English Literature

Pride and Prejudice is one of the most popular novels of Jane Austen due to its multi-dimensional versatility of themes. Andrew H. Wright remarks: � She (Jane Austen) develops themes of the broadest significance, the novels go beyond social record, beneath the didactic, to moral concern, perplexity and commitment� One of the most important themes of Pride and Prejudice,  love and marriage, is also the central theme of the novel. The oft-quoted opening sentence of the novel demonstrates this basic theme: �It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife� It is true that the chief preoccupation of Jane Austen�s heroines is getting married and life is a matrimonial ceremony for them. Pride and Prejudice dramatizes the economic inequality of women, showing how women had to marry undesirable mates in order to gain some financial security. Marriage was a significant social concern in Jane Austen�s time and she was fully co...

Jane Austen as a novelist has stringently set her limits which she seldom oversteps. She was amazingly aware of which side her genius lay and she exploited it accordingly without any false notions of her capabilities or limitations. As Lord David Cecil points out, she very wisely stayed "within the range of her imaginative inspiration." Her imaginative inspiration was as severely limited as, for example, Hardy's or Arnold Bennett's. Her themes, her characters, her background setting -everything has a well-etched range within which she works, and works exquisitely. Jane Austen herself referred to her work as �Two inches of ivory.� In a letter to her niece, Fanny Knight, Jane Austen wrote, �Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on.� Although she works on a very small canvas, yet she has widened the scope of fiction in almost all its directions. Her stories are mostly indoor actions where only family matters are discussed. However, her...

Hardy�s �femme fatale� , Eustacia Vye is perhaps one of the most alluring and fascinating characters in The Return of the Native . Hardy presents a complicated and enthralling character of Eustacia vye, a genuine woman as opposed to an idealised one. Although Hardy gives proud, selfish and egotistical potrait of Eustacia, yet he masterfully creates a scenario in which she appears a tragic figure. Whereas  Clym may be �the nicest� among Hardy�s characters, it is the eccentric Eustacia Vye which is the centre  of the novel. Even in the Hardy�s introduction of her, there is plenty to dwell upon. The first time her existence  is mentioned, it is through the idle gossip of the locals. She is described as �very strange in her ways� , some of them accuse her of being a witch. Unlike Clym, whom the heath folk can at least fathom in part, Eustacia is beyond their comprehension. Her whole personality has a sleepy, dreamy cast to it. Though she is beautiful in an exotic way, i...

Hardy�s The Return of the Native is a novel based on unpractical idealism and  incompatible relationship between two major characters � Clym Yeobright and Eustacia Vye. Both of them are poles apart in character: The former is a plodding idealist, whereas the later is a fiery sensualist. Where Eustacia�s vision is a projective dream of the world, Clym�s is an introspective dream. Where she is a �the raw material of a divinity� who wilfully creates the objects of her world, Clym, is the enslaved sovereign of the kingdom of his mind. The conflict between these two antithetical modes of perception is inevitable from the outset; both fail to see the other at the commencement of the relationship.  When the story begins, we are not introduced with Clym who has been in Paris at that time but returns soon to the heath and it is the return that drives the plot of novel. Clym Yeobright is the tragic hero of Hardy�s novel. He is young man of thirty three and he is attractive enough to ...

O ne of the most prominent figures in Hardy�s The  Return of the Native is not a human character, but the physical landmark- Egdon Heath. The heath's central role is obvious from the beginning. The novel opens with an extensive description of the heath at dusk. Hardy begins by saying: �A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment� . Even though the main story focuses on the relationships between Eustacia Vye, Clym Yeobright, Wildeve and Thomasin, the Heath is the central figure. Many of the events occur on or around Egdon Heath, and equally as important- all of the characters have their own special relationship with the heath.It is  �A Face on which Time makes but little Impression� . The nature of human beings is fleeting and insignificance as compared to the permanence of the heath. Avrom Fleishman in "The Buried Giant of Egdon Heath" regards Egdo...

Hardy, the novelist,  was essentially  a poet and an artist rather than  a philosopher. Hardy was  primarily a story-teller and should be viewed more as chronicler of moods and deeds than  a philosopher. He repeatedly affirmed that the 'Views' expressed in his novels were not his convictions or beliefs; they were simply "impressions" of the moment. In  The Return of the Native , Hardy proves a dismal view of life in which coincidence and accident conspire to produce the worst of circumstance due to the indifference of the Will.     In order to understand  Hady�s philosophy, we should have a fair idea of Hardy�s biography. Hardy lived in an age of transition. The industrial revolution was in the process of destroying the agricultural life, and the subsequent shifting of population caused a disintegration of rural customs and traditions. It was a period when fundamental beliefs � religious, social, scientific, and political � were shaken t...

Chances and coincidences play a vital role in all the novels of Hardy. In the work of no other novelist do chances and coincidences exercise such a conspicuous influence on the course of events. The unexpected often happens and always it is the undesirable and unwanted. Such chance events are heavy blows aimed at the head of Hardy's protagonists and they send them to their doom.          While a character is certainly responsible to a large extent, chances and coincidences often operate as the deciding factor. Hardy believed that there is some malignant power that controls the universe, and which is out to thwart and defeat men in their plans. It is especially hostile to them who try to assert themselves and have their own way . He couldn�t believe in a benevolent Providence; events were too plainly ironical so they must have been contrived by a supernatural power. He found it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the idea of a beneficent an...