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AN - Anglická literatúra Bc. - pomôcka ku štátniciam (an.literature-overview.doc)
Jonathan Swift
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World.
In Four Parts.
By Lemuel Gulliver,
First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships.
Title:
Gulliverovy Cesty by Jonathan Swift
Published:
Praha: Odeon, 1968.
Translation:
Aloys Skoumal
About the author
Jonathan Swift (*1667 †1745) was an Irish cleric, essayist, journalist, political pamphleteer, and poet. He was the foremost prose satirist in the English language. He is famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, although he is less well known for his poetry. Swift published all of his works under pseudonyms such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier - or anonymously.
About the book
Gulliver's Travels is perhaps Swift's most prolific and well-known work, spanning a literary sixteen years in physical journey and countless more in personal exploration. In it, Swift explores gender differences, politics, class, money, race, science, education, exploration, love, physical strength, physical beauty, and more, and forces stringent satirical commentary on each. In 1726 Swift paid a long-deferred visit to London, taking with him the manuscript of Gulliver's Travels. During his visit he stayed with his old friends, Alexander Pope. John Arbuthnot, and John Gay, who helped him arrange for the publication of his book. First published in November 1726, it was an immediate hit, with a total of three printings that year and another in early 1727. French, German, and Dutch translations appeared in 1727 and pirated copies were printed in Ireland.
Like all of Swift's works, Gulliver's Travels was originally published without Swift's name on it because he feared government persecution. Swift's sharp observations about the corruption of people and their institutions still ring true today, almost three hundred years after the book was first published.
Main Topic
Gulliver's Travels was originally intended as an attack on the hypocrisy of the establishment, including the government, the courts, and the clergy, but it was so well written that it immediately became a children's favourite. Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels at a time of political change and scientific invention, and many of the events he describes in the book can easily be linked to contemporary events in Europe. One of the reasons that the stories are deeply amusing is that, by combining real issues with entirely fantastic situations and characters, they suggest that the realities of 18th century England were as fantastic as the situations in which Gulliver finds himself.
Through basic analysis of history one learns that anybody who has made a substantial difference in society was originally misunderstood and unappreciated.
Plot summary
At its simplest level, Gulliver's Travels is the story of Lemuel Gulliver and his voyages around the world. Prefaced by two letters attesting to the truth of the tales, the adventures are told by Gulliver after his return home from his final journey.
The narrator, also the hero of the story, Gulliver, starts by telling the reader that his father sent him to school when he was young. Gulliver was schooled to become a surgeon there and he also took up navigation and other subjects that would be valuable at sea. After his education, he became a doctor on a ship for a couple of years.
Lemuel Gulliver speaks to the reader and explains that he will retell of his experiences at sea. He recounts his youth, education, and marriage and about his reasons for writing these tales.
The book comprises four different travels. In the first, Gulliver narrates how he happened to shipwreck in Lilliput Island, where its inhabitants were only six inch tall and fights wars “Obě mohutná mocnářství vedou….už šestatřicet měsícu houževnatě válku” (pg.32) . In the second voyage, Gulliver and some other mariners reach the shores of Brobdingag, the country of peaceful giants. With such a microscopic view into humanity, Gulliver discovers the grotesque nature of human beings, both physically and spiritually. The king of Brobdingnag, after hearing about Gulliver’s country, thinks that the people there must be the most hateful race of creatures on earth “…z odpovědí, které jsem z tebe pracně vymámil a vyždímal, nemohu leč usoudit, že valná část tvých krajanů je nejškodlivější drobná hnusná havěť, jaká se kdy z dopuštění přírody plazila po povrchu země.” (pg.87)
In the third part, we find Gulliver's most satirical voyage to the Flying Island of Laputa and to its neighbouring countries Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdurbdribb and Japan. “Lap ve stare, dnes již neužívané řeči znamená vysoký, a untuh zase vladař, z čehož prý zkomolením z Lapuntuh vzniklo Laputa.” (pg. 107) Eventually Gulliver narrates his forth and last voyage to the country of Houyhnhnms, the wise horses who enslave a kind of degenerated human species called Yahoos. “Slovo Hvajhnhnim znamená v jejich jazyce koně a původně znamenalo přírodní dokonalost.” (pg.156)
Characters
Lemuel Gulliver - the narrator and protagonist of the story
Lilliputians - the race of miniature people whom Gulliver meets on his first voyage
The Emperor of Lilliput - the ruler of Lilliput, he appears both laughable and sinister
Brobdignags - giants whom Gulliver meets on his second voyage. Brobdingnagians are basically a reasonable and kindly people governed by a sense of justice.
Laputans - absentminded intellectuals who live on the floating island of Laputa, encountered by Gulliver on his third voyage
Yahoos - unkempt humanlike beasts who live in servitude to the Houyhnhnms
Houyhnhms - rational horses who maintain a simple, peaceful society governed by reason and truthfulness—they do not even have a word for “lie” in their language
The Queen - the queen of Brobdingnag who is so delighted by Gulliver’s beauty and charms that she agrees to buy him from the farmer for 1,000 pieces of gold
The King - the king of Brobdingnag, who, in contrast to the emperor of Lilliput, seems to be a true intellectual
The farmer - Gulliver’s first master in Brobdingnag
Glumdalclitch - The farmer’s nine-year-old daughter, she becomes Gulliver’s friend and nursemaid
Gulliver’s Houyhnhnm master - the Houyhnhnm who first discovers Gulliver and takes him into his own home
Lord Munodi - a lord of Lagado, capital of the underdeveloped land beneath Laputa, who hosts Gulliver and gives him a tour of the country on Gulliver’s third voyage
Mary Burton Gulliver - Gulliver’s wife, whose perfunctory mention in the first paragraphs of Gulliver’s Travels demonstrates how unsentimental and unemotional Gulliver is
Richard Sympson - Gulliver’s cousin, self-proclaimed intimate friend, and the editor and publisher of Gulliver’s Travels
Don Pedro de Mendez - the Portuguese captain who takes Gulliver back to Europe after he is forced to leave the land of the Houyhnhnms
Narrator
There is a a first-person narrator called Lemuel Gulliver. „Odstěhoval jsem se z Old Jury do Fetter Lane a odtamtud od Wappingu a těšil jsem se, že najdu práci u námořníku...“ (pg. 13)
Language
Because of the structure, the book as a whole has a very sketchy plot; it feels more like weekly episodes than one long narrative. It is sometimes difficult to follow the main storyline because the narration jumps often from one episode to another. Swift uses an archaic type of language and run-along sentences, where the trying for ironic touch-tinge and sometimes the arrogance of the narrator seems to be clear.
Chapters, books
Gulliver's Travels is divided into four parts or books, each about a different place. Every part is divided into more chapters.
PART I: A Voyage to Lilliput
PART II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag
PART III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib and Japan
PART IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms
At the beginning of the book there is a short part called “The Publisher to the Reader” and the “Letter from Capt. Gulliver, to his Cousin Sympson”.
Daniel Defoe
The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,
of York, mariner:
Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an uninhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque;
Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With an Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates.
Written by Himself
Title
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Published Praha: Olympia, 1986.
Translation Josef V.Pleva
Abouth the author
Daniel Defoe (*1660 †1731) was an English novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist, author of well known titles like The Shortest Way With the Dissenters, Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year, Roxana and Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain . Along with Samuel Richardson, Defoe is considered the founder of the English novel. He produced some 200 works of non-fiction prose in addition to close 2 000 short essays in periodical publications, several of which he also edited.
Defoe was one of the first to write stories about believable characters in realistic situations using simple prose. He achieved literary immortality when in April 1719 he published Robinson Crusoe, which was based partly on the memoirs of voyagers and castaways, such as Alexander Selkirk, who spent on his island four years and four months.
About the book
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English. The book is a fictional autobiography of the title character, an English castaway who spends 28 years on a remote island, encountering savages, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. This device, presenting an account of supposedly factual events, is known as a "false document", and gives a realistic frame to the story.
Robinson Crusoe was one of the first English novels, as well as being one of the world's most popular adventure stories. At first Defoe had troubles in finding a publisher for the book and eventually received £10 for the manuscript. It was first published by William Taylor on April 25, 1719 without the author´s name. With six printings in four months, Robinson Crusoe was a popular and financial success in 1719. To capitalize on its success, Defoe wrote, in the same year, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, which is a disappointment for most readers. The next year, he recycled some essays as Serious Reflections of Robinson Crusoe. Through the remainder of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, Robinson Crusoe was printed with both the first and second parts. The modern practice of publishing only the first part of Robinson Crusoe began around 1860.
The book proved so popular that the names of the two main protagonists have entered the language. The term "Robinson Crusoe" is virtually synonymous with the word "castaway" and is often used as a metaphor for being or doing something alone. Robinson Crusoe usually referred to his servant as "my man Friday", from which the term "Man Friday" (or "Girl Friday") originated, referring to a personal assistant, servant, or companion.
Main topic Employing a first-person narrator and apparently genuine journal entries, Defoe created a realistic frame for the novel, which distinguished it from its predecessors. The account of a shipwrecked sailor was a comment both on the human need for society and the equally powerful impulse for solitude. But it also offered a dream of building a private kingdom, a self-made Utopia, and being completely self-sufficient.
Plot summary
William Selkirk was the son of a Scottish tanner, who became the master of the Cinque Ports Galley, a privateering ship. Selkirk went to sea in 1704 under William Dampier and was put ashore at his own request, or according to some sources as a punishment of insubordination, on the island of Juan Fernandez in the Pacific, hundreds of miles off the coast of Chile. The island was uninhabited, and he survived there until his rescue in 1709 by Captain Woodes Rogers. Selkirk claimed that he had become a "better Christian" and it was a positive experience. As a journalist Defoe must have heard his story and possibly interviewed him. Selkirk never did go back to the Pacific island, as Defoe had Crusoe do in two sequels.
Robinson Crusoe is a mariner who runs away to the sea at the age of 19 despite parental warnings. „...tenkrát se otec zapŕisáhl, že jeho dítě nikdy nesmí vstoupit na loď.....tak jako tebe láká námořnictví, lákala zase Thomase vojenská dobrodružství.....kdybys nám odešel ještě ty, věř mi, dlouho bychom ot nepřežili...“ (pg.20) He suffers a number of misfortunes at the hands of Barbary pirates and the elements. Finally Crusoe is shipwrecked off South America. With salvaging needful things from the ship, including the Bible, Crusoe manages to survive in the island. Aided with his enterprising behavior, Crusoe adapts into his alien environment. After several lone years he sees a strange footprint in the sand. Savages arrive for a cannibal feast. One of their prisoners manages to escape. Crusoe meets later the frightened native and christens him Man Friday and teaches him English. Later an English ship arrives. Crusoe rescues the captain and crew from the hands of mutineers and returns to England. „A tu matka pohleděla pozorněji do jeho tváře a rozpřáhla paže s výkřikem: „Robinsone! Synáčku můj drahý. Tak jsem se přece dočkala!“ (pg.242)
Characters
Robinson Crusoe - The novel’s protagonist and narrator
Friday - A twenty-six-year-old Caribbean native and cannibal who converts to Protestantism under Crusoe’s tutelage
The Spaniard - One of the men from the Spanish ship that is wrecked off Crusoe’s Island
The Portuguese captain - The sea captain who picks up Crusoe and the slave boy Xury from their boat after they escape from their Moorish captors and float down the African coast
Xury - A nonwhite (Arab or black) slave boy only briefly introduced during the period of Crusoe’s enslavement in Sallee
Narrator
Robinson Crusoe is a fictional autobiography written from a first-person point of view, apparently written by an old man looking back on his life. „Když jsem se probral k vědomí, nemohl jsem si v prvém okamžiku uvědomit, co se se mnou stalo.“ (pg. 52)
Language
Robinson Crusoe is intensely hard to read because of the language; Defoe uses run-along sentences which last for over half a page, spelling errors which aren't even consistent, and bad grammar. Also, he spends too long a time describing all that Crusoe made, how he made it, what he used, where he got the tools, etc. Despite this, there are certain sections of the book that are interesting. Defoe's thoughts on religion are quite fascinating, and the adventures are well-thought out.
Chapters, books
The whole book is divided into 27 chapters from which each describes and episode of Robinson’s life.
Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice
Title
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Published Hertfordschire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1992.
Abouth the author
Jane Austen (*1775 † 1817) is an English novelist whose works, the most famous of which novels like Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816) are widely regarded as classics. Her biting social commentary and masterful use of both free indirect discourse and irony eventually made Austen one of the most influential and revered novelists of the early nineteenth century.
About the book
Pride and Prejudice, first published on 28 January 1813, is the most famous of Jane Austen's novels. It is one of the first romantic comedies in the history of the novel.
Its manuscript was first written between 1796 and 1797, and was originally entitled First Impressions, but was never published under that title. Following revisions, it was first published on 28 January 1813. Like both its predecessor and Northanger Abbey, it was written at Steventon Rectory.
The first sentence of Pride and Prejudice is perhaps the most famous opening of all English comedies of social manners. „ It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. “ (pg. 1) It encapsulates the ambitions of the empty-headed Mrs. Bennet, and her desire to find a good match for each of her five daughters form among the middle-class young men of the family’s acquaintance.
One element from the book, the initial mutual dislike of two people destined to love each other, has become a cliché of the Hollywood romance.
Main topic
Pride and Prejudice deals with the misjudgements that often occur at the beginning of an acquaintance, and how those misjudgements can change as individuals learn more about each other.
The story of a sparkling, irrepressible heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, the behavior of whose family leaves much to be desired, and Mr. Darcy, a very rich and seemingly rude young man who initially finds Elizabeth "…tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me…" (pg. 9) is a novel about how a man changes his manners and a woman changes her mind. Through the ages, its chief delights for readers have been its flawed but charming heroine; its humorous treatment of a serious subject; brilliant and witty dialogue laced with irony; a cast of humorous minor characters; and Austen's nearly magical development of a complex but believable love relationship between two complex people.
Plot summary Elizabeth is one of five Bennet daughters, second in age only to the beautiful Jane. The Bennet estate is entailed on a male cousin, Mr.Collins, and although the girls are comfortable enough as long as their father lives, their long-term financial survival depends on their marrying.
The story revolves around Elizabeth's continued dislike of Darcy and Darcy's growing attraction to Elizabeth. When she meets Mr. Wickham, he dislikes Darcy intensely; she is quickly won over by their shared distaste. A subplot involves her father's heir, the Reverend Collins, who attempts to amend his financial impact on the family by asking Elizabeth to marry him. Elizabeth rejects him-he is pompous and stupid-so he proposes to Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth's best friend, who accepts.
Darcy proposes to Elizabeth, but rudely. Elizabeth rudely rejects him. Wickham elopes with Lydia, the youngest Bennet sister, and Darcy is instrumental in finding the couple and buying Lydia a marriage. This, along with his steadfast love and improved manners, convinces Elizabeth that he is the man for her after all. Jane marries Darcy's friend Mr. Bingley on the same day Elizabeth and Darcy are married. Both sisters end up rich.
Characters
Elizabeth Bennet - The novel’s protagonist. The second daughter of Mr. Bennet, Elizabeth is the most intelligent and sensible of the five Bennet sisters. She is well read and quick-witted, with a tongue that occasionally proves too sharp for her own good. Her realization of Darcy’s essential goodness eventually triumphs over her initial prejudice against him.
Fitzwilliam Darcy - A wealthy gentleman, the master of Pemberley, and the nephew of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though Darcy is intelligent and honest, his excess of pride causes him to look down on his social inferiors. Over the course of the novel, he tempers his class-consciousness and learns to admire and love Elizabeth for her strong character.
Jane Bennet - The eldest and most beautiful Bennet sister. Jane is more reserved and gentler than Elizabeth. The easy pleasantness with which she and Bingley interact contrasts starkly with the mutual distaste that marks the encounters between Elizabeth and Darcy.
Charles Bingley - Darcy’s considerably wealthy best friend. Bingley’s purchase of Netherfield, an estate near the Bennets, serves as the impetus for the novel. He is a genial, well-intentioned gentleman, whose easygoing nature contrasts with Darcy’s initially discourteous demeanour. He is blissfully uncaring about class differences.
Mr. Bennet - The patriarch of the Bennet family, a gentleman of modest income with five unmarried daughters. Mr. Bennet has a sarcastic, cynical sense of humor that he uses to purposefully irritate his wife. Though he loves his daughters (Elizabeth in particular), he often fails as a parent, preferring to withdraw from the never-ending marriage concerns of the women around him rather than offer help.
Mrs. Bennet - Mr. Bennet’s wife, a foolish, noisy woman whose only goal in life is to see her daughters married. Because of her low breeding and often unbecoming behavior, Mrs. Bennet often repels the very suitors whom she tries to attract for her daughters.
George Wickham - A handsome, fortune-hunting militia officer. Wickham’s good looks and charm attract Elizabeth initially, but Darcy’s revelation about Wickham’s disreputable past clues her in to his true nature and simultaneously draws her closer to Darcy.
Lydia Bennet - The youngest Bennet sister, she is gossipy, immature, and self-involved. Unlike Elizabeth, Lydia flings herself headlong into romance and ends up running off with Wickham.
Mr. Collins - A pompous, generally idiotic clergyman who stands to inherit Mr. Bennet’s property. Mr. Collins’s own social status is nothing to brag about, but he takes great pains to let everyone and anyone know that Lady Catherine de Bourgh serves as his patroness. He is the worst combination of snobbish and obsequious.
Miss Bingley - Bingley’s snobbish sister. Miss Bingley bears inordinate disdain for Elizabeth’s middle-class background. Her vain attempts to garner Darcy’s attention cause Darcy to admire Elizabeth’s self-possessed character even more.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh - A rich, bossy noblewoman; Mr. Collins’s patron and Darcy’s aunt. Lady Catherine epitomizes class snobbery, especially in her attempts to order the middle-class Elizabeth away from her well-bred nephew.
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner - Mrs. Bennet’s brother and his wife. The Gardiners, caring, nurturing, and full of common sense, often prove to be better parents to the Bennet daughters than Mr. Bennet and his wife.
Charlotte Lucas - Elizabeth’s dear friend. Pragmatic where Elizabeth is romantic, and also six years older than Elizabeth, Charlotte does not view love as the most vital component of a marriage. She is more interested in having a comfortable home. Thus, when Mr. Collins proposes, she accepts.
Georgiana Darcy - Darcy’s sister. She is immensely pretty and just as shy. She has great skill at playing the pianoforte.
Mary Bennet - The middle Bennet sister, bookish and pedantic.
Catherine Bennet - The fourth Bennet sister. Like Lydia, she is girlishly enthralled with the soldiers.
Narrator
Pride and Prejudice is a novel written in an omniscient third-person narrator. The novel is primarily told from Elizabeth Bennet’s point of view.
“Elizabeth listened with delight to the happy, thought modest hopes which Jane entertained of Bingley’s regard, and said all in her power to heighten her confidence in it.” (pg.94)
Language
Austen uses language superbly, but not in flowery or flashy ways. Rather, she writes with great clarity and precision, and employs irony for a comic effect. Irony allows a writer to communicate more than the literal or expected meanings of his or her language.
For instance, upon Darcy's entrance to a dance in chapter 3, Austen writes that „...the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year...“ (pg.8) Here Austen pokes fun at the gossipy nature of the people and shows why Darcy might be justified in feeling out of place.
Austen also fills the novel's dialogue with irony, making people such as Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins reveal their foolishness to the reader through their ridiculous comments. „A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for or girls!“ (pg. 1)
Chapters, books
The whole book is divided into 61 chapters which follow up without disconnecting the narration of the story.
CHARLES DICKENS
Oliver Twist
The Parish Boy´s Progress
Title:
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Published:
Hertfordschire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1992.
About the author:
Charles Dickens (*February 7, 1812 † June 9, 1870) acclaimed as one of history's greatest novelists.
Charles John Huffam Dickens, pen-name "Boz", was the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era, as well as a vigorous social campaigner. Considered one of the English language's greatest writers, he was acclaimed for his rich storytelling and memorable characters, and achieved massive worldwide popularity in his lifetime. The popularity of Dickens' novels and short stories has meant that none have ever gone out of print. Dickens wrote serialised novels, which was the usual format for fiction at the time, and each new part of his stories would be eagerly anticipated by the reading public.
The life story of Charles Dickens is a success story. Generally regarded today as one of the greatest novelists in the English language, Dickens had the unusual good fortune to have been recognized by his contemporaries as well as by posterity.
From the appearance of his first full-length work of prose fiction, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, in 1836-1837, which began publication when he was twenty-four years old and which was a phenomenally popular success on both sides of the Atlantic, Charles Dickens has retained his place as one of the best-loved and most widely read novelists in the world.
Dickens remained a prolific writer to the end of his life, and his novels – among them his best-known works as Great Expectations (1860–1861), David Copperfield (1849–1850), Oliver Twist (1837–1839), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Bleak House (1852–1853), The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1838–1839), The Pickwick Papers (1836–1837), and A Christmas Carol (1843) – continued to earn critical and popular acclaim.
About the book: Oliver Twist (1838) is Charles Dickens' second novel and one of his best-known works. The book was originally published in Bentley's Miscellany as a serial, in monthly instalments that began appearing in February 1837 and continued through April 1839. Oliver Twist is the first English novel with a child protagonist, and is also notable for Dickens' unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives. Like most of Dickens' work, the book is used to bring the public's attention to various contemporary social evils, including the workhouse, child labour and the recruitment of children as criminals. The novel is full of sarcasm and dark humour, even as it treats its serious subject, revealing the hypocrisies of the time. Oliver Twist is notable for its emphasis on the struggle to survive, its presentation of the poor and criminals as real people with their own stories and sufferings, and its emphasis on money and the hypocrisy it frequently breeds.
Throughout Oliver Twist, Dickens criticizes the Victorian stereotype of the poor as criminals from birth. Oliver Twist is full of mistaken, assumed, and changed identities. Oliver joins his final domestic scene by assuming yet another identity. Once the mystery of his real identity is revealed, he quickly exchanges it for another, becoming Brownlow’s adopted son. After all the fuss and the labyrinthine conspiracies to conceal Oliver’s identity, it is ironic that he gives it up almost as soon as he discovers it.
The final passage of the novel sums up Dickens’s moral and religious vision. “I have said that they were truly happy; and without strong affection and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is Mercy and whose great attribute is Benevolence to all things that breathe, happiness can never be attained. Within the altar of the old village church there stands a white marble tablet which bears as yet but one word: “Agnes!”…… I believe that the shade of Agnes sometimes hovers round the solemn nook. I believe it none the less because that nook is in a Church, and she was weak and erring.” (pg. 360)
On the one hand, Dickens considers a firm and true belief in God to be an essential prerequisite of both moral rectitude and earthly happiness. On the other hand, the novel has not been kind to characters such as Mr. Bumble, who prattle on about Christian values, but whose behaviour is notably lacking in “Benevolence” and who are quick to condemn others as sinners. The description of Agnes’s grave is an attack on puritanical religion, which would consider adultery to be an unforgivable sin. The novel’s faith in Christian values is as wholehearted as its attacks on Christian hypocrisy are biting.
The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of his hardships as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It has been the subject of numerous film and television adaptations, and the basis for a highly successful British musical, Oliver!.
Main topic:
Oliver Twist is a grimly comic indictment of the effects of industrialism upon 19th century England. Oliver, an innocent child, is trapped in an unforgiving society where, thanks in part to the harsh new Poor Laws, his only practical alternatives seem to be the workhouse, Fagin's den of thieves, a prison sentence, or an early grave. From this grim industrial/institutional setting, however, a fairy tale also emerges: In the midst of corruption and degradation, the essentially passive Oliver remains pure-hearted; he refrains from evil when those around him succumb; and, in proper fairy-tale fashion, he eventually receives his reward - just as his chief tormenters receive theirs. On the way to Oliver´s happy ending, Dickens takes the opportunity to explore the kind of life an orphan, outcast boy could expect to lead in the London of the 1830s.
Oliver Twist had a twofold moral purpose: to exhibit the evil working of the Poor Law Act, and to give a faithful picture of the life of thieves in London. The motives hung well together, for in Dickens's view the pauper system was directly responsible for a great deal of crime. Both Oliver and the thieves are victims of the Poor Laws and other social institutions that prevent or discourage them from productive work. They all battle hunger, cold, and lack of decent living conditions, and society seems bent on rubbing them out – even Oliver's harmless and sweet friend Dick is viewed as a nuisance and a danger by the authorities. As Dickens wrote, children in the infant farm are often killed when they are "…overlooked in turning up a bedstead, or inadvertently scalded to death when there happened to be a washing…” (pg. 6)
Oliver Twist is born into a life of poverty and misfortune in the workhouse of an unnamed town some 75 miles from London. Orphaned almost from his first breath by his unmarried and nameless mother’s death in childbirth and his father’s conspicuous absence, Oliver is meagrely provided for under the terms of the Poor Law, and spends the first nine years of his life at a “baby farm” (pg. 5) in the care of a woman named Mrs. Mann, who starves the children under her care and pockets the money given to her for their food. Although many of the children die, investigations always determine that the death was “accidental”. Along with other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, Oliver is brought up with little food and few comforts.
Around the time of the orphan’s ninth birthday, Mr Bumble, a parish beadle, removes Oliver from the baby farm and puts him to work picking oakum at the main branch-workhouse. “So they established the rule that all poor people should have the alternative ….of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it.” (pg. 11) Oliver, who toils with very little food, remains in the workhouse for six months. Then, the desperately hungry boys draw lots; the poor boy must ask for another portion of gruel. The task falls to Oliver, who at the next meal tremblingly comes forward, bowl in hand, and makes his famous request: “Please, sir, I want some more.” (pg. 12) A great uproar ensues. The boards of well-fed gentlemen, who administer the workhouse, while eating a meal fit for a king, are outraged by Oliver's ingratitude. Wanting to be rid of this troublemaker, they offer five pounds to any person wishing to take on the boy as an apprentice. A brutal chimney sweep almost claims Oliver, but, when he begs despairingly not to be sent away with him. “Oliver fell on his knees, and clasping his hands together, prayed that they would order him back to the dark room – that they would starve him – beat him – kill him if they pleased – rather than send him away with that dreadful man.” (pg. 20) So a kindly old magistrate refuses to sign the indentures. Later, Mr. Sowerberry, an undertaker employed by the parish, takes Oliver into his service. Because of his sorrowful countenance, Sowerberry uses him as a mute, or mourner, at children's funerals. When the undertaker’s other apprentice, Noah Claypole, makes disparaging comments about Oliver’s mother, Oliver attacks him and incurs the Sowerberrys’ wrath. Desperate, Oliver runs away at dawn and travels toward London.
Outside London, Oliver, starved and exhausted, meets Jack Dawkins, a boy his own age. Jack offers him shelter in the London house of his benefactor, Fagin. It turns out that Fagin is a career criminal who trains orphan boys to pick pockets for him. After a few days of training, Oliver is sent on a pickpocketing mission with two other boys. When he sees them swipe a handkerchief from an elderly gentleman, Oliver is horrified and runs off. He is caught but narrowly escapes being convicted of the theft. Mr. Brownlow, the man whose handkerchief was stolen, takes the feverish Oliver to his home and nurses him back to health. Mr. Brownlow is struck by Oliver’s resemblance to a portrait of a young woman that hangs in his house. Oliver thrives in Mr. Brownlow’s home, but two young adults in Fagin’s gang, Bill Sikes and his lover Nancy, capture Oliver and return him to Fagin.
Fagin sends Oliver to assist Sikes in a burglary. Oliver is shot by a servant of the house and, after Sikes escapes, is taken in by the women who live there, Mrs. Maylie and her beautiful adopted niece Rose. They grow fond of Oliver, and he spends an idyllic summer with them in the countryside. But Fagin and a mysterious man named Monks are set on recapturing Oliver. Meanwhile, it is revealed that Oliver’s mother left behind a gold locket when she died. Monks obtains and destroys that locket. When the Maylies come to London, Nancy meets secretly with Rose and informs her of Fagin’s designs, but a member of Fagin’s gang overhears the conversation. When word of Nancy’s disclosure reaches Sikes, he brutally murders Nancy and flees London. Pursued by his guilty conscience and an angry mob, he inadvertently hangs himself while trying to escape.
Mr. Brownlow, with whom the Maylies have reunited Oliver, confronts Monks and wrings the truth about Oliver’s parentage from him. It is revealed that Monks is Oliver’s half brother. Their father, Mr. Leeford, was unhappily married to a wealthy woman and had an affair with Oliver’s mother, Agnes Fleming. Monks has been pursuing Oliver all along in the hopes of ensuring that his half-brother is deprived of his share of the family inheritance. Mr. Brownlow forces Monks to sign over Oliver’s share to Oliver. Moreover, it is discovered that Rose is Agnes’s younger sister, hence Oliver’s aunt. Fagin is hung for his crimes. Finally, Mr. Brownlow adopts Oliver, and they and the Maylies retire to a blissful existence in the countryside.
Characters:
Oliver Twist - The novel’s protagonist. Oliver is an orphan born in a workhouse, and Dickens uses his situation to criticize public policy toward the poor in 1830s England. Oliver is between nine and twelve years old when the main action of the novel occurs. Though treated with cruelty and surrounded by coarseness for most of his life, he is a pious, innocent child, and his charms draw the attention of several wealthy benefactors. His true identity is the central mystery of the novel.
Fagin - A conniving career criminal. Fagin takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him. He is also a buyer of other people’s stolen goods. He rarely commits crimes himself, preferring to employ others to commit them—and often suffer legal retribution—in his place. Dickens’s portrait of Fagin displays the influence of anti-Semitic stereotypes.
Nancy - A young prostitute and one of Fagin’s former child pickpockets. Nancy is also Bill Sikes’s lover. Her love for Sikes and her sense of moral decency come into conflict when Sikes abuses Oliver. Despite her criminal lifestyle, she is among the noblest characters in the novel. In effect, she gives her life for Oliver when Sikes murders her for revealing Monks’s plots.
The Artful Dodger - The cleverest of Fagin’s pickpockets who introduces Oliver to Fagin. The Dodger’s real name is Jack Dawkins. Though no older than Oliver, the Dodger talks and dresses like a grown man. The Dodger is so-called by his skill and cunning in that respect. As a result he has become the leader of the gang of child criminals, trained by the elderly Fagin. Ultimately The Dodger is caught with a stolen silver snuff box on his person, convicted as a "lifer", and "sent abroad" (to Australia). The nickname "Artful Dodger" is still commonly used to refer to someone who is good at avoiding responsibility or the consequences of his or her actions. "Artful Dodger" is also Cockney rhyming slang for "lodger".
Charley Bates - One of Fagin’s pickpockets. Charley is ready to laugh at anything.
Mr. Brownlow - A well-off, erudite gentleman who serves as Oliver’s first benefactor. Mr. Brownlow owns a portrait of Agnes Fleming and was engaged to Mr. Leeford’s sister when she died. Throughout the novel, he behaves with compassion and common sense and emerges as a natural leader.
Monks - A sickly, vicious young man, prone to violent fits and teeming with inexplicable hatred. With Fagin, he schemes to give Oliver a bad reputation.
Bill Sikes - A brutal professional burglar brought up in Fagin’s gang. Sikes and Nancy are lovers, and he treats both her and his dog Bull’s-eye with an odd combination of cruelty and grudging familiarity. His murder of Nancy is the most heinous of the many crimes that occur in the novel.
Mr. Bumble - The pompous, self-important beadle—a minor church official—for the workhouse where Oliver is born. Though Mr. Bumble preaches Christian morality, he behaves without compassion toward the paupers under his care. Dickens mercilessly satirizes his self-righteousness, greed, hypocrisy, and folly, of which his name is an obvious symbol.
Agnes Fleming - Oliver’s mother. After falling in love with and becoming pregnant by Mr. Leeford, she chooses to die anonymously in a workhouse rather than stain her family’s reputation. A retired naval officer’s daughter, she was a beautiful, loving woman. Oliver’s face closely resembles hers.
Mr. Leeford - Oliver and Monks’s father, who dies long before the events of the novel. He was an intelligent, high-minded man whose family forced him into an unhappy marriage with a wealthy woman. He eventually separated from his wife and had an illicit love affair with Agnes Fleming. He intended to flee the country with Agnes but died before he could do so.
Mr. Losberne - Mrs. Maylie’s family physician. A hot-tempered but good-hearted old bachelor, Mr. Losberne is fiercely loyal to the Maylies and, eventually, to Oliver.
Mrs. Maylie - A kind, wealthy older woman, the mother of Harry Maylie and adoptive “aunt” of Rose.
Harry Maylie - Mrs. Maylie’s son. Harry is a dashing young man with grand political ambitions and career prospects, which he eventually gives up to marry Rose.
Rose Maylie - Agnes Fleming’s sister, raised by Mrs. Maylie after the death of Rose’s father. A beautiful, compassionate, and forgiving young woman, Rose is the novel’s model of female virtue. She establishes a loving relationship with Oliver even before it is revealed that the two are related.
Old Sally - An elderly pauper who serves as the nurse at Oliver’s birth. Old Sally steals Agnes’s gold locket, the only clue to Oliver’s identity.
Mrs. Corney - The matron of the workhouse where Oliver is born. Mrs. Corney is hypocritical, callous, and materialistic. After she marries Mr. Bumble, she hounds him mercilessly.
Noah Claypole - A charity boy and Mr. Sowerberry’s apprentice. Noah is an overgrown, cowardly bully who mistreats Oliver and eventually joins Fagin’s gang.
Charlotte - The Sowerberrys’ maid. Charlotte becomes romantically involved with Noah Claypole and follows him about slavishly.
Toby Crackit - One of Fagin and Sikes’s associates, crass and not too bright. Toby participates in the attempted burglary of Mrs. Maylie’s home.
Mrs. Bedwin - Mr. Brownlow’s kindhearted housekeeper. Mrs. Bedwin is unwilling to believe Mr. Bumble’s negative report of Oliver’s character.
Mr. Sowerberry - The undertaker to whom Oliver is apprenticed. Though Mr. Sowerberry makes a grotesque living arranging cut-rate burials for paupers, he is a decent man who is kind to Oliver.
Mrs. Sowerberry - Sowerberry’s wife. Mrs. Sowerberry is a mean, judgmental woman who henpecks her husband.
Narrator:
The narrator is a third person anonymous omniscient narrator and assumes the points of view of various characters in turn. The narrator’s tone is not objective; it is sympathetic to the protagonists and far less so to the novel’s other characters. When dealing with hypocritical or morally objectionable characters, the narrative voice is often ironic or sarcastic.
Books, chapters:
The book contains 53 chapters with 24 illustrations by George Cruikshank. Each chapter begins with a short description of what will happen in it.
charlotte bronte
Jane Eyre
Title Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Published Michigan: Ann Arbor Media Group, 2006
About the author Charlotte Brontë (*1816 †1855) was an English novelist, daughter of a clergyman of Irish descent and and the eldest of the three Brontë sisters whose novels have become enduring classics of English literature. After various efforts as schoolmistresses and governesses, the sisters took to literature and published a vol. of poems under the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, which, however, fell flat. Charlotte then wrote her first novel, The Professor, which did not appear until after her death, and began Jane Eyre, published 1847, which took the public by storm. It was followed by Shirley in 1849, and Villette in 1852. In 1854 she was married to her father’s curate but after a short though happy married life she died in 1855. The novels of Charlotte especially created a strong impression from the first, and the published of Jane Eyre gave rise to much curiosity and speculation as to its authorship. Their strength and originality have retained for them a high place in English fiction which is likely to prove permanent. There is a biography of Charlotte wrote by Mrs. Gaskell and published posthumous.
About the book Jane Eyre is a classic romance novel by Charlotte Brontë which was first published in October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Company, London, and is one of the most famous British novels.
When first published, Jane Eyre attracted much attention, and the novel became an almost instant commercial success. So high was demand for the book that the publisher issued a second edition within three months, followed by a third edition in April, 1848. Ther novel was an instant success, earning the praise of many reviewers. The influential novelist William Makepeace Thackeray was one of Jane Eyre's earliest admirers. Brontë subsequently dedicated the second edition of the book to Thackeray. Charlotte Brontë first published the book as Jane Eyre: An Autobiography under the pseudonym Currer Bell. There was much speculation about whether the writer was a man or a woman and whether the Bells were really three persons, two persons, or just one person. When it became known that a woman had written such a passionate novel and seemed so knowing sexually, the reviews became more negative.
Jane Eyre is a hybrid of three genres: the Gothic novel (utilizes the mysterious, the supernatural, the horrific, the romantic); the romance novel (emphasizes love and passion, represents the notion of lovers destined for each other); and the Bildungsroman (narrates the story of a character’s internal development as he or she undergoes a succession of encounters with the external world). Despite the Gothic elements, Jane’s personality is friendly and the tone is also affectionate and confessional. Her unflagging spirit and opinionated nature further infuse the book with high energy and add a philosophical and political flavor.
The novel has also a typically - for a Victorian story - happy ending. All of the characters who were good to Jane are rewarded. Although it may seem a little strange that Brontë chose to end her romantic novel in this way, religion and moral purpose are strong recurring themes throughout the novel.
As a partly biographical work, the early of Jane Eyre´s sequences, in which the orphaned Jane is sent to Lowood, a harsh boarding school, are based on the author's own experiences. Mr. Brocklehurst is based on the Revd William Carus Wilson, the founder of the school, and Helen Burns is a representation of Charlotte's sister Maria. These facts were revealed to the public in The Life of Charlotte Bronte (1857) by Charlotte's friend the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell and caused considerable controversy at the time. The Gothic Thornfield was probably inspired by North Lees Hall, near Hathersage in the Peak District. This was visited by Charlotte Bronte and her friend Ellen Nussey in the summer of 1845 and described by Ellen Nussey in a letter dated 22 July 1845. It was the residence of the Eyre family and its first owner Agnes Ashurst was reputedly confined as a lunatic in a padded second floor room.
Main topic
Orphaned into the household of the cruel Reeds at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre nonetheless emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. How she takes up the post of a governess at Thornfield Hall, meets and fels in love with Mr. Rochester and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage, are elements in this story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman's passionate search for a wider and richer life than that traditionally accorded to her sex in Victorian society.
Brontë´s book has serious things to say about a number of important subjects: the relations between men and women, women's equality, the treatment of children and of women, religious faith and religious hypocrisy, the realization of selfhood, and the nature of true love. It is a work of fiction with memorable characters and vivid scenes, written in a compelling prose style. In appealing to both the head and the heart, Jane Eyre triumphs over its flaws and remains a classic of nineteenth-century English literature and one of the most popular of all English novels.
Plot summary
The narrator and main character of the novel, Jane Eyre is a young girl, orphaned as a baby. She is being raised by Mrs. Reed, her cruel, wealthy aunt, who only takes her in as the result of a promise to her husband on his deathbed. Mrs. Reed does not treat Jane so very well, and her son often beats and verbally abuses her: “... John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me. He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near...." (pg. 6)
Mrs. Reed dislikes her and likewise her children are unkind to Jane, and frequently harp on Jane’s inferior social status. Jane's plainness, her perceptive and passionate nature, and her occasional "visions", or vivid dreams, do not help to secure her relatives' affections: "Besides," said Miss Abbot, "God will punish her: He might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go? Come, Bessie, we will leave her: I wouldn't have her heart for anything. Say your prayers, Miss Eyre, when you are by yourself; for if you don't repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away... I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind. This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very painful and crushing...“ (pg. 11)
Jane grows up for many years very unhappy-an overly mature, sad, sallow and un-childlike child. A servant named Bessie provides Jane with some of the few kindnesses she receives, telling her stories and singing songs to her. One day, as punishment for fighting with her bullying cousin John Reed, Jane’s aunt imprisons Jane in the red-room, the room in which Jane’s Uncle Reed died. While locked in, Jane, believing that she sees her uncle’s ghost, screams and faints. She wakes to find herself in the care of Bessie and the kindly apothecary Mr. Lloyd, who suggests to Mrs. Reed that Jane be sent away to school. To Jane’s delight, Mrs. Reed concurs. “You think I have no feelings and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back - roughly and violently thrust me back - into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, 'Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!' And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me - knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale. People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. You are deceitful!“ (pg.34)
Once at the Lowood School, a charitable, cheap and strictly kept school for clergyman's daughters, Jane finds that her life is far from idyllic. The school’s headmaster is Mr. Brocklehurst, an inhuman, cruel, hypocritical, and abusive man. Brocklehurst preaches a doctrine of poverty and privation to his students while using the school’s funds to provide a wealthy and opulent lifestyle for his own family. „...Madam," he pursued, "I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world: “…my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven; these, I repeat, must be cut off; think of the time wasted, of..." (pg. 62)
At Lowood, Jane befriends a young girl named Helen Burns, whose strong, martyrlike attitude toward the school’s miseries is both helpful and displeasing to Jane and also Ms. Temple. These two individuals greatly affect Jane's personality and character, especially related to personal philosophy, religion, and treatment of others. It is against Jane's nature to be submissive, although she learns while at Lowood to hide her temper and character, the injustices of the world burn in her soul.
A massive typhus epidemic sweeps Lowood, and Helen dies of consumption. The epidemic also results in the departure of Mr. Brocklehurst by attracting attention to the insalubrious conditions at Lowood. After a group of more sympathetic gentlemen takes Brocklehurst’s place, Jane’s life improves dramatically. She spends eight more years at Lowood, six as a student and two as a teacher.
After teaching for two years, Jane yearns for new experiences. She accepts a governess position at a manor called Thornfield, where she teaches a lively French girl named Adèle. The distinguished housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax presides over the estate. Jane’s employer at Thornfield is a dark, impassioned man named Rochester, with whom Jane finds herself falling secretly in love. She saves Rochester from a fire one night, which he claims was started by a drunken servant named Grace Poole. But because Grace Poole continues to work at Thornfield, Jane concludes that she has not been told the entire story. Jane sinks into despondency when Rochester brings home a beautiful but vicious woman named Blanche Ingram. Jane expects Rochester to propose to Blanche. But Rochester instead proposes to Jane, who accepts almost disbelievingly.
The wedding day arrives and, as Jane and Mr. Rochester prepare to exchange their vows, the voice of Mr. Mason cries out that Rochester already has a wife. Mason introduces himself as the brother of that wife - a woman named Bertha. Mr. Mason testifies that Bertha, whom Rochester married when he was a young man in Jamaica, is still alive. Rochester does not deny Mason’s claims, but he explains that Bertha has gone mad. He takes the wedding party back to Thornfield, where they witness the insane Bertha Mason scurrying around on all fours and growling like an animal. Rochester keeps Bertha hidden on the third storey of Thornfield and pays Grace Poole to keep his wife under control. Bertha was the real cause of the mysterious fire earlier in the story.
Knowing that it is impossible for her to be with Rochester, Jane wants to flee from Thornfield. After Jane and Rochester’s wedding is cancelled, Jane finds comfort in the moon. She sees the moon as a white human form shining in the sky, inclining a glorious brow earthward. She tells us: “It spoke to my spirit: immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near, it whispered in my heart - my daughter, flee temptation! … Mother, I will” (pg. 333). Waking from the dream, Jane leaves Thornfield.
Penniless and hungry, Jane is forced to sleep outdoors and beg for food. She is destitute and near death almost for three days, until she comes upon a house at Whitcross, whose members take her in. There the three siblings who live in a manor alternatively called Marsh End and Moor House take care of her. She stays there for many days. She wakes and tells them most of her story.
Jane quickly becomes friends with Mary, Diana, and St.John Rivers. St.John is a clergyman, and he finds Jane a job teaching at a charity school for girls. He surprises her one day by declaring that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left her a large fortune of 20,000 pounds. When Jane asks how he received this news, he shocks her further by declaring that her uncle was also his uncle: Jane and the Riverses are cousins. After a great exclamation of joy upon finding living relatives with whom she already feels such kinship, Jane resolves to divide the twenty thousand pounds evenly among her three cousins and herself, so that they should all be taken care of well. She says: "I had found a brother: one I could be proud of,--one I could love; and two sisters whose qualities were such that, when I knew them but as mere strangers, they had inspired me with genuine affection and admiration. The two girls on whom, kneeling down on the wet ground, and looking through the low, latticed window of Moor House kitchen, I had gazed...were my near kinswomen, and the young and stately gentleman who had found me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation. Glorious discovery to a lonely wretch! This was wealth indeed! - wealth to the heart! - a mine of pure, genial affections. This was a blessing...not like the ponderous gift of gold: rich and welcome enough in its way, but sobering from its weight." (pg. 403)
St.John decides to travel to India as a missionary, and he urges Jane to accompany him - as his wife. Jane agrees to go to India but refuses to marry her cousin because she does not love him. „...I should suffer often, no doubt, attached to him only in this capacity: my body would be under rather a stringent yoke, but my heart and mind would be free. I should still have my unblighted self to turn to: my natural unenslaved feelings with which to communicate in moments of loneliness. There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came, and sentiments growing there fresh and sheltered which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march trample down: but as his wife - at his side always, and always restrained, and always checked - forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital - would be unendurable...“ (pg. 427, 428) St.John pressures her to reconsider, and she nearly gives in. However, she realizes that she cannot abandon forever the man she truly loves when one night she hears Rochester’s voice calling her name over the moors.
Jane immediately hurries back to Thornfield and finds that it has been burned to the ground by Bertha Mason, who lost her life in the fire. Rochester saved the servants but lost his eyesight and one of his hands. Jane travels on to Rochester’s new residence, Ferndean, where he lives with two servants named John and Mary. When Jane comes the first time to Rochester and he perceives that the voice is Jane's, he grabs for her fingers, her waist, her form to verify this spectre of a voice. He embraces her gratefully, still in disbelief that it is his Jane. In fact, he still believes the form and voice are in his mind, as they have come and gone before during dreams. He says: "My living darling! These are certainly her limbs, and these her features; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery. It is a dream; such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus - and felt that she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me...Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go--embrace me, Jane.“ (pg. 455)
At Ferndean, Rochester and Jane rebuild their relationship and soon marry with a quiet ceremony. Immediately, Jane writes to the Rivers, explaining what she has done. Diana and Mary both approve of her marriage, but Jane receives no response from St. John. Not having forgotten Adèle, Jane visits her at school. The girl is pale, thin, and unhappy, so Jane moves her to a more indulgent school. Adèle grows into a docile, good-natured young woman.
At the end of her story, Jane writes that she has been married for ten blissful years and that she and Rochester enjoy perfect equality in their life together. She is happier than she could ever be, because they love each other so much, they are each other's better half and never tire of each other. They are perfectly suited for each other, and Jane is happy spending her life loving and helping Rochester. She says: "I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character - perfect concord is the result." (pg. 472)
She says that after two years of blindness, Rochester regained sight in one eye and was able to behold their first son at his birth. In the last paragraphs of the novel, she reads a letter from St. John Rivers, now apparently dying in India, but welcoming his impending union with his Saviour
Characters
Jane Eyre - The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Jane is an intelligent, honest, plain-featured young girl forced to contend with oppression, inequality, and hardship. Although she meets with a series of individuals who threaten her autonomy, Jane repeatedly succeeds at asserting herself and maintains her principles of justice, human dignity, and morality. She also values intellectual and emotional fulfillment. Her strong belief in gender and social equality challenges the Victorian prejudices against women and the poor.
Edward Fairfax Rochester - Jane’s employer and the master of Thornfield, Rochester is a wealthy, passionate man with a dark secret that provides much of the novel’s suspense. Rochester is unconventional, ready to set aside polite manners, propriety, and consideration of social class in order to interact with Jane frankly and directly. He is rash and impetuous and has spent much of his adult life roaming about Europe in an attempt to avoid the consequences of his youthful indiscretions. His problems are partly the result of his own recklessness, but he is a sympathetic figure because he has suffered for so long as a result of his early marriage to Bertha.
St. John Rivers - Along with his sisters, Mary and Diana, St. John serves as Jane’s benefactor after she runs away from Thornfield, giving her food and shelter. The minister at Morton, St. John is cold, reserved, and often controlling in his interactions with others. Because he is entirely alienated from his feelings and devoted solely to an austere ambition, St. John serves as a foil to Edward Rochester.
Mrs. Reed - Mrs. Reed is Jane’s cruel aunt, who raises her at Gateshead Hall until Jane is sent away to school at age ten. Later in her life, Jane attempts reconciliation with her aunt, but the old woman continues to resent her because her husband had always loved Jane more than his own children.
Bessie Lee - The maid at Gateshead, Bessie is the only figure in Jane’s childhood who regularly treats her kindly, telling her stories and singing her songs. Bessie later marries Robert Leaven, the Reeds’ coachman.
Mr. Lloyd - Mr. Lloyd is the Reeds’ apothecary, who suggests that Jane be sent away to school. Always kind to Jane, Mr. Lloyd writes a letter to Miss Temple confirming Jane’s story about her childhood and clearing Jane of Mrs. Reed’s charge that she is a liar.
Georgiana Reed - Georgiana Reed is Jane’s cousin and one of Mrs. Reed’s two daughters. The beautiful Georgiana treats Jane cruelly when they are children, but later in their lives she befriends her cousin and confides in her. Georgiana attempts to elope with a man named Lord Edwin Vere, but her sister, Eliza, alerts Mrs. Reed of the arrangement and sabotages the plan. After Mrs. Reed dies, Georgiana marries a wealthy man.
Eliza Reed - Eliza Reed is Jane’s cousin and one of Mrs. Reed’s two daughters. Not as beautiful as her sister, Eliza devotes herself somewhat self-righteously to the church and eventually goes to a convent in France where she becomes the Mother Superior.
John Reed - John Reed is Jane’s cousin, Mrs. Reed’s son, and brother to Eliza and Georgiana. John treats Jane with appalling cruelty during their childhood and later falls into a life of drinking and gambling. John commits suicide midway through the novel when his mother ceases to pay his debts for him.
Helen Burns - Helen Burns is Jane’s close friend at the Lowood School. She endures her miserable life there with a passive dignity that Jane cannot understand. Helen dies of consumption in Jane’s arms.
Mr. Brocklehurst - The cruel, hypocritical master of the Lowood School, Mr. Brocklehurst preaches a doctrine of privation, while stealing from the school to support his luxurious lifestyle. After a typhus epidemic sweeps Lowood, Brocklehurst’s shifty and dishonest practices are brought to light and he is publicly discredited.
Maria Temple - Maria Temple is a kind teacher at Lowood, who treats Jane and Helen with respect and compassion. Along with Bessie Lee, she serves as one of Jane’s first positive female role models. Miss Temple helps clear Jane of Mrs. Reed’s accusations against her.
Alice Fairfax - Alice Fairfax is the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall. She is the first to tell Jane that the mysterious laughter often heard echoing through the halls is, in fact, the laughter of Grace Poole—a lie that Rochester himself often repeats.
Bertha Mason - Rochester’s clandestine wife, Bertha Mason is a formerly beautiful and wealthy Creole woman who has become insane, violent, and bestial. She lives locked in a secret room on the third story of Thornfield and is guarded by Grace Poole, whose occasional bouts of inebriation sometimes enable Bertha to escape. Bertha eventually burns down Thornfield, plunging to her death in the flames.
Grace Poole - Grace Poole is Bertha Mason’s keeper at Thornfield, whose drunken carelessness frequently allows Bertha to escape. When Jane first arrives at Thornfield, Mrs. Fairfax attributes to Grace all evidence of Bertha’s misdeeds.
Adèle Varens - Jane’s pupil at Thornfield, Adèle Varens is a lively though somewhat spoiled child from France. Rochester brought her to Thornfield after her mother, Celine, abandoned her. Although Celine was once Rochester’s mistress, he does not believe himself to be Adèle’s father.
Richard Mason - Richard Mason is Bertha’s brother. During a visit to Thornfield, he is injured by his mad sister. After learning of Rochester’s intent to marry Jane, Mason arrives with the solicitor Briggs in order to thwart the wedding and reveal the truth of Rochester’s prior marriage.
Mr. Briggs - John Eyre’s attorney, Mr. Briggs helps Richard Mason prevent Jane’s wedding to Rochester when he learns of the existence of Bertha Mason, Rochester’s wife. After John Eyre’s death, Briggs searches for Jane in order to give her her inheritance.
Blanche Ingram - Blanche Ingram is a beautiful socialite who des-pises Jane and hopes to marry Rochester for his money.
Narrator
Jane Eyre is written in the first person, and told from the viewpoint of its main character, Jane. Sometimes she narrates the events as she experienced them at the time, while at other times she focuses on her retrospective understanding of the events. “I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.“ (pg.3)
As part of her first-person narrative, Brontë uses one of the oldest conventions in English fiction - the novel is allegedly a memoir written by a real woman named Jane Eyre and edited by Currer Bell. As part of this convention, the narrator occasionally addresses the reader directly with the word "reader."
When the novel was initially published, the subtitle was An Autobiography, and Currer Bell was identified as the editor rather than as the author. The subtitle was dropped in subsequent editions of the novel.
Language
Charlotte Brontë has a very clear, easyly to read style. The action is flowing and moving, the reader can see the development of Jane, the changings of her feeling and thoughts. Most readers accept Jane's interpretation and explanations of herself, the other characters, and events. Jane's emotional intensity and openness cause the reader to identify with her, so that her experiences and feelings temporarily become those of most readers. Despite the fact that Jane Eyre reles upon the moral growth and maturation of both Jane and Rochester, the point of view remains that of Jane alone, and evertything is told solely from her point of view wo the readers see all the action and characters through her eyes. Even when she is the apparently passive recipient of information from other characters, the reader never forgets what Jane is feeling
Chapters, books
The whole book is divided into 37 chapters and contains also a short epilogue, which describes the happy-end of the whole novel.
George Eliot
Silas Marner
The Weaver of Raveloe
The Epigraph
“A child, more than all other gifts
That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts.”
William Wordsworth
Title: Silas Marner by George Eliot
Published: London: Penguin Classics, 1985
About the author:
Mary Anne Evans ( * November 22, 1819 † December 22, 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist. She used a male pen name to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Evans was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity. Mary Anne Evans was a humane freethinker, whose insightful psychological novels paved way to modern character portrayals - contemporary of Dostoevsky, who at the same time in Russia developed similar narrative techniques. Eliot's liaison with the married writer and editor George Henry Lewes arise among the rigid Victorians much indignation, which calmed down with the progress of her literary fame. Eliot's first collection of tales Scenes Of Clerical Life, appeared in 1858 under the pseudonym George Eliot. It was followed by her first novel, Adam Bede (1859), a tragic love story in which the model for the title character was Eliot's father. The book was a brilliant success. Her other major works include The Mill On The Floss (1860), a story of destructive family relations, and Silas Marner (1861). Middlemarch (1871-72), her greatest novel, was probably inspired by her life at Coventry. The story follows the sexual and intellectual frustrations of Dorothea Brooke. Adam Bede, Silas Marner, and The Mill on the Floss focus especially on Marian's childhood memories of the rural countryside in Warwickshire: the landscape and its inhabitants. She also recalled her religious views and integrated them into the stories. In 1860-61 Eliot spent some time in Italy collecting material for her historical romance Romola. It was published serially first in the Cornhill Magazine and in book form in 1863. In 1876, she published Daniel Deronda. She also translated The Life of Jesus Critically Examined by David Strauss (1846) and Feuerbach´s The Essence of Christianity (1854)
About the book:
Silas Marner was Eliot’s third novel and is among the best known of her works. Many of the novel’s themes and concerns stem from Eliot’s own life experiences. Silas’s loss of religious faith recalls Eliot’s own struggle with her faith and the novel’s setting in the vanishing English countryside reflects Eliot’s concern that England was fast becoming industrialized and impersonal. The novel’s concern with class and family can likewise be linked back to Eliot’s own life. The voice of the novel’s narrator can be seen as Eliot’s own voice. Though Silas Marner is in a sense a very personal novel for Eliot, its treatment of the themes of faith, family, and class has nonetheless given it universal appeal, especially at the time of publication, when English society and institutions were undergoing rapid change.
In Silas Marner George Eliot combines humor and rich symbolism with a historically precise setting. This novel explores the issues of redemptive love, the notion of community, the role of religion, and the status of the gentry and family. While religion and religious devotion play a strong part in this text, Eliot concerns herself with matters of ethics. The book has also a strong moral tract; the bad characters like Dunstan Cass get their just deserts, while the good, pitiable characters like Silas Marner are richly rewarded. Although it seems like a simple moral story with a happy ending, George Eliot's text includes several pointed criticisms on organised religion, the role of the gentry, and the impact of industrialization.
George Eliot evidently felt a kinship with William Wordsworth, widely considered the most important English writer of his time, and his strong identification with the English landscape. Like Wordsworth, Eliot draws many of her metaphors from the natural world. The Wordsworth epigraph she chose for Silas Marner also highlights the philosophical aspect of her affinity with Wordsworth. Like Eliot, Wordsworth had tried his hand at philosophy before turning to more literary pursuits, and in his poetry he works out his conception of human consciousness. One of Wordsworth’s major ideas, radical at the time, was that children and the memories of childhood they evoke in adults can still bring us close to that early, idyllic state like before our birth. It is not hard to imagine that Eliot had this model in mind when she wrote her story of a child bringing a man out of isolation and spiritual desolation.
Main Topic:
Ultimately, Silas Marner is a tale of familial love and loyalty, reward and punishment, and humble friendships. Silas Marner is about a tortured and lonely mans redemption through another man's failure. Silas Marner by George Eliot is a comment on the life of an English weaver and the social interactions of English county folk .The first thing that Eliot shows is how one man Godfrey Cass's failure as a human saves Silas Marner form a life alone with no one but his money to comfort him. Elliot also shows how Godfrey fails as a father. And finally Eliot shows the opinions and practices of English villagers.
The story of Silas Marner's life has a mythic dimension to it. Silas undergoes a spiritual journey that is a variation on the great religious myth of Western culture. In the Christian myth, man is expelled from a garden, saved by the birth of the Christ-child, and promised a life in bliss in the heavenly city of Jerusalem described in the Book of Revelations. Silas travels a similar path from expulsion to redemption, but the symbolism is reversed. In the course of this journey, which occupies over thirty years of Silas's life, he is expelled from a city, saved by a child, and ends up in a garden, as seen in the final chapter when Eppie and Aaron grow a garden just outside his cottage. “Eppie had a larger garden than she ever expected there now…” (pg. 243)
Plot summary:
The novel is set in the earlier years of the 19th century. Silas Marner is a weaver in an industrial town. He is also a highly thought of member of a little dissenting church. Silas is engaged to a female member of the church and thinks that his future happiness is assured. However, due to the betrayal of a fellow parishioner, who blames him for a theft that he did not commit, Silas is expelled from the congregation. He finds out later that his former fiancee married the man who had betrayed him. Later on, he goes to settle in the village of Raveloe. “It was fifteen years since Silas Marner had first come to Raveloe…”
Silas Marner is distrusted and disliked by the people of Raveloe. He is a solitary man who is regarded as strange by the other villagers because he does not socialize with them. Silas Marner has been living in Raveloe for the past fifteen years, and he still is considered an outsider to Raveloe. His home region and his way of living are uncharacteristic to Raveloe standards, for the town where he lived is different from the countryside village where he now resides. He has never invited anyone to his home; he never socializes with anyone. All the young ladies of Raveloe are convinced that he is not in the least interested in marrying one of them, and he never attends church. „It came to pass that those scattered linen-weavers - emigrants from the town into the country - were to the last regarded as aliens by their rustic neighbours, and usually contracted the eccentric habits which belong to a state of loneliness." (pg. 52)
Silas lives as a recluse who exists only for work and his precious hoard of money until that money is stolen by a son of Squire Cass, the town's leading landowner, causing him to become heartbroken. Soon an orphaned child comes to Raveloe. She was not known by the people there, but she is really the child of Godfrey Cass, the eldest son of the local squire. Her mother, Molly, is secretly married to Godfrey, but is also of low birth and addicted to opium and alcohol. Molly attempts to make her way into town with the child to prove that she is Godfrey's wife and ruin him. On the way she overdoses on opium and freezes to death in the snow. The small child wanders from her mother's body into Silas' house. Silas names the child Eppie. “My mother´s name was Hepzibah, said Silas, and my little sister was named after her.” (pg. 183) Her presence changes his life completely. Symbolically, Silas loses his material gold to theft only to have it replaced by the golden-haired Eppie. “Yes – the door was open. The money’s gone I don´t know where, and this is come from I don´t know where.” (pg. 179)
Later in the book, the gold is found and restored. Eppie grows up to be the pride of the town and to have a very strong bond with Silas, who through her has found inclusion in the town. Later, the childless Godfrey and Nancy Lammeter arrive at Silas' door, revealing the truth about Eppie's family and asking that Silas give Eppie up to their care. However, the decision falls to Eppie, who has no desire to be raised as a gentlemen's daughter if it means forsaking Silas. “For I should have no delight i´ life any more if I was forced to go away from my father, and knew he was sitting at home, a-thining of me and feeling lone.” (pg. 233)
At the end, Eppie marries a local boy, Aaron, son of Dolly Winthrop, and both of them move into Silas' newly enlarged house, courtesy of Godfrey.
Characters: Silas Marner - A simple, honest, and kindhearted weaver. After losing faith in both God and his fellow man, Silas lives for fifteen years as a solitary miser. After his money is stolen, his faith and trust are restored by his adopted daughter, Eppie, whom he lovingly raises. Godfrey Cass - The eldest son of Squire Cass. Godfrey is good-natured but selfish and weak-willed. He knows what is right but is unwilling to pay the price for obeying his conscience. Eppie - A girl whom Silas Marner eventually adopts. Eppie is the biological child of Godfrey Cass and Molly Farren, Godfrey’s secret wife. Eppie is pretty and spirited, and loves Silas unquestioningly. Nancy Lammeter - The object of Godfrey’s affection and his eventual wife. Nancy is pretty, caring, and stubborn, and she lives her life by a code of rules that sometimes seems arbitrary and uncompromising.
Dunstan Cass - Godfrey’s younger brother. Dunsey, as he is usually called, is cruel, lazy, and unscrupulous, and he loves gambling and drinking.
Squire Cass - The wealthiest man in Raveloe. The Squire is lazy, self-satisfied, and short-tempered.
Dolly Winthrop - The wheelwright’s wife who helps Silas with Eppie. Dolly later becomes Eppie’s godmother and mother-in-law. She is kind, patient, and devout.
Molly Farren - Godfrey’s secret wife and Eppie’s mother. Once pretty, Molly has been destroyed by her addictions to opium and alcohol.
William Dane - Silas’s proud and priggish best friend from his childhood in Lantern Yard. William Dane frames Silas for theft in order to bring disgrace upon him, then marries Silas’s fiancée, Sarah.
Mr. Macey - Raveloe’s parish clerk. Mr. Macey is opinionated and smug but means well.
Aaron Winthrop - Dolly’s son and Eppie’s eventual husband.
Priscilla Lammeter - Nancy’s homely and plainspoken sister. Priscilla talks endlessly but is extremely competent at everything she does.
Sarah - Silas’s fiancée in Lantern Yard. Sarah is put off by Silas’s strange fit and ends up marrying William Dane after Silas is disgraced.
Mr. Lammeter - Nancy’s and Priscilla’s father. He is a proud and morally uncompromising man.
Jem Rodney - A somewhat disreputable character and a poacher. Jem sees Silas in the midst of one of Silas’s fits. Silas later accuses Jem of stealing his gold.
Mr. Kimble - Godfrey’s uncle and Raveloe’s doctor. Mr. Kimble is usually an animated conversationalist and joker, but becomes irritable when he plays cards. He has no medical degree and inherited the position of village physician from his father.
Mr. Dowlas - The town farrier, who shoes horses and tends to general livestock diseases. Mr. Dowlas is a fiercely contrarian person, much taken with his own opinions.
Mr. Snell - The landlord of the Rainbow, a local tavern. By nature a conciliatory person, Mr. Snell always tries to settle arguments.
The peddler - An anonymous peddler who comes through Raveloe some time before the theft of Silas’s gold. The peddler is a suspect in the theft because of his gypsy like appearance—and for lack of a better candidate.
Bryce - A friend of both Godfrey and Dunsey. Bryce arranges to buy Wildfire, Dunsey’s horse.
Miss Gunns - Sisters from a larger nearby town who come to the Squire’s New Year’s dance. The Misses Gunn are disdainful of Raveloe’s rustic ways, but are nonetheless impressed by Nancy Lammeter’s beauty.
Sally Oates - Silas’s neighbor and the wheelwright’s wife. Silas eases the pain of Sally’s heart disease and dropsy with a concoction he makes out of foxglove.
Narrator:
The narrator speaks in the anonymous omniscient third person, describing what the characters are seeing, feeling, and thinking and what they are failing to see, feel, and think. The narrator uses the first person singular “I,” but at no point enters the story as a character. „In the early years of this century, such a linene-weaver, named Silas Marner, worked at his voccation in a stone cottage that stod among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe...“ (pg.52)
Books, chapters:
The whole book is divided into 21 that are divided into two parts, the first part from the chapter 1 to 15 and the second part from the chapter 16 to 21. At the end there is a short part called Conclusion that works like the last chapter.
Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights
Title:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Published:
New York: Bantam Books, 1986
About the author:
Emily Jane Brontë (July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848) was a British novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel Wuthering Heights, a classic of English literature. She used the pen name Ellis Bell.
About the book:
The name of the novel comes from the manor on which the story centres. First published m 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights ranks high on the list of major works of English literature. A unique achievement in its time, this work dramatizes a vision of life controlled by elemental forces which transcend conventional categories of good and evil. A brooding tale of passion and revenge set in the Yorkshire moors, the novel has inspired no fewer than four film versions in modern times. Early critics did not like the work, citing its excess of passion and its coarseness. A second edition was published in 1850, two years after the author's death by her sister Charlotte. Sympathetically prefaced by Charlotte, it met with greater success, and the novel has continued to grow in stature ever since.
Wuthering Heights is a novel of romance, revenge, and tragedy. It exhibits many characteristics of the so-called Gothic novel, which focuses on dark, mysterious events. The typical Gothic novel is designed to both horrify and fascinate readers with scenes of passion and cruelty; supernatural elements; and a dark, foreboding atmosphere and unfolds at one or more creepy sites, such as a dimly lit castle, an old mansion on a hilltop, a misty cemetery, a forlorn countryside, or the laboratory of a scientist conducting frightful experiments. In some Gothic novels, characters imagine that they see ghosts and monsters. In others, the ghosts and monsters are real. The weather in a Gothic novel is often dreary or foul: There may be high winds that rattle windowpanes, electrical storms with lightning strikes, and gray skies that brood over landscapes. (The word wuthering refers to violent wind.)
The novel is admired not least for the power of its imagery, its complex structure, and its ambiguity, the very elements that confounded its first critics. Emily Brontë spent her short life mostly at home, and apart from her own fertile imagination, she drew her inspiration from the local landscape the surrounding moorlands and the regional architecture of the Yorkshire area-as well as her personal experience of religion, of folklore, and of illness and death. Dealing with themes of nature, cruelty, social position, and indestructibility of the spirit, Wuthering Heights has surpassed the more successful Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre in academic and popular circles.
Main Topic:
Wuthering Heights is composed of two stories told one after the other. The first is about Cathy Earnshaw's relationships with Heathcliff and Edgar Linton. Their all-encompassing love for one another, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them both. Social tensions prevent their union, leading Heathcliff to shun and abuse society. The plot is given here in detail, as the book's narration is at times non-linear.
The second traces the course of Catherine Linton's relationships with her two cousins, Linton Heathcliff and Hareton Earnshaw. It has long been recognized that the two stories have much in common, and this is usually attributed to `repetition', a view which emphasizes the chronological sequence of events.
Dean's story provides insight into how the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine would have far-reaching repercussions for their families. Heathcliff's passion for Catherine is so dark and sinister that he becomes hellbent on destroying the happiness of her sister-in-law, her daughter and even his own son. This mission of destruction, though fervent during Catherine's lifetime, becomes still more impassioned after her death.
Plot summary:
The novel itself opens in 1801, with Lockwood arriving at Thrushcross Grange, a grand house he is renting from Heathcliff, who at this point resides at the titular Wuthering Heights. After attempting - and failing - to win over his surly, unwelcoming landlord, and intrigued by the curious state of affairs he finds at Wuthering Heights, when confined to his sickbed after catching a cold Lockwood curiously asks his housekeeper, Dean, of the story of Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights.
At this point, Dean takes over the narration (although Lockwood occasionally breaks in during her narrative). Dean's story begins thirty years earlier, when Heathcliff - then an orphaned foundling living on the streets of Liverpool - is brought to Wuthering Heights by the then-owner, Mr. Earnshaw and raised as his own. Also in the household are two servants, Joseph, a cranky old man, and Nelly Dean.
Earnshaw's own children, Hindley and Catherine, initially detest Heathcliff; over time, however, Catherine is won over by Heathcliff and the two eventually become inseparable childhood friends. Hindley, however, continues to resent Heathcliff, seeing him as an interloper in his father's affections, and the two boys become bitter rivals. But Hindley’s abuse of Heathcliff meets with severe censure if old Earnshaw witnesses it. As Nelly observes: “...twice, or thrice, Hindley's manifestations of scorn, while his father was near, roused the old man to a fury....” (chapter 5, pg.39) Mr. Earnshaw sends Hindley away to college, keeping Heathcliff nearby.
Upon Earnshaw's death three years later, Hindley comes home from college to take over the estate, surprising everyone by also bringing home a wife, a woman named Frances. As the new master of Wuthering Heights, Hindley brutalizes Heathcliff, spitefully forcing him to work as a hired hand. Despite this, Heathcliff and Catherine remain firm friends. Although initially something of a wild child, an accidental dog bite forces Catherine to stay at the nearby Linton family estate, Thrushcross Grange, for six weeks. During this time, she matures and grows attached to the refined and mild young Edgar Linton. When she returns to Wuthering Heights, she goes to some trouble to maintain her friendship with both Edgar and Heathcliff, in spite of their having an instantaneous dislike for each other.
A year later, Frances dies soon after the birth of Hindley's child Hareton. Destroyed by her death, Hindley turns to alcohol. Some two years after that, Catherine accepts a marriage proposal made to her by Edgar. Catherine – though now so passionately in love with Heathcliff that she says: „My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.“ (chapter 9, pg.79) – confides to Nelly that she has decided to marry Edgar Linton, who has made it clear that he wants her, because it would be degrading to marry Heathcliff. Unfortunately, Heathcliff overhears the conversation and leaves at this point, never hearing her continuing declarations that Heathcliff is as much a part of her as the rocks are to the earth beneath. Catherine is mortified when she realizes that Heathcliff has overheard her, but by that point he has left Wuthering Heights, furious at the fact that he can no longer be with Catherine and unaware of the true bond that she feels towards him. Nevertheless, she marries Edgar, and the two initially live happily.
After Catherine has been married to Edgar for two years, Heathcliff returns, and it is soon revealed that he is intent on destroying those whom he blames for preventing him from being with Catherine. In the interim, he has amassed significant wealth (by means that are not revealed) and has duped the alcoholic, self-destructive Hindley into owing him Wuthering Heights. He is also intent on ruining Edgar, and when he learns of an infatuation Edgar's sister Isabella has developed towards him, Heathcliff elopes with her, much to Edgar's despair; not only does this ruin his relationship with his sister, but it also places Heathcliff in a position to inherit Thrushcross Grange upon Edgar's death. After his marriage, Heathcliff's true contempt for Isabella emerges and he treats her in a cruel and abusive fashion. Back at Thrushcross Grange, Catherine - whose physical and mental health has been ruined by the ongoing feud between Heathcliff and her husband - dies in childbirth, giving birth to a daughter also named Catherine. Her death, however, only intensifies Heathcliff's bitterness and determination to continue his vendetta. Isabella flees Heathcliff's cruelty a month after Catherine's death, and later gives birth to a boy, Linton. At around the same time, Hindley dies, and Heathcliff takes ownership of Wuthering Heights. He also takes control of Hindley's son, Hareton, determined to raise the boy with as much neglect as he had suffered at Hindley's hands years earlier; despite this, Hareton remains intensely loyal to Heathcliff, viewing him as a surrogate father. Despite his grief over his wife's death, Edgar devotes himself to raising the younger Catherine, who grows into a gentle-natured girl who shares the flighty nature her mother had once possessed.
Twelve years later, Isabella is dying and sends for Edgar to come retrieve and raise her and Heathcliff's son, Linton. However, Heathcliff finds out about this and takes Linton from Thrushcross Grange back to Wuthering Heights. The boy is sickly and spoiled, and his father has nothing but contempt for him, but nevertheless delights in the prospect of his own son ruling over the property of his enemies. To that end, Heathcliff forces young Catherine and Linton to marry. Soon after, Edgar Linton dies, followed shortly by Heathcliff's son, Linton. This leaves young Catherine a widow and a virtual prisoner at Wuthering Heights, as Heathcliff has gained complete control of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Chronologically, it is at this point in the narrative that Lockwood arrives, taking possession of Thrushcross Grange, and that Nelly Dean tells her story. Shocked and horrified at the sordid details of what has transpired, Lockwood leaves for London.
During his absence from the area, however, events reach a climax; young Catherine, at first repulsed by and contemptuous of Hareton's rough, uncouth and uneducated nature, gradually softens towards him—just as her mother grew tender towards Heathcliff. In her lonely state of existence at Wuthering Heights, Hareton becomes her only source of happiness, and the two fall in love. Heathcliff, on seeing their love for each another, appears to no longer care to pursue his life-long vendetta. Having been haunted for years by what he perceives as the elder Catherine's ghost, Heathcliff finally dies, a broken and tormented man, and Catherine and Hareton marry. Heathcliff is buried next to Catherine (the elder), and the story concludes with Lockwood - who has learnt of these events from Nelly Dean - visiting the grave, unsure of exactly what to feel.”… watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.“ (chapter 34, pg.315)
Characters:
Heathcliff - An orphan brought to live at Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff falls into an intense, unbreakable love with Mr. Earnshaw’s daughter Catherine. After Mr. Earnshaw dies, his resentful son Hindley abuses Heathcliff and treats him as a servant. Because of her desire for social prominence, Catherine marries Edgar Linton instead of Heathcliff. Heathcliff’s humiliation and misery prompt him to spend most of the rest of his life seeking revenge on Hindley, his beloved Catherine, and their respective children (Hareton and young Catherine). A powerful, fierce, and often cruel man, Heathcliff acquires a fortune and uses his extraordinary powers of will to acquire both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, the estate of Edgar Linton.
Catherine - The daughter of Mr. Earnshaw and his wife, Catherine falls powerfully in love with Heathcliff, the orphan Mr. Earnshaw brings home from Liverpool. Catherine loves Heathcliff so intensely that she claims they are the same person. However, her desire for social advancement motivates her to marry Edgar Linton instead. The location of Catherine’s coffin symbolizes the conflict that tears apart her short life. She is not buried in the chapel with the Lintons. Nor is her coffin placed among the tombs of the Earnshaws. Instead, as Nelly describes, Catherine is buried “…in a corner of the kirkyard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry plants have climbed over it from the moor.” (chapter 16, pg.158) Moreover, she is buried with Edgar on one side and Heathcliff on the other, suggesting her conflicted loyalties. Her actions are driven in part by her social ambitions, which initially are awakened during her first stay at the Lintons’, and which eventually compel her to marry Edgar. However, she is also motivated by impulses that prompt her to violate social conventions – to love Heathcliff, throw temper tantrums, and run around on the moor.
Catherine is free-spirited, beautiful, spoiled, and often arrogant. She is given to fits of temper, and she is torn between her wild passion for Heathcliff and her social ambition. She brings misery to both of the men who love her. Catherine is a happy, spirited, likable child – but full of the devil. Nelly says of her: „Certainly she had ways with her such as I never saw a child take up before; and she put all of us past our patience fifty times and oftener in a day: from the hour she came down-stairs till the hour she went to bed, we had not a minute's security that she wouldn't be in mischief. Her spirits were always at high-water mark, her tongue always going - singing, laughing, and plaguing everybody who would not do the same. A wild, wicked slip she was - but she had the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile, and lightest foot in the parish...“ (chapter 5, pg.41)
Edgar Linton - Well-bred but rather spoiled as a boy, Edgar Linton grows into a tender, constant, but cowardly man. He is almost the ideal gentleman: Catherine accurately describes him as “…handsome, pleasant to be with, cheerful and rich…” (chapter 9, pg.75) However, this full assortment of gentlemanly characteristics, along with his civilized virtues, proves useless in Edgar’s clashes with his foil, Heathcliff, who gains power over his wife, sister, and daughter. Edgar is particularly humiliated by his confrontation with Heathcliff, in which he openly shows his fear of fighting Heathcliff. Catherine, having witnessed the scene, taunts him, saying: “Heathcliff would as soon lift a finger at you as the king would march his army against a colony of mice.” (chapter 11, pg.109) As the reader can see from the earliest descriptions of Edgar as a spoiled child, his refinement is tied to his helplessness and impotence.
Nelly Dean - Nelly Dean (known formally as Ellen Dean) serves as the chief narrator of Wuthering Heights. A sensible, intelligent, and compassionate woman, she grew up essentially alongside Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw and is deeply involved in the story she tells. She has strong feelings for the characters in her story, and these feelings complicate her narration.
Lockwood - Lockwood’s narration forms a frame around Nelly’s; he serves as an intermediary between Nelly and the reader. A somewhat vain and presumptuous gentleman, he deals very clumsily with the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. Lockwood comes from a more domesticated region of England, and he finds himself at a loss when he witnesses the strange household’s disregard for the social conventions that have always structured his world. As a narrator, his vanity and unfamiliarity with the story occasionally lead him to misunderstand events.
Young Catherine - The first Catherine begins her life as Catherine Earnshaw and ends it as Catherine Linton; her daughter begins as Catherine Linton and, assuming that she marries Hareton after the end of the story, goes on to become Catherine Earnshaw. The mother and the daughter share not only a name, but also a tendency toward headstrong behavior, impetuousness, and occasional arrogance. However, Edgar’s influence seems to have tempered young Catherine’s character, and she is a gentler and more compassionate creature than her mother.
Hareton Earnshaw - The son of Hindley and Frances Earnshaw, Hareton is Catherine’s nephew. After Hindley’s death, Heathcliff assumes custody of Hareton, and raises him as an uneducated field worker, just as Hindley had done to Heathcliff himself. Thus Heathcliff uses Hareton to seek revenge on Hindley. Illiterate and quick-tempered, Hareton is easily humiliated, but shows a good heart and a deep desire to improve himself. At the end of the novel, he marries young Catherine.
Linton Heathcliff - Heathcliff’s son by Isabella. Weak, sniveling, demanding, and constantly ill, Linton is raised in London by his mother and does not meet his father until he is thirteen years old, when he goes to live with him after his mother’s death. Heathcliff despises Linton, treats him contemptuously, and, by forcing him to marry the young Catherine, uses him to cement his control over Thrushcross Grange after Edgar Linton’s death. Linton himself dies not long after this marriage.
Hindley Earnshaw - Catherine’s brother, and Mr. Earnshaw’s son. Hindley resents it when Heathcliff is brought to live at Wuthering Heights. After his father dies and he inherits the estate, Hindley begins to abuse the young Heathcliff, terminating his education and forcing him to work in the fields. When Hindley’s wife Frances dies shortly after giving birth to their son Hareton, he lapses into alcoholism and dissipation.
Isabella Linton - Edgar Linton’s sister, who falls in love with Heathcliff and marries him. She sees Heathcliff as a romantic figure, like a character in a novel. Ultimately, she ruins her life by falling in love with him. He never returns her feelings and treats her as a mere tool in his quest for revenge on the Linton family.
Mr. Earnshaw - Catherine and Hindley’s father. Mr. Earnshaw adopts Heathcliff and brings him to live at Wuthering Heights. Mr. Earnshaw prefers Heathcliff to Hindley but nevertheless bequeaths Wuthering Heights to Hindley when he dies.
Mrs. Earnshaw - Catherine and Hindley’s mother, who neither likes nor trusts the orphan Heathcliff when he is brought to live at her house. She dies shortly after Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights.
Joseph - A long-winded, fanatically religious, elderly servant at Wuthering Heights. Joseph is strange, stubborn, and unkind, and he speaks with a thick Yorkshire accent.
Frances Earnshaw - Hindley’s simpering, silly wife, who treats Heathcliff cruelly. She dies shortly after giving birth to Hareton.
Mr. Linton - Edgar and Isabella’s father and the proprietor of Thrushcross Grange when Heathcliff and Catherine are children. An established member of the gentry, he raises his son and daughter to be well-mannered young people.
Mrs. Linton - Mr. Linton’s somewhat snobbish wife, who does not like Heathcliff to be allowed near her children, Edgar and Isabella. She teaches Catherine to act like a gentle-woman, thereby instilling her with social ambitions.
Narrator:
The narrative is non-linear, involving several flashbacks to events in the past, and involves two narrators – Mr. Lockwood and Nelly Dean, whose stories are interwoven with each other.
Lockwood narrates the entire novel as an entry in his diary. The story is organized as a narrative within a narrative, or what some critics call "Chinese boxes." Lockwood is used to open and end the novel in the present tense, first person. “I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.“ (chapter 1, pg.1) The story that Lockwood records is told to him by Nelly and Lockwood writes most of the narrative in her voice, describing how she told it to him.
Most of the events are narrated from Nelly’s point of view, focusing only on what Nelly can see and hear, or what she can find out about indirectly. Nelly frequently comments on what the other characters think and feel, and on what their motivations are, but these comments are all based on her own interpretations of the other characters – she is not an omniscient narrator. “Sometimes, while meditating on these things in solitude, I've got up in a sudden terror, and put on my bonnet to go see how all was at the farm. I've persuaded my conscience that it was a duty to warn him how people talked regarding his ways...“ (chapter 11, pg.102)
Books, chapters:
The book contains 34 chapters, which describe about forty years of the story.
OSCAR WILDE
An Ideal Husband
A play
Title:
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
Published:
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995
Context:
With respect to historical context, Wilde wrote An Idea Husband during the decade known as the "Yellow" or "Naughty Nineties", the twilight years of England's Victorian era. This period was distinguished by England's growth as an industrial and imperial giant and an increasingly conservatism in social mores. Imperial expansion, foreign speculation, and the period's rigid system of mores – involving, for example, notions of familial devotion, propriety, and duty both public and personal – provide the backdrop for Wilde's play.
The Aesthetic Movement of the "Yellow Nineties," a movement has its roots in dandyism and decadence. The figure of the Dandy dates back to the early nineteenth century and the fashionable English playboy Beau Brummel. Celebrated in several essays by the French poet Baudelaire in the 1860s, the Dandy, a consummate man of fashion, evolved into a figure of exaggeration, moral liberty, and the art of pretense.
Decadence grew out of English imitations of French visions of artistic autonomy. Modeled especially on the ideas of Baudelaire, Decadence emerged in England in the 1860s with the writing of Algernon Swinburne. It flaunted the pursuit of forbidden experiences – from homosexuality to hashish – while asserting the superiority of artifice over nature. One was expected to be irresponsible, witty, artificial, and languorous, while always exhibiting astonishing superiority in style and dress.
As a primary propagator of aestheticism, Wilde rebelled against Victorian sensibilities, calling for a world judged by the beauty of its artifice rather than its moral value. The aesthets called to forget about the duties to society in the name of individual freedom, social theatricality, and the pleasures of style and affectation. Ideal Husband dramatizes this clash in value systems rather explicitly, continually posing the figure of the dandy – a thinly veiled double of Wilde himself – against a set of more respectable, "ideal" characters.
About the play:
Wilde and his play are by now firmly established in the English-language, and most libraries hold volumes of the individual or collected plays. The Modern Library editions of Wilde's collected comedies are the most widespread.
In the summer of 1893, Oscar Wilde began writing An Ideal Husband, and he completed it later that winter. At this point in his career he was accustomed to success, and in writing An Ideal Husband he wanted to ensure himself public fame. His work began at Goring-on-Thames, after which he named the character Lord Goring, and concluded at St. James Place. He initially sent the completed play to the Garrick theater, where the manager rejected it, but it was soon accepted the Haymarket Theatre, where Lewis Waller had temporarily taken control. Waller was an excellent actor and cast himself as Sir Robert Chiltern. The play gave the Haymarket the success it desperately needed. After opening on January 3, 1895, it continued for 124 performances. In April of that year, Wilde was arrested for ‘gross indecency’ and his name was publicly taken off the play. On April 6, soon after Wilde's arrest, the play moved to the Criterion Theatre where it ran from April 13-27. The play was published in 1899, although Wilde was not listed as the author. This published version differs slightly from the performed play, for Wilde added many passages and cut others. Prominent additions included written stage directions and character descriptions. Wilde was a leader in the effort to make plays accessible to the reading public. In 1897, he wrote a letter describing the process of writing An Ideal Husband, which was later published under the title De Profundis.
The play borrows from the style of Alexandre Dumas, where a theatrical device, in this case a letter, determines the outcome. Yet, Wilde keeps his work original by creating constant ironic plot twists and turns. The plot of An Ideal Husband was largely influenced by events in Paris in 1893. The directors of the Compagnie du Canal Interoceanique exploited shareholder funds, and similar political corruption lies at the heart of Wilde's play. In addition, some critics suggest that the play borrowed elements of mark Twain’s The Gilded Age, and that the character of Sir Robert Chiltern might be modeled after two contemporary politicians: Sir Charles Duilke, a dining friend of Wilde's, or Charles Stuart Parnell. Sir Charles was the Liberal Party’s Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs from 1880 to 1882 and President of the Local Government Board from 1882 to 1885, but his career suddenly ended in 1885 when his wife divorced him. Parnell was accused of political murder, but was acquitted. Soon after he was named in divorce proceedings and withdrew from public life.
Wilde creates his characters as artistic objects within society, and through their conversations and seemingly carefree banter, explores the themes of love, loyalty and honour. Wilde's writing, which relies on these sorts of conversation, is often referred to as epigrammatic. An epigram is defined as a concise and witty statement that expresses insight and is often ironic in tone. The opening act contains many epigrammatic statements, including Mrs. Marchmont's claim of abhorring education, and Lord Goring's claim that the only thing he knows anything about is nothing. Clearly, neither truly believes these statements, but there is truth to them. Wilde's reliance on epigrammatic conversation forces the reader to determine when there is seriousness in such statements, and when they are simply witty and somewhat false tools used to extend somewhat meaningless conversation. As such, Wilde successfully weaves the most serious themes of the play in with the most frivolous of its banter and conversation.
Wilde crafts his characters as works of art, and demonstrates how their culture has taught them to behave with a certain amount of pretense. The play constantly moves toward a more ideal moral standard as the characters struggle with dishonesty, hypocrisy, double moral standards, materialism, and corruption of social and political life. Wilde’s enduring message is that love, and not wealth, leads to happiness.
Main topic:
An Ideal Husband tells the story of two women, whose determination that their husbands should be perfect, creates complication in the lives of the men they love. The play veils important truths behind layers of tart wit and pointed humor, skillfully blending several different genres of comedy, including, satire and farce.
An Ideal Husband is one of the most serious of Wilde’s social comedies, and contains very strong political overtones, ironically and cynically examining the contemporary political landscape. The play's main focus is the often corrupt sources of great wealth, of which the public is usually ignorant. The characters and circumstances surrounding Sir Robert, Mrs. Cheveley, and Baron Arnheim all mirror contemporary society and how finances increasingly influence political life. Within this political realm, the play notes how social power relies not on money, but rather on information and knowledge. In the play, secret knowledge allows Mrs. Cheveley to hold great power over Sir Robert Chiltern.
The play's action discusses and analyzes conflicts between public and personal morality, and examines the power of self-interest. Although Sir Robert is only honest when it is in his interest, Lady Chiltern, for all her talk of honor and morality, is often hypocritical in her inability to forgive others. The play does not contain a formula for public success, and Wilde maintains a very critical view of society. In the play, Wilde also examines the problematic nature of marriage, and portrays it as corrupt and corrupting. The Chilterns are foolish to try to have an “ideal” marriage based on materialistic values, such as property and high social standing. Wilde suggests a similarity between the absences of morality in their marriage and the lack of morality in the state’s politics.
The title phrase, "an ideal husband," appears in the penultimate dialogue of Act IV as the last joke of the play. Mabel Chiltern and Lord Goring have just announced their engagement, and Lord Caversham – emblematic of an older generation of London Society – issues the threat quoted above to his dandified son. At the same time, Mabel and Goring have negotiated a union that dispenses with question regarding the ideal behavior of the married couple. As Mabel protests, the "ideal husband" belongs in heaven “…An ideal husband! Oh, I don’t think I should like that. It sounds like something in the next world.” (Act IV, pg.245). Goring can be whatever he wants while she wants to be his real wife who decidedly belongs to this world. Indeed, throughout the play they have assumed an amoral pose, disparaging the demands of duty and respectability. Their union thus in a sense counterpoises that of the upright Chilterns, who have just reconciled and are also on the scene.
Plot summary:
The action of An Ideal Husband takes place within about twenty four hours. An Ideal Husband opens during a dinner party at the home of Sir Robert Chiltern in London's fashionable Grosvenor Square. Sir Robert, a prestigious member of the House of Commons, and his wife, Lady Gertrude Chiltern, are hosting a gathering that includes his friend Lord Goring, a dandified bachelor and close friend to the Chilterns, his sister Mabel Chiltern, and other genteel guests.
The first two speakers of the play, two minor characters, Lady Basildon and Mrs. Marchmont, set a witty tone. They are pretty, young married women, and they speak to each other languidly and cleverly. Attention then moves to various new arrivals at the reception, such as the Earl of Caversham, who inquires after his son Lord Goring, and Mabel Chiltern, Sir Robert Chiltern's sister, who chats with the Earl of Caversham. The most important arrivals, however, are Lady Markby and Mrs. Cheveley, because the latter is the play's villain.
During the party, Mrs. Cheveley, an enemy of Lady Chiltern's from their school days, attempts to blackmail Sir Robert into supporting a fraudulent scheme to build a canal in Argentina. Apparently, Mrs. Cheveley's dead mentor, Baron Arnheim, convinced the young Sir Robert many years ago to sell him a Cabinet secret, a secret that suggested he buy stocks in the Suez Canal three days before the British government announced its purchase. Sir Robert made his fortune with that illicit money, and Mrs. Cheveley has the letter to prove his crime. Fearing both the ruin of career and marriage, Sir Robert submits to her demands.
When Mrs. Cheveley pointedly informs Lady Chiltern of Sir Robert's change of heart regarding the canal scheme, the morally inflexible Lady, unaware of both her husband's past and the blackmail plot, insists that Sir Robert renege on his promise. For Lady Chiltern, their marriage is predicated on her having an "ideal husband" – that is, a model spouse in both private and public life that she can worship: thus Sir Robert must remain unimpeachable in all his decisions. Sir Robert complies with the lady's wishes and apparently seals his doom. Also toward the end of Act I, Mabel and Lord Goring come upon a diamond brooch that Lord Goring gave someone many years ago. Goring takes the brooch and asks that Mabel inform him if anyone comes to retrieve it.
In the second act, which also takes place at Sir Robert's house, Lord Goring urges Sir Robert to fight Mrs. Cheveley and admit his guilt to his wife. He also reveals that he and Mrs. Cheveley were formerly engaged. After finishing his conversation with Sir Robert, Goring engages in flirtatious banter with Mabel. He also takes Lady Chiltern aside and obliquely urges her to be less morally inflexible and more forgiving. Once Goring leaves, Mrs. Cheveley appears, unexpected, in search of a brooch she lost the previous evening. Incensed at Sir Robert's reneging on his promise, she ultimately exposes Sir Robert to his wife once they are both in the room. Unable to accept a Sir Robert now unmasked, Lady Chiltern then denounces her husband and refuses to forgive him.
In the third act, set in Lord Goring's home, Goring receives a pink letter from Lady Chiltern asking for his help, a letter that might be read as a compromising love note. Just as Goring receives this note, however, his father, Lord Caversham, drops in and demands to know when his son will marry. A visit from Sir Robert, who seeks further counsel from Goring, follows. Meanwhile, Mrs. Cheveley arrives unexpectedly and, misrecognized by the butler as the woman Goring awaits, is ushered into Lord Goring's drawing room. While she waits, she finds Lady Chiltern's letter. Ultimately, Sir Robert discovers Mrs. Cheveley in the drawing room and, convinced of an affair between these two former loves, angrily storms out of the house.
When she and Lord Goring confront each other, Mrs. Cheveley makes a proposal: claiming to still love Goring from their early days of courtship, she offers to exchange Sir Robert's letter for her old beau's hand in marriage. Lord Goring declines, accusing her of defiling love by reducing courtship to a vulgar transaction and ruining the Chilterns' marriage. He then springs his trap. Removing the diamond brooch from his desk drawer, he binds it to Cheveley's wrist with a hidden device. Goring then reveals how the item came into her possession: apparently Mrs. Cheveley stole it from his cousin years ago. To avoid arrest, Cheveley must trade the incriminating letter for her release from the bejeweled handcuff. After Goring obtains and burns the letter, however, Mrs. Cheveley steals Lady Chiltern's note from his desk. Vengefully she plans to send it to Sir Robert misconstrued as a love letter addressed to the dandified lord. Mrs. Cheveley exits the house in triumph.
The final act, which returns to Grosvenor Square, resolves the many plot complications sketched above with a decidedly happy ending. Lord Goring proposes to and is accepted by Mabel. Lord Caversham informs his son that Sir Robert has denounced the Argentine canal scheme before the House. Lady Chiltern then appears, and Lord Goring informs her that Sir Robert's letter has been destroyed but that Mrs. Cheveley has stolen her letter and plans to use it to destroy her marriage. At that moment, Sir Robert enters while reading Lady Chiltern's letter, but he has mistaken it for a letter of forgiveness written for him. The two reconcile. The ever-upright Lady Chiltern then attempts to drive Sir Robert to renounce his career in politics, but Lord Goring dissuades her from doing so. When Sir Robert refuses Lord Goring his sister's hand in marriage, still believing he has taken up with Mrs. Cheveley, Lady Chiltern is forced to explain last night's events and the true nature of the letter. Sir Robert relents, and Lord Goring and Mabel are permitted to wed.
Characters:
Lady Basildon: Mrs. Marchmont’s primary companion at the Chiltern party, she is a frequent complainer. The two women discuss a variety of "current" social issues, are highly superficial, and act as very basic, decorative characters in the plot. Lady Basildon and her close friend Mrs. Marchmont are the first speakers in Wilde's play, setting the tone with their witty banter. Lady Basildon and her friend affect a world-weary attitude, pretending to find the fashionable London parties they go to terribly boring. As Lady Basildon says of a different party the two are planning to attend "Horribly tedious! Never know why I go. Never know why I go anywhere." (Act I, pg.165) The duo's worldly sophistication and wit undoubtedly flattered a portion of his audience whom Wilde hoped would enjoy his play, namely fashionable society women.
Sir Robert Chiltern: Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, a member of English society, and married to the honest and respectable Lady Chiltern, Sir Robert Chiltern is the “tragic hero” of the play. Early in his public career Chiltern sold state secrets to Baron Arnheim, from which he became quite rich. The past comes back to haunt him when Mrs. Cheveley arrives at his home and blackmails him with evidence of his wrongdoing. Chiltern, who is powerfully dependent on his ill-gotten wealth, struggles between succumbing to Mrs. Cheveley's blackmail and living and honest life. Fortunately, he is saved from disgrace through a variety of happenstance occurrences, and in fact discovers an even greater happiness in his marriage and government work than he had known before his status and professional career were threatened. Lord Goring: Lord Goring is a very clever and dashing man who lives a life of simple luxury and avoids professional pursuits. He is always impeccably dressed in the most up to date fashion, and demonstrates substantial intelligence and a penchant for acute analysis of human behavior. Ironically, he also prides himself on rejecting the expectations of society. A close friend of Sir Robert Chiltern, Goring wisely counsels him after Mrs. Cheveley, whom Goring was once engaged to, reveals her blackmail scheme. He also works to heal the wounds between Lady Chiltern and her husband and to destroy Mrs. Cheveley's evil scheme. Lord Goring is quite successful in these endeavors and in fact proves to be a hero of the play. In the final scenes of the play, he proposes to Mabel Chiltern, who accepts him. Lady Gertrude Chiltern: Sir Robert Chiltern’s extremely beautiful twenty-seven year old wife, champion of the Higher Education of women, a member of the Woman’s Liberal Association, and a moral, upstanding citizen. Lady Chiltern also attended school with Mrs. Cheveley, and knows her to be dishonest and unkind. Lady Chiltern expects perfection from her husband, which makes it difficult for her to understand that he might have mistakes in his past. However, she loves her husband dearly and finally accepts that every man is somehow flawed. Mrs. Cheveley: Mrs. Cheveley, who attended school with Lady Chiltern, is dishonest, selfish, and manipulative. The villain of the play, she arrives at the Chiltern's party and blackmails Robert Chiltern with a dishonest letter he wrote early in his public career that reveals state secrets for monetary gain. Mrs. Cheveley revels in wielding power over others and tells Sir Chiltern that in order to prevent her from publishing the letter, he must support her current financial scheme, the Argentinean Canal. Later, Lord Goring tricks her into admitting theft and successfully foils her scheme to destroy Robert Chiltern and his marriage.
Mabel Chiltern: Sir Robert Chiltern's sister. Mabel constantly teases Lord Goring and flirts with him throughout the play. She complains often that Tommy Trafford proposes to her in a most unpleasant manner. In the final scenes of the play, Lord Goring proposes to her and she accepts his hand. Lord Caversham: Lord Goring’s father, Caversham prides himself on dignity and honor. Caversham constantly belittles his dandy of a son publicly and privately, accusing him of an idle life and urging him to begin a professional career and marry. Lady Markby: A pleasant woman who is friends with Mrs. Cheveley and brings her to the Chiltern home. Lady Markby is very traditional in her views, rejecting higher education for women and longing for more simple days where women simply wished for the attention of a husband. Phipps: A "mask with a manner" who serves Lord Goring as his butler. He is known for his complete reticence, making him the "ideal butler". He is bsolutely impassive, he reveals nothing of his intellect or emotions and "represents the dominance of form." Phipps appears briefly at the beginning of Act III in a comic interlude with Lord Goring. Vicomte de Nanjac: A guest at the Chiltern’s party, the Vicomte talks with many of the women. He asks Mabel to dance with him, recognizes Mrs. Cheveley from knowing her in Berlin five years previous, and excessively, almost comically, compliments the English language. Mr. Monford: A secretary to Sir Robert Chiltern, also described as a dandy. James : A minor character, James is Lord Goring's footman and appears to show Mrs. Cheveley into Lord Goring's library in Act III and withdraws when Phipps gives him a glassy stare. Mason: Butler to Sir Robert Chiltern, Mason is another minor character who announces each guest at the dinner party in Act I. Harold: Sir Robert's footman. He appears briefly in Act IV.
Narrator:
Point of view is not located as there is no narrator figure. The figures speak in dialogues.
Chapters, books:
The play contains four acts and a preface with a list of the persons and scenes of the play with a short description of time an place.
ACT I. The Octagon Room in Sir Robert Chiltern's House in Grosvenor Square.
ACT II. Morning-room in Sir Robert Chiltern's House.
ACT III. The Library of Lord Goring's House in Curzon Street.
ACT IV. Same as Act II.
TIME: The Present
PLACE: London.
The action of the play is completed within twenty-four hours.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Title:
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Published:
New York: The Modern Library, 1998
About the author:
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (* October 16, 1854 † November 30, 1900) was an Irish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and short story writer. He was the son of Sir William Wilde, a distinguished doctor, and Jane Francesca Elgee, a poet and journalist who supported the movement for Irish independence.
Educated at the Portora Royal School, Trinity College in Dublin, and Oxford University, he married Contance Lloyd in 1884 and had two children, Cyril and Vyvyan. Known for his barbed wit, he was one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day. As the result of a famous trial, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned for two years of hard labour.
Most of his works had to do with the Aesthetic movement, of which he was one of the most public supporters; he believed that art is useless, and it should be done simply for its own sake. In the literary world of Victorian London, Wilde fell in with an artistic crowd that included W. B. Yeats, the great Irish poet, and Lillie Langtry, mistress to the Prince of Wales. A great conversationalist and a famous wit, Wilde began by publishing poetry like as Ravenna (1878), Poems (1881), The Sphinx (1894) or The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) but soon achieved widespread fame for his brilliant, witty comedies. The first, Vera; or, The Nihilists, was published in 1880. Wilde followed this work with The Duchess of Padua (1881), Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892), A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and his most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Although these plays relied upon relatively simple and familiar plots, they rose well above convention with their brilliant dialogue and biting satire.
He is probably best known for his only published novel The Picture of Dorian Gray from 1891. Some other of his prose works are The Canterville Ghost (1887), The Happy Prince and Other Stories (1888), Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories (1891), Intentions (1891) or De Profundis (1905).
About the book:
The Picture of Dorian Gray is considered one of the last works of classic gothic horror fiction with a strong Faustian theme. The novel deals with the artistic movement of the decadents, and homosexuality, both of which caused some controversy when the book was first published.
The first edition of the novel was published in 1890 in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. Wilde later revised this edition, making several alterations, and adding six new chapters; the amended version was published by Ward, Lock, and Company in April 1891.
In the second edition Wilde removed all references to the fictitious book "Le Secret de Raoul", and to its fictitious author, Catulle Sarrazin. The book and its author are still referred to in the published versions of the novel, but are unnamed. Wilde also attempted to moderate some of the more homoerotic instances in the book, or instances whereby the intentions of the characters' may be misconstrued.
In England, the novel was condemned by many reviewers as shocking and immoral, the public was shocked and disgusted by the book and its implicit homosexuality Wilde tried to address some of these criticisms as he worked on an expanded version of the story, along with a preface in which Wilde stated his artistic credo.
The second published book was given a good review and said to promote the idea that excess was evil and would make a person ugly; Wilde denied that this was his intention; however he did say that the book shows that certain excesses have their own punishments.
As a variation on the Faust legend, with echoes of the fall of man and the Adonis myth, and as an examination of the relationship between art and life, The Picture of Dorian Gray fascinated readers and gave rise to many different interpretations.
Main topic:
The novel tells of a young man of great beauty named Dorian Gray who, having promised his soul in order to live a life of perpetual youth, must try to reconcile himself to the bodily decay and dissipation that are recorded in his portrait.
When Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, Lord Henry inspires him with a vision of life in which the pursuit of beauty through sensual pleasure is valued above ethical or moral concerns. Another friend of Dorian, the artist Basil Hallward, awakens Dorian's vanity. After admiring a portrait of him painted by Basil, Dorian declares that he would give his own soul if he could remain eternally young while the portrait grows old. He gets his wish, and the picture shows the gradual disfigurement of his soul as he sinks into a life of degradation and crime.
Although the theme of homoerotic love is never stated explicitly, it may be present in Basil's feelings for Dorian. He tells Lord Henry that he cannot be happy if he does not see Dorian every day. He is upset when Dorian becomes engaged to Sibyl. Later, he confesses to Dorian that from the first moment they met, he worshipped him. He says, "…I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself. I was only happy when I was with you." (chapter 9, pg.127) He is completely dominated by his feelings for the younger man, which also transfigure his perception of the entire world. Everything becomes wonderful to him because of Dorian. Basil presents what may be homoerotic attraction in different terms, as the lure of an aesthetic ideal.
Plot summary:
The novel begins with Lord Henry Wotton observing the artist Basil Hallward painting the portrait of a handsome young man named Dorian Gray. Dorian arrives later, meeting Lord Henry Wotton. After hearing Lord Henry's world view, Dorian begins to think that beauty the only worthwhile aspect of life, and the only thing left to pursue. He wishes that the portrait of him which Basil is painting would grow old instead of him. "How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that-for that-I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!" (chapter 2, pg.30)
Under the influence of Lord Henry, Dorian begins an exploration of his senses. He discovers an actress, Sibyl Vane, who performs Shakespeare in a dingy theatre. Dorian approaches her, and very soon, proposes marriage. "You, who know all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to make Romeo jealous, I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!" (chapter 4, pg.63)
Sibyl, who refers to him as "Prince Charming"” … her prince, Prince Charming, was with her. She had called on Memory to remake him. She had sent her soul to search for him, and it had brought him back...“ (chapter 5, pg.70) She rushes home to tell her sceptical mother and brother. Her protective brother, James Vane, tells her that if "Prince Charming" ever harms her, he will kill him.
Dorian then invites Basil and Lord Henry to see Sibyl perform in Romeo and Juliet. Sibyl, whose only previous knowledge of love was through the love of theatre, suddenly loses her acting abilities through the experience of true love with Dorian, and performs very badly. Dorian rejects her, saying that her beauty was in her art, and if she could no longer act, he was no longer interested in her. Once he returns home, Dorian notices that Basil's portrait of him has changed. After examining the painting, Dorian realises that his wish has come true – the portrait is ageing whilst his own outward appearance remains unchanged. The painting fills him with fear and he has it locked up in an old schoolroom in his house. He decides to reconcile with Sibyl, but Lord Henry arrives in the morning to say that Sibyl has killed herself by swallowing prussic acid. Over the next eighteen years he experiments with every vice, mostly under the influence of a French novel, a present from Lord Henry.
One night before he leaves for Paris, Basil arrives to question Dorian about the rumours of his indulgences. Dorian does not deny the debauchery. He takes Basil to the portrait which is revealed to have become ugly under Dorian's sins. "I keep a diary of my life from day to day, and it never leaves the room in which it is written. I shall show it to you if you come with me." (chapter 12, pg.174) Basil is horrified and tries to make Dorian repent. In a fit of anger, Dorian blames the artist for his fate, and stabs him to death. He then blackmails an old friend into destroying the body.
Dorian becomes increasingly anxious and fearful that someone might discover his secret, and goes to an opium den to try to erase his bad feelings. James Vane happens to be nearby, and hears someone refer to Dorian as Prince Charming. He follows Dorian out and attempts to shoot him, but he is deceived when Dorian asks James to look at him in the lane, saying that he is too young to have been involved with his sister eighteen years ago. James releases Dorian, but is approached by the woman from the opium den, who chastises him for not killing Dorian and tells him that Dorian has not aged for the past eighteen years.
Whilst at dinner one night, Dorian sees Sibyl Vane's brother stalking the grounds and fears for his life. However, during a game-shooting party the next day James is accidentally shot and killed by one of the hunters. After returning to London, Dorian informs Lord Henry that he will be good from now on, and has started by not breaking the heart of his latest innocent conquest, a vicar's daughter in a country town. At his apartment, he wonders if the portrait would have begun to change back, losing its sinful appearance, now that he has changed his ways. He unveils the portrait to find that it has become worse. Seeing this he begins to question the motives behind his act, whether it was merely vanity, curiosity, or seeking new emotional excess. Deciding that only a full confession would truly absolve him, but lacking any guilt and fearing the consequences, he decides to destroy the last vestige of his conscience. "It had brought melancholy across his passions. Its mere memory had marred many moments of joy. It had been like conscience to him. Yes, it had been conscience. He would destroy it." (chapter 20, pg.253) In a fit of rage, he picks up the knife that killed Basil Hallward, and plunges it into the painting. Hearing his cry from inside the locked room, his servants send for the police, who find Dorian's body, suddenly aged and withered, besides the portrait, which has reverted to its original form; it is only through his rings that the corpse can be identified. “When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.” (chapter 20, pg.255)
Characters:
Dorian Gray - A radiantly handsome, impressionable, and wealthy young gentleman, whose portrait the artist Basil Hallward paints. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian becomes extremely concerned with the transience of his beauty and begins to pursue his own pleasure above all else. He devotes himself to having as many experiences as possible, whether moral or immoral, elegant or sordid. Dorian is described as "…wonderfully handsome, with his finely-curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes and his crisp gold hair. . . . All the candour of youth was there, as well as all of youth's passionate purity." (chapter 2, pg.17)
Lord Henry Wotton - A nobleman and a close friend of Basil Hallward. Urbane and witty, Lord Henry is perpetually armed and ready with well-phrased epigrams criticizing the moralism and hypocrisy of Victorian society. His pleasure-seeking philosophy of “new Hedonism,” which espouses garnering experiences that stimulate the senses without regard for conventional morality, plays a vital role in Dorian’s development.
Basil Hallward - An artist, and a friend of Lord Henry. Basil becomes obsessed with Dorian after meeting him at a party. He claims that Dorian possesses a beauty so rare that it has helped him realize a new kind of art; through Dorian, he finds “the lines of a fresh school.” Dorian also helps Basil realize his artistic potential, as the portrait of Dorian that Basil paints proves to be his masterpiece.
Sibyl Vane - A poor, beautiful, and talented actress with whom Dorian falls in love. Sibyl’s love for Dorian compromises her ability to act, as her experience of true love in life makes her realize the falseness of affecting emotions onstage.
James Vane - Sibyl’s brother, a sailor bound for Australia. James cares deeply for his sister and worries about her relationship with Dorian. Distrustful of his mother’s motives, he believes that Mrs. Vane’s interest in Dorian’s wealth disables her from properly protecting Sibyl. As a result, James is hesitant to leave his sister.
Mrs. Vane - Sibyl and James’s mother. Mrs. Vane is a faded actress who has consigned herself and her daughter to a tawdry theater company, the owner of which has helped her to pay her debts. She conceives of Dorian Gray as a wonderful alliance for her daughter because of his wealth; this ulterior motive, however, clouds her judgment and leaves Sibyl vulnerable.
Alan Campbell - Once an intimate friend, Alan Campbell is one of many promising young men who have severed ties with Dorian because of Dorian’s sullied reputation.
Lady Agatha - Lord Henry’s aunt. Lady Agatha is active in charity work in the London slums.
Lord Fermor - Lord Henry’s irascible uncle. Lord Fermor tells Henry the story of Dorian’s parentage.
Duchess of Monmouth - A pretty, bored young noblewoman who flirts with Dorian at his country estate.
Victoria Wotton - Lord Henry’s wife. Victoria appears only once in the novel, greeting Dorian as he waits for Lord Henry. She is described as an untidy, foolishly romantic woman with “a perfect mania for going to church.”
Victor - Dorian’s servant. Although Victor is a trustworthy servant, Dorian becomes suspicious of him and sends him out on needless errands to ensure that he does not attempt to steal a glance at Dorian’s portrait.
Narrator:
The narrator is anonymous. “From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.“ (chapter 1, pg. 8) The point of view is third person, omniscient. The narrator chronicles both the objective or external world and the subjective or internal thoughts and feelings of the characters. „Yes, perhaps Basil, too, had his secret. He would ask him and try.“ (chapter 9, pg.101)
Books, chapters:
The novel contains twenty chapters and a preface. The preface was added, along with other amendments, after the edition published in Lippincott's received criticism. Wilde used it to address these criticisms and defend the novel's reputation. It consists of a collection of statements about the role of the artist, art itself, the value of beauty, and serves as an indicator of the way in which Wilde intends the novel to be read, as well as traces of Wilde's exposure to Daoism and the writings of Zhuangzi.
Prednášky sú zverejnené v súlade s ustanovením § 33 ods. 1 písm. c) zákona č. 618/2003 v znení neskorších prepisov a teda výhradne na informačné účely. Prosíme Vás aby ste všetky porušenia autorských práv bezodkladne ohlásili administrátorovi. Podmienky používania
