History of Novels and the Young Women

History Presentation

The New Woman

A young girl reading a book by Jean Honoré Fragonard. By the nineteenth century , images of women reading silently, in the

privacy of room, became common in European Paintings.

The New Woman• The most exciting element of the novel was

the involvement of women.• The eighteenth century saw the middle

classes become more prosperous.• Women got more leisure to read as well as

write novels. And novels began exploring the world of women – their emotions and identities, their experiences and problems.

The New Woman• Many novels were about domestic life – a

theme about which women were allowed to speak with authority.

• They drew upon their experience, wrote about family life and earned public recognition.

A watercolour and pencil sketch of Jane Austen, believed to have been drawn from life by her sister Cassandra (c. 1810)

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as

one of the most widely read writers in English literature.

Jane Austen and the New Women

• The novels of Jane Austen give us a glimpse of the world of women in genteel rural society in early nineteenth century Britain.

• They make us think about a society which encouraged women to look for ‘good’ marriages and rind wealthy or propertied husbands.

• The fist sentence of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice states: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’

Jane Austen and the New Women

• This observation allows us to see the behavior of the main characters, who are preoccupied with marriage and money, as typifying Austen’s society.

An oil painting by Pierre Auguste Renoir's depicting a woman reading a novel. This painting is called “The Reader” and was made in the year

1877

Charlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood,

whose novels are English literature standards. She wrote Jane Eyre under the pen name Currer Bell.

More about Women Novelists and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre• But women novelists did not simply popularize the

domestic role of women. • Often their novels dealt with women who broke

established norms of society before adjusting to them.

• Such stories allowed women readers to sympathize with rebellious actions.

• In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, published in 1847, a young Jane is shown as independent and assertive.

• While girls of her time were expected to be quiet and well behaved, Jane at the age of ten protested against the hypocrisy of her elders with startling bluntness.

• She tells hers Aunt who is always unkind to her: ‘People think you are a good woman, but you are bad… You are deceitful! I will never call you aunt as long as I live.’

More about Women Novelists and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

Novels for the Young

Embossed cover from the original edition of The Jungle Book by

Rudyard Kipling. This book was released in 1894 and sold millions

of copies.

How did Novels influence Children and Adolescents?

• Novels for young boys idealised a new type of man -- someone who was powerful, assertive, independent and daring.

• Most of these novels were full of adventure set in places remote from Europe.

• The colonisers appear heroic and honourable – confronting ‘native’ peoples and strange surroundings, adapting to native life as well as changing it, colonising territories and then developing nations there.

How did Novels influence Children and Adolescents?

• These novels aroused the excitement and adventure of conquering strange lands.

• Love stories written for adolescent girls also first became popular in this period especially in the US.

• They were set in Mexico, Alexandria, Siberia and many other countries.

• They were mostly about young boys who witness grand historical events, get involved in some military action and show what they called ‘English’ courage. A way of inducing the thought of English supremacy.

How did Novels influence Children and Adolescents?

• The novels showed that the colonized people were barbaric and colonization was a must to civilize them.

• Ramona (1884) by Helen Hunt Jackson, and a series entitled What Katy Did (1872) by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, who wrote under the pen-name Susan Coolidge along with R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book (1894) became great hits.

Treasure Island (1883) was written by Robert Louis

Stevenson and was a very successful hit in the 19th

Century.

Out on the Pampas (1871) was a very famous publication of George Alfred Henty. His historical adventure novels for boys were wildly popular during

the height of the British empire.

“The Cat of Bubastes” was written by G.A. Henty and was published for the first

time in 1889

“What Katy Did” (1872) by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey was written

under the pen name Susan Coolidge

Colonialism and After

Robinson Crusoe !1719) by Daniel Defoe

Colonialists and Novels

• The novel originated in Europe at a time when it was colonizing the rest of the world.

• The early novel contributed to colonialism by making the readers feel they were part of a superior community of fellow colonialists.

• The hero of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) is an adventurer and slave trader. Shipwrecked on an island, Crusoe treats colored people not as human beings equal to him, but as inferior creatures. He rescues a ‘native’ and makes him his slave. He does not ask for his name but arrogantly gives him the name Friday.

Colonialists and Novels

• But at the time, Crusoe’s behavior was not seen as unacceptable or odd, for most writers of the time saw colonialism as natural.

• Colonized people were seen as primitive and barbaric, less than human; and colonial rule was considered necessary to civilize them, to make them fully human.

• It was only later in the twentieth century, that writers like Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) wrote novels that showed the darker side of colonial occupation.

Colonialists and Novels

• The colonized, however, believed that the novel allowed them to explore their own identities and problems, their own national concerns.

Joseph Conrad (3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was the person who started writing novels

which showed the darker side of the Colonial Masters

Novels come to India

An illustration from a Syrian edition dated 1354. The rabbit fools the elephant king by showing him the reflection of the moon.

Banabhatta’s Kadambari, written in Sanskrit in the

seventh century is an example of a story in prose

Early Novels in India

Panchatantra is another example of a story in prose

written in the seventh century

Early Novels in India

There was also a long tradition of prose tales of adventure and heroism in Persian and Urdu, known as

dastan.

Early Novels in India

• The modern novel form developed in the 19th century as Indians became familiar with the western novel.

• The development of the vernaculars, print and a reading public helped in this process.

Early Novels in India

Early Novels in India• The earliest novel in Marathi was Baba

Padmanji’s Yamuna Paryatan (1857), which used a simple style of storytelling to speak about the plight of widows.

• This was followed by Lakshman Moreshwar Halbe’s Muktamala (1861).

• This was not a realistic novel; it presented an imaginary ‘romance’ narrative with a moral purpose.

• Leading novelists of the nineteenth century wrote for a cause.

• Colonial rulers regarded the contemporary culture of India as inferior.

• On the other hand, Indian novelists wrote to develop a modern literature of the country that could produce a sense of national belonging and cultural equality with their colonial masters.

Colonialism and Indian Novels

• Translations of novels into different regional languages helped to spread the popularity of the novel and stimulated the growth of the novel in new areas.

Colonialism and Indian Novels

CREDITS

Compilation, Pictures, Designing, Animations and Editing for all topics; and information and pictures for “Young Women”

EISA ADIL

Information for “Novels for the Young”JERRY KISHORE (Group Head)

Information and Pictures for “Colonialism and After”ADHAAN KHAN

Information and Pictures for “Novels come to India”AAMIR AHMAD SYED