NOVELS, SOCIETY AND HISTORY

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.