NOVELS, SOCIETY AND HISTORY
→Novels: A fictitious prose of book length
with some degree of reality.
→In this chapter we will first look at the
history of the novel in the West, and then see how this form developed in some
of the regions of India.
→The novel is a modern form of literature
which is born from print, a mechanical invention.
→The novel first took firm root in England
and France.
→Novels began to be written from the
seventeenth century, but they really flowered from the eighteenth century.
→Initially, novels did not come cheap.
Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749)
was issued in six volumes priced at three shillings each – which was more than
what a labourer earned in a week.
→Technological improvements in printing
brought down the price of books.
→The novel was one of the first
mass-produced items to be sold.
Reasons
for its popularity:
→The worlds created by novels were
absorbing and believable, and seemingly real. While reading novels, the reader
was transported to another person’s world, and began looking at life as it was
experienced by the characters of the novel.
→Novels allowed individuals the pleasure of
reading in private, as well as the joy of publicly reading or discussing
stories with friends or relatives.
→Serialisation allowed readers to relish
the suspense, discuss the characters of a novel and live for weeks with their
stories
But soon, people had easier access to books
with the introduction of circulating libraries in 1740.
|
S.NO.
|
Name
|
Novel
|
Features
|
Other specifications
|
|
1
|
Samuel Richardson
|
Pamela
|
Epistolary novel-(Written in the form of a series
of letters)
|
|
|
2
|
Henry Fielding
|
Tom Jones (1749)
|
Costly for poor
|
He claimed “ he founded new province for writing where he
can make his own laws”
Reason: As readership grew and the market for books expanded, the
earnings of authors increased. This freed them from financial dependence on
the patronage of aristocrats, and gave them independence to experiment with
different literary styles.
|
|
3
|
Charles Dickens
|
Pickwick
Papers
|
Serialized in a magazine known as “All the Round Year”
|
Serialization allowed readers to relish the suspense.
|
|
4
|
Leo Tolstoy
|
War and peace
|
Russian novelist who wrote extensively on rural life and
community.
|
|
|
5
|
Charles Dickens
|
Hard Times
|
About the terrible effects of
Industrialization on people’s life such as overtime,
underpaid, unemployment
|
|
|
6
|
Charles Dickens
|
Oliver Twist (1838)
|
Tale of a poor orphan who lived in a world of petty
criminals and beggars in industrial city.
|
|
|
7
|
Emile Zola (French)
|
Germinal (1885)
|
Life of a young miner in France in grim condition
|
|
|
8
|
Thomas Hardy
(Britain)
|
Mayor of Casterbridge (1886).
|
About breaking of old rural culture in England
|
|
|
9
|
Jane Austen
|
Pride and Prejudice
|
Give us a glimpse of the world of women in genteel rural
society in early-nineteenth-century Britain.
|
|
|
10
|
Charlotte Bronte
|
Jane Eyre
|
Jane is shown as independent and assertive.
|
Jane at the age of ten protests against
the hypocrisy of her elders with startling bluntness.
|
|
11
|
Mary Ann Evans ( pen name George Eliot )
|
‘Silly novels by lady novelists’,
|
Eliot believed that novels gave women a special
opportunity to express themselves freely.
|
|
|
12
|
R.L. Stevenson
|
Treasure Island ( 1883)
|
The colonisers appear heroic and honourable – confronting
‘native’
|
|
|
13
|
Rudyard Kipling
|
Jungle Book
(1894)
|
The colonisers appear heroic and honourable – confronting
‘native’
|
|
|
14
|
G.A. Henty
|
Under Drake’s Flag (1883)
|
Historical adventure novels for boys
|
In Under Drake’s Flag
(1883) two young Elizabethan adventurers face their apparently
approaching death, but
still remember to assert
their
‘English’ courage.
|
|
15
|
Sarah Chauncey Woolsey,( Pen name Susan Coolidge)
|
What Katy Did
|
Love stories written for adolescent girls
|
|
|
16
|
Helen Hunt Jackson
|
Ramona
|
Love stories written for adolescent girls
|
|
|
17
|
Joseph Conrad
|
Wrote novels that showed the darker side of colonial
occupation.
|
||
|
18
|
Daniel Defoe
|
Robinson Crusoe (1719)
|
Colonised people were seen as primitive and barbaric, less
than
human; and colonial rule was considered necessary to
civilise them
|
|
|
19
|
Baba Padmanji
|
Yamuna
Paryatan (1857),
|
Earliest novel in Marathi
|
About the plight of widows.
|
|
20
|
Lakshman
Moreshwar Halbe
|
Muktamala (1861).
|
Marathi novel
|
Imaginary romantic with moral message
|
|
21
|
Naro Sadashiv
Risbud
|
Manjughosha (1868).
|
Marathi novel
|
|
|
22
|
Benjamin Disraeli
|
Henrietta Temple
|
O. Chandu Menon, translated into Malyalam
|
Benjamin Disraeli in english was dreadfully boring for
locals
|
|
23
|
O. Chandu Menon
( a subjudge from Malabar)
|
Indulekha,
|
First modern novel in Malayalam.
|
Characters like Indulekha and Madhavan showed readers how
Indian and foreign lifestyles could be brought
together in an ideal combination.
|
|
24
|
Oliver Goldsmith
|
Vicar
of Wakefield
|
Kandukuri Viresalingam began translating in Telgu
later stopped
|
|
|
25
|
Kandukuri
Viresalingam
|
Rajasekhara Caritamu
|
Telugu novel
|
|
|
26
|
Reynolds
|
Pickwick Abroad
(1839)
|
More popular in India than Dickens’s original Pickwick
Papers (1837).
|
|
|
27
|
Bharatendu Harishchandra
|
The pioneer of modern
Hindi literature,
|
||
|
28
|
Srinivas Das
|
Pariksha-Guru (The Master Examiner).
|
First proper Indian modern novel.
cautioned young men of well-to-do families against the
dangerous influences of bad company and consequent loose morals.
|
|
|
29
|
Devaki Nandan Khatri
|
Chandrakanta
|
fantasy
|
|
|
30
|
Premchand
|
Sewasadan (The Abode of Service) 1916
|
Sewasadan deals mainly with the poor condition of women in
society.
|
Hindi novels achieved excellence
|
|
31
|
Rajanikanta Bardoloi
|
Manomati
|
First major historical novel in Assam
|
Burmese invasion
|
|
32
|
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
|
Durgeshnandini
|
||
|
33
|
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
|
Most popular novelist in Bengal
|
||
|
34
|
Ramashankar Ray
|
Saudamani.
|
First Oriya novel
|
serialised
|
|
35
|
Fakir Madan
Senapati (1902)
|
“Chaa Mana atha Guntha”
|
Oriya
|
|
|
36
|
Gulavadi Venkata Rao
|
Indirabai,
|
Kannada novel
|
Related to plight
of widow, message of social reform
|
|
37
|
R. Krishnamurthy
(penname
‘Kalki’. )
|
Ponniyin Selvan,
|
Most popular historical novelist in Tamil
|
Kalki was an active participant in the
freedom movement and
the editor of the widely
read
Tamil magazines Anandavikatan and Kalki.
|
|
38
|
Rokeya Hossein
|
Sultana’s Dream
1905
|
Satiric fantasy in English
|
About a topsyturvy
world in which women take the place of men.
|
|
39
|
Rokeya Hossein
|
Padmarag
|
About the need for women to reform their condition by
their own actions.
|
|
|
40
|
Hannah Mullens
( Christian missionary) 1852
|
Karuna o
Phulmonir Bibaran
|
First novel in bengali
|
|
|
41
|
Potheri Kunjambu,
(‘lower-caste’ writer from north Kerala)
|
Saraswativijaym
|
Saraswativijayam stresses the importance of education for
the upliftment of the lower castes.
|
|
|
42
|
Advaita Malla
Burman
|
Titash Ekti Nadir Naam
|
About the lives of peasants and ‘low’ caste “Mallas”.
|
|
|
43
|
Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay
|
Anguriya Binimoy
|
First historical novel written in Bengal.
|
Its hero Shivaji engages in many battles against a clever
and treacherous
Aurangzeb.
|
|
44
|
Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay
|
Anandamath (1882)
|
A novel about a secret Hindu militia that fights Muslims
to establish
a Hindu kingdom.
|
“Vndemataram” the national song of India extracted from
Anandamath
|
|
45
|
Sivarama Karanth
|
Chomana Dudi
|
||
|
46
|
Premchand
|
Rangbhoomi (The Arena),
|
Hero of novel Surdas is significant, belong to
untouchable caste
|
The story of Surdas was inspired by Gandhi’s personality
and ideas.
|
|
47
|
Premchand
|
Godan (The Gift of Cow),
|
Best-known work.
|
The novel
tells the moving story of Hori and his wife Dhania, a
peasant couple.
|
|
48
|
Banabhatta
|
Kadambari, 7th century A.D
|
Harshavardhan reign, it was not novel but prose, other eg.
Panchtantra
|
Uses of Novels in
India:
Colonial administrators found ‘vernacular’
novels a valuable source of information on native life and customs. Such
information was useful for them in governing Indian society, with its large
variety of communities and castes.
As
outsiders, the British knew little about life inside Indian households. The new
novels in Indian languages often had descriptions of domestic life. They showed
how people dressed, their forms of religious worship, their beliefs and
practices, and so on. Some of these books were translated into English, often by
British administrators or Christian missionaries.
Indians used the novel as a powerful medium
to criticise what they considered defects in their society and to suggest
remedies. Writers like Viresalingam used the novel mainly to propagate their
ideas about society among a wider readership.
Novels also helped in establishing a
relationship with the past. Many of them told thrilling stories of adventures
and intrigues set in the past. Through glorified accounts of the past, these
novels helped in creating a sense of national pride among their readers.
Novels made their readers familiar with the
ways in which people in other parts
of their land spoke their language.
Note:
Vernacular – The
normal, spoken form of a language rather than the formal, literary form.
Prose tales of
adventure and heroism in Persian and Urdu, is known as dastan.
Walter Scott remembered and collected
popular Scottish ballads which he used in his historical novels about the wars
between Scottish clans.
