling the venomous orator, leader Slackbridge “a mere figment of middle class imagination.”
Utilitarianism:
Dickens was a staunch anti-utilitarianist. While Dickens was writing Hard Times, Utilitarianism was the prominent philosophy in industrial England, founded by Jeremy Bentham. Utilitarians believed that human actions should be judged based on how much pleasure or pain they produced for the greatest number of people. Anti-utilitarians, as described in the anthology Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, believe there is more behind human action than selfish desires for pleasure or aversion to pain.
Utilitarianism is the assumption that human beings act in a way that highlights their own self-interest. It is based on factuality and leaves little room for imagination. Dickens provides three vivid examples of this utilitarian logic in Hard Times. The first; Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, one of the main characters in the book, was the principal of a school in Coketown. He was a firm believer in utilitarianism and instilled this philosophy into the students at the school from a very young age, as well as his own children. The children are encouraged to maximize utility through their actions by basing their decisions on selfish, cold calculation. In turn, the children are punished for enjoying artistic entertainment such as storybooks about fairies and watching circus performers. With lives dominated by facts and void of art, the children are frustrated and discontented. Gradgrind’s children ultimately grow to find that the utilitarian system of ethics fails them when they are confronted with the complexity of justice and emotions.
Mr. Josiah Bounderby was also a practitioner of utilitarianism but was more interested in the profit that stemmed from it. At the other end of the perspective, a group of circus members, who are the total opposite of utilitarians, are added by Dickens to provide a sharp contrast from the ideas of Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind.
Dickens’ ultimate message is to show the value of imagination, art, and human connection in a place dominated by fact and rationality. When Tom Gradgrind’s children, Louisa and Tom face hardship because they followed their father’s utilitarian thinking, it is ultimately Sissy who will be the one who pilots change in the imaginary of the Gradgrinds. Sissy is a magnetic storyteller, someone who can light the spark in the minds of others that illuminates a new vision of the world. That vision might be a fantastic one of fairies and other forest spirits, or of a different, more compassionate future. We see this in Sissy’s undying hope that her father might still come back home to her one day. She has faith in a better tomorrow that is based on love, not material improvement.
Conclusion:
'Hard Times' is a social novel with a well defined cluster of themes. It is the indictment of Victorian society in general and some of its evils and abuses in particular. Since Dickens is considered as the novelist with a purpose, so is the Hard Times, which is full of the battered utilitarianism in all the three aspects of society such as the educational system, social system and economical system.The main attack of Dickens is on the utilitarian theory of education based on facts, figures and calculations. This novel on the whole conveys that if the educational system is one sided the young generation of the nation will also be one sided. This novel shows the society of the Victorian era and how it is completely battered by the utilitarian philosophy of Bentham and Smith.
Hello readers! I write this blog in response to a Thinking activity assigned by Dilip Barad sir. In this blog I am going to discuss about the Absalom and Achitophel as a political Satire.
The English author John Dryden is best known as a poet and critic. After John Donne and John Milton, John Dryden was the greatest English poet of the 17th century. After William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, he was the greatest playwright. His translation of The Aeneid remains the best ever produced in English. Dryden the poet is best known today as a satirist. He wrote only two great original satires: 'Mac Flecknoe' and 'The Medall'. His most famous poem, 'Absalom and Achitophel' contains several brilliant satiric portraits. John Dryden came from a landowning family with connections to Parliament and the Church of England. He studied as a King’s Scholar at the prestigious Westminster School of London, where he later sent two of his own children. There, Dryden was trained in the art of rhetorical argument, which remained a strong influence on the poet's writing and critical thought throughout his life. Dryden published his first poem in 1649.
Dryden’s poem, despite its aristocratic elements of monarchism and heroic valor. After the death of William Davenant in April 1668, Dryden became the first official poet laureate of England. The royal office carried the responsibility of composing occasional works in celebration of public events.
He is credited with standardizing the heroic couplet in English poetry by applying it as a convention in a range of works, including satires, religious pieces, fables, epigrams, prologues, and plays. After the theaters were reopened in 1660, Dryden became a key figure in the dramatic movement we now call Restoration comedy. Dryden died in May 1700, and was initially buried in St. Anne’s Cemetery. In 1710, he was moved to the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey.
Absalom and Achitophel:
John Dryden’s “Absalom and Achitophel” was first published in 1681, in direct response to a political crisis faced by King Charles II from 1679 to 1681. In what became known as the “Exclusion Crisis,” the king’s opponents in Parliament tried to exclude Charles’s brother James from the succession on the grounds that he was a Roman Catholic. “Absalom and Achitophel” is a satiric narrative poem in which Dryden uses a biblical allegory to discuss the events and main personalities involved in this crisis. The poem mocks the King’s opponents and openly reveals Dryden’s staunchly royalist sympathies. The poem is also notable for featuring one of Dryden’s literary trademarks: the “heroic couplet."
Absalom and Achitophel Political Satire:
The poem originated in the political situation of England at the time and one cannot fail to note that several political personalities are satirized in it. Published in November 1681, the theme was suggested by the king to Dryden. At this time, the question of succession to King Charles had assumed great importance. The Earl of Shaftesbury had been thrown into prison to face a charge of high treason. There were two contenders for the succession. Firstly, Charles’ brother James, Duke of York, a known Roman Catholic; the second contender was Charles’ illegitimate son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth.
Dryden wrote 'Absalom and Achitophel' at the King’s request. In the context of this poem, he ridiculed and satirized the Whigs and Earl of Shaftesbury. The poem covers its political satire under the apparent disguise of a Biblical Story. This poem completely describes the existing crisis and the political issues of contemporary time. Absalom was convinced by Achitophel to revolt against King David. Absalom represents James Scott and Achitophel represents Earl of Shaftesbury. By using the Biblical Allegory, Dryden satirizes Achitophel and the ones following him. The poet, all through the poem, wishes to inform King Charles that James Scott was not to be blamed and accused because the Earl of Shaftesbury was the one who aroused the rebellion's will in James Scott. Also, the poem ridiculed and satirized King Charles but not in cruel words. He criticized the King by mentioning his many wives and slaves.
The aim of Dryden was to support the King and to expose his enemies. Charles had his own weaknesses, he is extremely fond of women. But Dryden puts a charitable mantel over his sexual sins. He is mild in dealing with his real vices. The king himself did not think unfavorably of his love affairs. Dryden has nothing but praise for the king’s moderation in political matters and his leniency towards rebels. Dryden’s lash falls on the King’s enemies, particularly the Earl of Shaftesbury. Dryden dreads the fickleness of the mob and he is not sure to what extremes a crowd can go. Dryden’s reference to the godlike David shows his flattery of the King and his belief in the “Theory of the Divine Right of Kings”.
People of England believe that kings are chosen by God. If anyone starts rebellion against the king that means he is again of God. In 'Absalom and Achitophel' Dryden mythologizes Charles II, his brother James, Duke of York, and the triumphant admirals and generals as classical and Christian heroes and even gods. This mythologizing seems deployed especially to defuse opposition to Charles and thereby to avert the potential unraveling of the Restoration compromise. Dryden opens the poem, the ultimate point of its portrayal of David’s promiscuity is that
“No True Succession” can “attend” the “seed” of David’s concubines.
While Dryden appears to be adopting a Burkean conservatism based on the weight of tradition as is obvious from all the references to God’s involvement in anointing and supporting kings throughout the poem. Lords, commoners, kings themselves, by tampering with succession were to make a king. Dryden then proceeds to portray the king’s friends as a loyal group of peers, bishops, judges, and even the former speaker of the House of Commons. The greatest wielder of words in the poem is David himself, who comes forward finally to vindicate his power and position. David insists that even if he has only a part of government, the part belongs to him, cannot be attenuated by any other part, and is “to Rule.” Thus Dryden stakes out for "David / Charles" a middle ground between extremes of arbitrary or anarchic rule. He insists on the king’s lawful prerogative granted by the unwritten constitution and forming part of a balanced system of government. Dryden closes the poem by underwriting David’s words with the Word of God:
He said. Th’Almighty, nodding, gave Consent: And Peals of Thunder shook the Firmament.”
Conclusion:
In Absalom and Acltophel Dryden mirrors the English life of the time, in a vigorous manner. The Whig leaders are mercilessly subjected to satire. Dryden also wrote numerous plays that helped him make him one of the leading figures in the Restoration theater. Today, however, he is admired more for his influence on other writers than for his own works.
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Words - 1,205
Images - 4
Monday, November 7, 2022
Assignment - Paper 105
Name: Insiyafatema Alvani
Batch: M.A Sem:1
Roll no: 12
Subject Code: 22396
Paper name: History of English Literature - From 1350 to 1900
E-mail: insiyafatemaalvani@gmail.com
Submitted to: Smt S.B Gardi Department of English MKBU
1)Romantic Age and Poets of This Age
Romanticism:
The Romantic Period in English literature is taken to begin with the publication of Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads and end with the death of the novelist, Sir Walter Scott. Romanticism was a broad movement in the history of European and American consciousness which rebelled against the triumph of the European Enlightenment; it is also a comprehensive term for the larger number of tendencies towards change observable in European literature in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As an ageless phenomenon Romanticism Cannot be defined. The Romantic Movement is traditionally seen as starting roughly around 1780. Romantic periods start in 1798, the year in which William Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge published a collection of poems entitled Lyrical Ballads. As a historical phase of literature, English Romanticism Extends from Blake's earliest poems up to the beginning of the 1830's, though these dates are arbitrary. Romanticism manifested at some-what varied times in Britain, America,France, Germany and Italy. Romanticism affected arts and culture in general. Its main feature was a reaction against the eighteenth century and the Age of Reason. In fact, "Romanticism", or the "Romantic Movement'', was a reaction against the rationalism of the eighteenth century.
Today the word ‘romantic’ evokes images of love and sentimentality, but the term ‘Romanticism’ has a much wider meaning. It covers a range of developments in art, literature, music and philosophy, spanning the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The ‘Romantics’ would not have used the term themselves: the label was applied retrospectively, from around the middle of the 19th century. The German poet Friedrich Schlegel, who is given credit for first using the term romantic to describe literature, defined it as "literature depicting emotional matter in imaginative forms.
The Age of Revolution:
The Romantic poets were only a small part of a much larger cultural movement. This movement affected the whole of Europe and America. Great painters such as David, Gericault, Constable and Goya and great composers such as Beethoven and Schubert also arose during this time, influenced by the same revolutions, ideas and feelings as the Romantic poets. Aside from the negative impact of the Industrial Revolution on the working and lower classes, the Romantic poets lived through an era of great political change, which influenced their poetic thoughts. The period is sometimes coined the "The Age of Revolution." The American Revolution began in 1765 with Americans rejecting the imposition of taxes by the British Parliament. The French Revolution of 1789 actually started two years prior, in 1787, with the summoning of notabilities to discuss the increase of taxes of the privileged classes. The Revolution did not reach its first climax until two years later in August 1789. The French Revolution continued until 1799. Equality,brotherhood, liberty, freedom these are the main ideas of revolution. The revolutionary wars promised a great future for arts and humanity in a free society. This excited the Romantic poets and is reflected in the themes of their poetry, especially in poems by Blake, Wordsworth and Shelley.
Important concepts of Romantic Poets:
Imagination:
The imagination was elevated to a position as the supreme faculty of the mind. The Romantics tended to define and to present the imagination as our ultimate "shaping" or creative power, the approximate human equivalent of the creative powers of nature or even deity. It is dynamic, an active, rather than passive power, with many functions.Imagination is the primary faculty to creating all art.
Nature:
The Romantic treatment of nature is almost always philosophical or moral. Nature and natural life were not just the focus of Romantic disenchantment with the new urban industrial existence of the late 18th century. Nature was the mirror in which the Romantics could see the eternal powers which had made both man and the physical universe; it was no longer merely the canvas on which the classical dream of order was written. It was viewed as "organic," rather than, as in the scientific or rationalist view, as a system of "mechanical" laws, for Romanticism displaced the rationalist view of the universe as a machine with the analogue of an "organic" image, a living tree or mankind itself.
William Wordsworth:
Born: 7 April, 1770
Died: 23 April, 1850
Notable Works:
Lyrical Ballads
The Prelude
William Wordsworth was one of the founders of English Romanticism and one its most central figures and important intellects. He is remembered as a poet of spiritual and epistemological speculation. A poet concerned with the human relationship to nature and a fierce advocate of using the vocabulary and speech patterns of common people in poetry. The son of John and Ann Cookson Wordsworth, William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770 in Cockermouth in England, an area that would become closely associated with Wordsworth for over two centuries after his death. While touring Europe, Wordsworth came into contact with the French Revolution. This experience, as well as a subsequent period living in France, brought about Wordsworth’s interest and sympathy for the life, troubles, and speech of the “common man.” These issues proved to be of the utmost importance to Wordsworth’s work. Wordsworth’s earliest poetry was published in 1793. Wordsworth was first taught to read by his mother and was sent to a low quality school in Cockermouth. Following his mother’s death, he was sent to a school in Penrith, which was a school for children of upper-class families. Wordsworth received his BA degree in 1791. He returned to Hawkshead for the first two summers of his time at Cambridge, and often spent later holidays on walking tours. In 1790 he went on a walking tour of Europe, during which he toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy.
Wordsworth’s earliest poetry was published in 1793 in the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. In 1802, he returned to France with his sister on a four-week visit to meet Caroline. Later that year, he married Mary Hutchinson, a childhood friend, and they had five children together. Equally important in the poetic life of Wordsworth was his 1795 meeting with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was with Coleridge that Wordsworth published the famous Lyrical Ballads in 1798. While the poems themselves are some of the most influential in Western literature. Wordsworth’s most famous work, The Prelude is considered by many to be the crowning achievement of English Romanticism. The poem, revised numerous times, chronicles the spiritual life of the poet and marks the birth of a new genre of poetry. Although Wordsworth worked on The Prelude throughout his life, the poem was published posthumously. Often known simply as ‘The Daffodils’, this is also one of the most famous poems of English Romanticism. Poem is written by Wordsworth, celebrating the ‘host of golden daffodils’ he saw while out walking. On 15 April 1802, Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy were walking around Glencoyne Bay in Ullswater when they came upon a ‘long belt’ of daffodils, as Dorothy put it memorably in her journal.
William Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount on April 23, 1850, leaving his wife, Mary. He was eighty years old. He is buried at St Oswald’s Church, Grasmere. His widow, Mary, published his lengthy autobiographical “Poem to Coleridge” as The Prelude several months after his death.
John Keats:
Born - 31 October 1795,
Died - 23 February 1821, Rome, Italy
Literary period - Romantic
"Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree; it had better not come at all'.
- John Keats
John Keats’s poetic achievement in a span of a mere six years can only be described as astonishing. But in his own lifetime, critics came close to destroying him. A revered English poet whose short life spanned just 25 years.
English Romantic poet John Keats was born on October 31, 1795, in London. The oldest of four children, he lost both his parents at a young age. His father was a livery-stable keeper, he died when Keats was eight; his mother died of tuberculosis six years later. His mother had tuberculosis when he was 14. In the summer of the same year, he was apprenticed to a surgeon neighbor of his maternal grandparents in Edmonton. In 1815 he began medical training at Guy’s Hospital. Despite qualifying, he never practiced medicine, turning instead to writing poetry. His first volume of poems, published in 1817, ‘On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer’. In the same year, Blackwood’s Magazine published a series of reviews denouncing what it called the ‘Cockney school’: poets and essayists associated with the writer Leigh Hunt, of which Keats was one. Keats' introduction to the work of Edmund Spenser, particularly The Faerie Queene, was to prove a turning point in his development as a poet. Spenser's work inspired Keats to write his first poem, which he entitled Imitation of Spenser. Keats befriended Leigh Hunt, a poet and editor who published his first poem in 1816.
Even as he studied medicine, Keats’ devotion to literature and the arts never ceased. Through his friend, Cowden Clarke, whose father was the headmaster at Enfield, Keats met publisher Leigh Hunt of The Examiner. In 1817 Keats leveraged his new friendships to publish his first volume of poetry, Poems by John Keats. The following year, Keats' published "Endymion," a mammoth four-thousand line poem based on the Greek myth of the same name. Keats had written the poem in the summer and fall of 1817, committing himself to at least 40 lines a day. He completed the work in November of that year and it was published in April 1818. An important change in Keats' life was a walking tour that he took through the Lake Country, up into Scotland, and a short trip to Ireland, with one of his friends, Charles Brown, in the summer of 1818. The trip lasted from June to August and reached its terminus in Cromarty, Scotland. The walking tour broadened Keats' acquaintance with his environment and with varieties of people. The hardships which Keats and Brown had to endure, often spending the night on the mud floor of a shepherd's hut, may have weakened Keats' constitution and shortened his life. The trip itself produced very little poetry.
However, in 1820 Keats fell ill with tuberculosis. He went to Italy in the hope that the climate might help. Nevertheless, John Keats died in Rome on 23 February 1821. He was only 25. Keats was buried in the Protestant cemetery.
P. B. Shelley:
Born - 4 August 1792
Died - 8 July 1822
Literary period - Romantic
Occupation - Poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the epic poets of the 19th century and is best known for his classic anthology verse works such as Ode to the West Wind and The Masque of Anarchy. He is also well known for his long-form poetry. He went on many adventures with his second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Percy Bysshe Shelley was born 4 August 1792 at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England. The eldest son of Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley, he stood in line to inherit his grandfather’s considerable estate and a seat in Parliament. He attended Eton College, where he began writing poetry, and went on to Oxford University. His first publication was a Gothic novel, Zastrozzi (1810). After less than a year at Oxford, he was expelled for writing and circulating a pamphlet promoting atheism.
Shelley's unconventional life and romantic idealism made him a notorious and denigrated figure in his own time, but he became the idol of later generations of poets including major Victorian poets Robert Browning, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Shelley was also known for his association with contemporaries John Keats and Lord Byron. Early in 1818, Percy and Mary Shelley left England for the last time, and went to Italy. During the remaining four years of his life, Shelley produced all his major works.
Of the romantic poets, who graced English poetry in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Shelley was most vitally inspired. He was essentially different from his great contemporaries. He has remained the most enchanting poet in the great age of romantic poetry and represented the essence of romance in poetry .Wordsworth's poetry, though much conditioned by the French Revolution, hardly embodies any actual revolutionary spirit. In Shelley's poetry the spirit of revolution is found manifested with zeal and depth. Liberty is the very breath of his poetic spirit. His poetry is the voice of the revolution, rather the gospel of the children of the revolution, for a thorough change of the existing state of absolutism and repression all over Europe.
Shelley died early. But he remains till now one of the greatest English poets of the world. His imaginative faculty, his exuberant emotional vivacity, his deep love and feeling for man and nature, and his prophetic hope for mankind mingle together to give his poetry a force that is at once ennobling and enchanting. His feeling is the feeling of love for all the oppressed and enchained people. His voice is the voice of protest against the tyranny and exploitation of the bench of bishops and kings.
Conclusion:
This brief introduction of Romantic Poets and poem guides, and recordings offer introductory samples of the Romantic era. Included are the monumental Romantic poets Wordsworth, and Coleridge and the so-called Young Romantics, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Indispensable women poets such as Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, and Felicia Dorothea Hemans, the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns and the farm laborer–poet John Clare are also represented.
Submitted to: Smt S.B Gardi Department of English MKBU
1) Jonathan Swift as a Satirist
Borndate- 30 November 1667
Deathdate - 19 October 1745
Restingplace- St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin
Occupation - Satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet, priest
Notable works -
A Tale of a Tub
Drapier's Letters
Gulliver's Travels
A Modest Proposal
"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own."
-Jonathan Swift
Early Life & Education:
Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. He is an Anglo- Irish poet, Satirist, essayist and political pamphleteer. He was born into a poor family that included his mother and his sister. His father had died seven months before Jonathan's birth. There is not much known of Swift's childhood, and what is reported is not always agreed upon by biographers. What is accepted, however, is that Jonathan's mother, after the death of her husband, left the children to be raised by relatives, while she returned to her family in England. It is also reported that Swift, as a baby, was taken by a nurse to England where he remained for three years before being returned to his family.
He spent much of his early adult life in England. It was this later stage when he would write most of his greatest works. Best known as the author of A Modest Proposal (1729), Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and A Tale Of A Tub (1704), Swift is widely acknowledged as the greatest prose satirist in the history of English literature. Swift’s extended family had several interesting literary connections, his grandmother, Elizabeth Swift was the niece of Sir Erasmus Dryden, grandfather of the poet John Dryden. The same grandmother’s aunt, Katherine Dryden, was a first cousin of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Walter Raleigh. His great-great grandmother, Margaret Swift, was the sister of Francis Godwin, author of 'The Man in the Moone', which influenced parts of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. His uncle, Thomas Swift, married a daughter of the poet and playwright Sir William Davenant. Swift’s uncle served as Jonathan’s benefactor, sending him to Trinity College Dublin, where he earned his BA and befriended writer William Congreve. Swift suffered a stroke in 1742. He was buried at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.
Early works:
Swift’s poetry has a relationship either by interconnections or reactions against the poetry of his contemporaries and predecessors. He was probably influenced by the Restoration writers John Wilmot. He may have picked up pointers from the Renaissance poets John Donne and Sir Philip Sidney. Beside these minor borrowings of his contemporaries, his debts are almost negligible. In the Augustan Age. His poetic contribution was strikingly original.
From approximately 1689 to 1694, Swift was employed as a secretary to Sir William Temple in Moor Park, Surrey, England. In 1694, he was ordained as a priest in the Church of Ireland. In 1696, he returned to working with Sir William Temple, and in 1699, after the death of Sir William, he became chaplain to Lord Berkley. After a period working as personal assistant to the English diplomat William Temple, he privately tutored Temple’s young family friend Esther Johnson, the ‘Stella’ to whom many of Swift’s poems are addressed. He also wrote such a great work, producing works like 'The Battle of the Books', 'of a clash between Ancient and Modern books' and the ideas contained in them. He visited Oxford in 1691. In 1692, with Temple's assistance, he received an M. A. degree from that University, and published his first poem. After reading this poem John Dryden, a distant relation, is said to have remarked
"Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet."
In reading Swift’s poems, one is first impressed with their apparent spareness of allusion and poetic device. Anyone can tell that a particular poem is powerful or vital. A few recent critics have carefully studied his use of allusion and image, but with only partial success. It still seems justified to conclude that Swift’s straightforward poetic style seldom calls for close analysis, his allusions seldom bring a whole literary past back to life, and his images are not very interesting in themselves. In general, Swift’s verses read faster than John Dryden’s or Alexander Pope’s. He apparently intends to sweep the reader along by the logic of the argument to the several conclusions he puts forth.
Scriblerus Club:
Jonathan Swift was a member of this club. This is the 18th-century British literary club whose founding members were the brilliant Tory wits Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Gay, Thomas Parnell, and John Arbuthnot.The name Martin was taken from John Dryden’s comic character Sir Martin Mar-all, whose name had become synonymous with absurd error; Scriblerus was a reference to scribler, the contemporary term of contempt for a talentless writer. The collaboration of the five writers on the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus began as early as 1713, in London. When they were separated, they pursued their project through correspondence. The zest, energy, and time that these five highly individualistic talents put into their joint enterprise may be gauged by Pope’s statement in a letter to Swift, “The top of my own ambition is to contribute to that great work 'The Memoirs', and I shall translate Homer by the by.” But only Pope and Swift lived to see the publication of the 'Memoirs'. It was published in 1741.
Golden Age of satire:
English literature in the 18th century is mainly satirical in tone and style. There is satire in poetry, in drama, in prose as well as in the essay and novel. Indeed, it is a great age of prose satire, and Jonathan Swift, the greatest of prose satirists in English, belongs to this period. Swift and his writings are usually considered a part of the Augustan era of British literature. The end of censorship in 1695 in England led to a dramatic change in the way people read and consumed political information. A decline in illiteracy and a 'print explosion' of pamphlets, journals, newspapers and ballads fed a public eager for news, comment, rumor and gossip. Satire emerges and recedes in different literary periods in England, but its dominant period was the 18th century which is also known as 'The Golden Age Of Satirical Writing'. Satire becomes an important and effective method of drawing attention to the ways in which human behavior falls short of his ideals, and of trying to correct that, within an accepted political and social framework.
Enlightenment writers Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift used different mediums of satire, different types of logic, and different targets of ridicule in order to shine a light on separate aspects of British society, providing much-needed criticism of the profuse moral corruption of a society that sometimes seemed to forget the true ideals of its age. Pope and Swift, well known for their sharply perceptive works, both looked to rhetorical masters of the rational, classical past and their separate satirical archetypes for inspiration. This course aims to look at the development of British politics in the 'long eighteenth century' through the lens of both literary and visual satire. Although the techniques and development of the medium will be touched upon this is a secondary consideration compared to its impact on the public sphere.
The course ends with the reform act of 1832 and the close of the long eighteenthcentury. Although satire itself did not end at this time, the beginning of democratic politics changed satirical priorities and focus. Humorous magazineslike Punch and later Private Eye would begin to cater to this larger and moreeducated audience.
Jonathan Swift as a Satirist:
Here i would like to share a small video about Jonathan Swift.
While writing notable poems throughout his career, Swift is primarily known today for being a master of satire. Satire is a form of literature that ridicules immorality, corruption, and foolishness through irony, sarcasm, Lampoon, caricature and humor. Satirists reveal human follies. The satirist is fed up with the existing condition of society and intends to make complete overhauling of the social structure using ironical expressions. The 18th century provided a fertile ground for the development of satire in England. The Literature of the period was entirely confined to the depiction of activities happening around the royal circle. Coffee houses emerged as the significant power centers to discuss political activities.
Almost all the major writers of this period took keen interest in the composition of satirical works. Prominent among those being John Dryden, Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. They wrote basically political satires to express their dissatisfaction over the existing socio-political condition of English society. Swift was a great scholarly genius .But his talent was not recognised by English society. This growing ignorance of his genuine demands sown the seeds of dissent in him and turned rebellious against royalty for elevating those having lesser talent to high pedestal. Through his successive works Swift has highlighted the corruption prevailing in various sectors. Swift was an staunch supporter of the whigs who were unfortunately voted out of power which virtually sealed his prospect of a significant position.
Swift's satire is merely the weapon of exaggeration, it is important to note that exaggeration is only one facet of his satiric method. Swift uses mock seriousness and understatement, he parodies and burlesques, he presents a virtue and then turns it into a vice. Swift's first major work of satire, 'A Tale of the Tub' railed against the numerous and gross corruptions in religion and learning, criticizing who he called "religious enthusiasts." Two of his most famous works, however, are the essay 'A Modest Proposal' and the book 'Gulliver's Travels'.
Gulliver's Travels:
Swift’s greatest satire, 'Gulliver’s Travels' was published in 1726. Its success was immediate, and it stands as his masterpiece. It has succeeded in entertaining all classes of readers. It was completed at a time when he was close to the poet Alexander Pope and the poet and dramatist John Gay. He had been a fellow member of their Scriblerus Club since 1713. Gulliver’s Travels was originally published without its author’s name under the title Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. This work, which is told in Gulliver’s “own words,” is the most brilliant as well as the most bitter and controversial of his satires. It was most popular among those who were indicted, that is, politicians, scientists, philosophers, and Englishmen in general. Swift was roasting people, and they were eager for the banquet.
Gulliver’s Travels’s matter-of-fact style and its air of sober reality confer on it an ironic depth that defeats over simple explanations. Swift certainly seems to use the various races and societies Gulliver encounters in his travels to satirize many of the errors, follies, and frailties that human beings are prone to. Swift's main purpose in Gulliver's Travels was to illustrate how the English government and society needed a reformation. As an Irish patriot and a former admirer of the English government and life, Swift now sees England and all its glory in a very different way.
'Tale Of A Tub':
Jonathan Swift's Tale of the Tub is a brilliant failure. It is a prose satire intended as a defense of the Anglican church, but it was widely interpreted by contemporary readers as an attack on all religion. At the time of writing it, Swift was a junior Anglican clergyman hoping for substantial preference in the Church.'Tale of The Tub' published in 1704. It is the first and perhaps the most difficult Satire by Jonathan Swift. The narrative is written using a complex though playful technique of interlinking stories concerning the lives of three brothers. The story digresses into separate parodies throughout, and is arranged in a fragmentary style, with each section dealing with a unique but pertinent topic. These include Catholicism, Anglicanism and dissenting religious sects.Tale engages directly with the debates concerning the ‘Ancients and Moderns’ that raged during the early 1700s. He compared with the older and established wisdom of Greek and Roman writers. In a well-known French and English literary debate that began during the 17th century, the "ancients" argued that Greek and Roman classical literature provided the only existing literary models of distinction. In contrast, the "moderns" argued that other such examples outside of the classics existed. According to Swift, the fascination with systems that characterized the Enlightenment led to rigid and pedantic thinking and, even worse, to rigid and pedantic writing.
Narrators’ voices and literary genres switch from section to section as a way of taking the work in radically new directions. Swift also concentrates his satirical fire on the new literary and publishing experiments that emerged in the early 18th century. The aspect of allegory is evident in the abuse of the coat, which showed the desire and corruption activities in the religion. In the Tale, Swift uses the analogy of the three brothers, Martin, Peter and Jack, to represent, respectively, the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church, and the Low Church, or Dissenters. He is trying to demonstrate that the spiritual practices of the Catholic Church and dissenting sects were based on a false interpretation of the true Word, the Bible. However, the sweep of Swift's irony in the book, and, the destabilizing and confusing nature of its changes in satiric personae meant that many of his contemporaries read the Tale as an attack on all religion.
One of the things that makes the Tale difficult to interpret for that the work attacks multiple things of things at the same time: it's an allegory about religious differences; it's a satire on pedantry and false scholarship; it's a parody of the contemporary book trade; it has attached to it two further treatises, the 'Battle of the Books', and the 'Mechanical Operation of the Spirit'. This essay will examine notions of authorship, intertextuality, originality, and the relationship between parody and allegory, and try to determine how all these components fit together.
Conclusion:
Swift was certainly not one of the optimists typical of his century. He did not believe that the Age of Science was the triumph that a great majority of his countrymen believed it to be. Science and reason needed limits, and they needed a good measure of humanism.
Jonathan Swift uses satire to bring light to the major issues that the society faced during his period. The Modest Proposal expresses the aspect of poverty that the Irish people were experiencing. He gave a satirized suggestion that aimed at reducing poverty and improving the economy of the nation. Several individuals misinterpreted his work on the Tale of Tub since they claimed that it was an attack on all the churches. Gulliver’s Travels was meant to express the cultural aspects of society from different perspectives. He also expresses the need for society as it helps prevent one from loneliness. Despite the challenging situations, Swift did not stop to expose the evil in society and to fight for the wellbeing of the Irish people.
Submitted to: Smt S.B Gardi Department of English MKBU
1) Thematic Study of 'Pride and Prejudice'
Born date - 16 December 1775
Death date - 18 July 1817
Resting place - Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire
Notable works:
Emma
Lady Susan
Mansfield Park
Persuasion
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen was a Georgian era author. Jane Austen's comic novels of love among the landed gentry gained popularity after 1869, and her reputation skyrocketed in the 20th century. Her novels, including Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, are considered literary classics, bridging the gap between romance and realism.
Early Life:
She is the seventh child and second daughter of Cassandra and George Austen. She was born in Steventon, Hampshire, England. Austen's parents were well-respected community members. Her father served as the Oxford-educated rector for a nearby Anglican parish. The family was close and the children grew up in an environment that stressed learning and creative thinking. When Austen was young, she and her siblings were encouraged to read from their father's extensive library. It was for the family circle that Austen first wrote high-spirited satires, some of which later became novels after numerous and careful rewriting.
George Austen was rector of the Anglican parishes of Steventon and Deane.He came from an extended and prosperous family of wool merchants. The wealth was divided as each generation of eldest sons received inheritances, and George's branch of the family fell into poverty. Austen and her sister Cassandra went to Oxford to be educated in 1783, and later went to Southampton. Austen was homeschooled until she began attending boarding school in Reading with her sister in early 1785 at the Reading Abbey Girls' School, which was run by Mrs. La Tournelle who had a cork leg and a passion for theater. The school curriculum most likely included French, spelling, needlework, dancing and music, and possibly drama. The sisters returned home before December 1786 because the Austen family couldn't afford the two girls' school fees. Her father and brothers James and Henry guided her through the rest of her education through reading.
The private theater was an essential part of Austen's education. The prologues and epilogues were written by Austen's eldest brother James, and she most likely participated in these activities, first as a spectator and then as a participant. The majority of the plays were comedies, indicating how Austen's satirical talents were developed. She began writing plays when she was 12 years old, and she wrote three short plays during her adolescence.
She is very ill at the end of her life. When her condition worsened, Austen wrote her will in April 1817. She was taken to Winchester for treatment where she died at the age of 41. Jane Austen’s grave is in Winchester Cathedral.
Literary works:
Austen began to write in bound notebooks. In the 1790s, during her adolescence, she started to craft her own novels and wrote 'Love and Friendship', a parody of romantic fiction organized as a series of love letters. Using that framework, she unveiled her wit and dislike of sensibility, or romantic hysteria, a distinct perspective that would eventually characterize much of her later writing.
Austen's reputation grew significantly after her death, and her six full-length novels are rarely out of print. Her posthumous reputation changed dramatically in 1833, when her novels were republished in Richard Bentley's Standard Novels series, illustrated by Ferdinand Pickering, and sold as a set. They gradually gained wider recognition and a large readership. Austen was an established novelist by the time. Her new and fresh style of writing was welcomed by readers and her upcoming novels were awaited. The readers loved her intelligent character sketching and homely settings. Although her health started to deteriorate in early 1816, Austen remained a busy writer even towards the end of her life. Austen’s identity as an author was revealed only after her death when her sister Cassandra and brother Henry arranged the publication of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey.
Pride and Prejudice:
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is a social comedy set in the provincial society of Hertfordshire, England, around the 18th century. Austen begins the novel with this sentence,
"A single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife".
Marriage is a constant pursuit in Austen's comic world. In 1796, when Austen was twenty-one years old, she wrote the novel First Impressions. The work was rewritten and published under the title Pride and Prejudice in 1813. It is her most popular and perhaps her greatest novel. It achieves this distinction by virtue of its perfection of form, which exactly balances and expresses its human content. As in Sense and Sensibility. The resolution of the main plot with the marriage of the two opposites represents a reconciliation of conflicting moral extremes. The value of pride is affirmed when humanized by the wife's warm personality, and the value of prejudice is affirmed when associated with the husband's standards of traditional honor.
In Austen's England, the social hierarchy can be likened to a pyramid, with the following classes listed in descending order, from the top tier to the bottom Royalty,Aristocracy or nobility, Upper-class gentry, including landed gentry with large. estates, high-level clergy and government officials, bankers, merchants, and barristers, Middle-class gentry, including landed gentry with smaller estates, various professionals, military officers, and lower level clergyLower and working classes. 'Pride and Prejudice' represents the interactions of characters from the middle of the pyramid. Austen, like the Bennet family portrayed in Pride and Prejudice,belonged to the educated upper-middle-class gentry. In that time of England Only the eldest son inherited land. These themes are specifically represented in 'Pride and Prejudice'.
Themes in 'Pride And Prejudice':
The novel Pride and Prejudice represents two major themes. There are other ideas which are also represented by the writer. Let's discuss other important themes also.
Class:
Class is the target of much of the novel's criticism of society in general. Austen makes it clear that people like Lady Catherine, who are overly invested in their social position, are guilty of mistreating other people. Due to the setting of the novel,within the upper and the upper middle class, it is safe to assume that one of the major themes is class and class difference. He claims that
"some people that belong to the upper class can be arrogant and callous. They can use you, but when they have no further use of you, they will ‘throw you off".
There are some instances in the novel where class plays an important role. The First example is Mr. Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth. It is an example of his inner struggle between his individuality and his position inherited through birth. The second example will take a closer look at Mr.Darcy’s social background and family in order to understand his improper conduct.
Marriage:
Jane Austen discusses five marriages and five couples in the novel,
Mr and Mrs Bennet
Bingley and Jane
Wickham and Lydia
Mr Collins and Charlotte Lucas
Darcy and Elizabeth
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune,must be in want of a wife."
The opening lines of the novel indicate the main theme of Pride and Prejudice. It is mainly about the difficulties a couple has to overcome before they can marry. Elizabeth is attractive and intelligent, Darcy is rich and handsome. But both have to gain self-knowledge. This is because Darcy is proud and will not humble himself while Elizabeth is hasty in her judgment and angered at Darcy's haughty exterior. Darcy's upbringing makes him hesitate in proposing to Elizabeth because of her lower social status but he does so in spite of himself, because he is attracted by her lively mind, affectionate nature and attractive appearance. He believes that Elizabeth will accept him because he is so superior. But she feels insulted by his patronizing behavior and rejects him.
The event which occurred towards the end eventually helps Darcy and Elizabeth to resolve their mistakes and accept each other forwhattheyare. Thus their marriage is founded on affection and understanding and not on blind impulse. Austen contrasts other marriages against the story of Elizabeth and Darcy. Charlotte'smarriage to Collins is a compromise she makes because she is twenty-seven, plain, and has no prospects of making a goodmarriage. So she marries Collins who is inferior in intelligence,only for the position he offers. Lydia and Wickham have married on the basis of momentary attraction on her part and mercenary aim on his.
There appears to be little attachment between them and the future does not seem to be a very happy one for them. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet obviously have an incompatible marriage. They have nothing in common because Mrs. Bennet is a selfish, vain, and unprincipled woman who attracted Mr. Bennet because of her good looks. He married her though she was inferior to him in intelligence, and now regards her with contempt which he does not try to hide. The only another marriage which is likely to be a happy one is that of Jane and Bingley because they are both essentially good-natured and have genuine affection for eachother. But they are both too passive and gentle and lack the liveliness that is seen in the relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy.
Love:
'Pride and Prejudice' is one of the most cherished work of literature in regard to the love, relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy. For instance, Elizabeth was proud, leading her to misjudge Darcy as being unfriendly while the later misjudged her because of poor background. Austen, makes the readers understand and be aware that for people to realize and capture love, there is a great need for both of the individuals to come out of their social class. Through this, the author shows us that marriage without love will never lead to financial security for the woman but not happiness. Parental love is also presented in the novel. Through Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, we see parents who always want the best for their kids, they want their girls to marry rich men. For instance, when Bingley come to live near them, Mr. Bennet pays him a visit and even invites him for dinner so that he can secure a chance for her girls before anyone else could. When Lydia eloped with Mr.Wickham and went to London. Because of love, Mr. Bennet is forced to go out and look for in an effort to take her back home to save the family's name. Through the Bennet sisters, the writer presented the love between sisters.
Appearance and reality:
The theme of appearance and reality is integrated into the total moral perspective of the novel, and people are often far from being what they appear to be. Outwardly, Mr. Collins is a Christian clergyman, but he is by nature a sycophant and a hypocrite; Mr. Hurst is outwardly a gentleman but actually a greedy mercenary. The fashionable Bingley sisters can hardly wait for the door to close on Elizabeth before criticizing her; and above all, Darcy and Wickham, one who is actually good and one who only appears to be good. A failure in self-knowledge also belongs to the theme of appearance and reality. Both Darcy and Elizabeth have to discover their own genuine selves, and this discovery comes along with their discovery of one another. They learn to rid themselves of the illusions and misunderstandings created by their pride and prejudice.
Women's Role:
In England in the eighteenth century, women had one primary function, which was to marry and marry well. The Bennet girls have a temporarily comfortable life, for in the absence of sons, when their father dies, his property will be inherited by their cousin, Mr. Collins. Therefore, for Mrs. Bennet, the most important thing was to marry their daughters, especially to wealthy young men,
"A single man of large fortune; five thousand pounds a year. What a fine thing for our girls".
Because of patriarchy, society could not accept women to enter professions like medicine or law. Hence, limited formal education. If unmarried, they would remain dependent upon their relatives, living with or receiving a small income from their fathers, brothers. In Elizabeth’s case,she is dependent upon her father while he is living, but because of the entail and the fact that she has no brothers, her situation could become quite worse when Mr. Bennet dies. She and her mother and sisters would be forced to rely upon the help and good will of their relatives. Unmarried women were not supposed to live alone. If a single woman who had never been married was not living with her family, she was to stay with her relatives. Therefore, when the Bennet daughters travel in Pride and Prejudice, they always stay in the company of a relative or a respectable married woman. Therefore, it is only marriage that can save her from being disowned. The role of the woman is not only to enjoy special privileges of a high social status. Her feelings play an important role in society. When Elizabeth and Darcy finally get engaged, they both learn the wisdom of humility and tolerance.
Conclusion:
'Pride and Prejudice' is full of character-driven themes that revolve around the literary concept of comedy of manners. A comedy of manners is a literary work that deals with young lovers attempting to unite in marriage, and usually includes several incidences of witty commentary from the main characters. 'Pride and Prejudice' is mainly concerned with the pairing of several couples and the issues surrounding each of those couples.
