Jude The Obscure

Hello! I am divya parmar. I am writing blog to complete task which is given by Dilip barad sar. I have taken the character read of female character from the Novel 'jude The Obscure' 

-About The Novel

Jude the Obscure, novel by Thomas Hardy, published in 1894–95 in an abridged form in Harper’s New Monthly as Hearts Insurgent; published in book form in 1895.

Jude the Obscure is Hardy’s last work of fiction and is also one of his most gloomily fatalistic, depicting the lives of individuals who are trapped by forces beyond their control. Jude Fawley, a poor villager, wants to enter the divinity school at Christminster (the University of Oxford). Sidetracked by Arabella Donn, an earthy country girl who pretends to be pregnant by him, Jude marries her but is later deserted. He earns a living as a stonemason at Christminster; there he falls in love with his independent-minded cousin, Sue Bridehead. Out of a sense of obligation, Sue marries the schoolmaster Phillotson, who has helped her. Unable to bear living with Phillotson, she returns to live with Jude and eventually bears his children out of wedlock. Their poverty and the weight of society’s disapproval begin to take a toll on Sue and Jude; the climax occurs when Jude’s son by Arabella hangs Sue and Jude’s children and himself. In penance, Sue returns to Phillotson and the church. Jude returns to Arabella and eventually dies miserably.

- Character Read of Sue Bridehead: 

It is easy for the modern reader to dislike Sue, even, as D. H. Lawrence did, to make her into the villain of the book. (Lawrence thought Sue represented everything that was wrong with modern women.) Jude, as well as Hardy, obviously sees her as charming, lively, intelligent, interesting, and attractive in the way that an adolescent girl is. But it is impossible not to see other sides to her personality: she is self-centered, wanting more than she is willing to give; she is intelligent but her knowledge is fashionable and her use of it is shallow; she is outspoken but afraid to suit her actions to her words; she wants to love and be loved but is morbidly afraid of her emotions and desires.

In short, she is something less than the ideal Jude sees in her; like him she is human. She is also a nineteenth-century woman who has given herself more freedom than she knows how to handle. She wants to believe that she is free to establish a new sort of relationship to men, even as she demands freedom to examine new ideas. But at the end she finds herself in the role of sinner performing penance for her misconduct. As Jude says, they were perhaps ahead of their time.

If she is not an ideal, she is the means by which J tide encounters a different view of life, one which he comes to adopt even as she flees from it. She is also one of the means by which Jude's hopes are frustrated and he is made to undergo suffering and defeat. But it is a frustration which he invites or which is given him by a power neither he nor Sue understands or seems to control.

- Character Read of Arabella Donn

Arabella is the least complex of the main characters; she is also the least ambitious, though what she wants she pursues with determination and enterprise. What she is after is simple enough: a man who will satisfy her and who will provide the comforts and some of the luxuries of life. She is attractive in an overblown way, good-humored, practical, uneducated of course but shrewd, cunning, and tenacious. She is common in her tastes and interests. She is capable of understanding a good deal in the emotional life of other people, especially women, as shown on several occasions with Sue.

Arabella never quite finds what she wants either. Jude's ambitions put her off when they are first married, but after him Cartlett is obviously a poor substitute, though she doesn't complain. She wants Jude again and gets him, but she isn't satisfied, since he is past the point of being much good to her.

That she is enterprising is demonstrated everywhere in the novel; she has a self-interest that amounts to an instinct for survival, rather than the self-interest of a Sue that is the same as pride. And, of course, she does survive intact in a way the others don't. Though at the end of the novel she is standing by Jude's coffin, Vilbert awaits her somewhere in the city. Life goes on, in short.

Word counter: 774 words

The Lady of Shalott

Hello! I am divya parmar. I am writing this blog to complete task which is given in classroom. Hear I have taken the poem 'The Lady of Shalott' by 'Alfred Tennyson'

poem: 

If you want to read the poem you can visit this link adress: click here

About the writer: 

Born on August 6, 1809, in Somersby, Lincolnshire, England, Alfred Lord Tennyson is one of the most well-loved Victorian poets. Tennyson, the fourth of twelve children, showed an early talent for writing. At the age of twelve he wrote a 6,000-line epic poem. His father, the Reverend George Tennyson, tutored his sons in classical and modern languages. In the 1820s, however, Tennyson's father began to suffer frequent mental breakdowns that were exacerbated by alcoholism. One of Tennyson's brothers had violent quarrels with his father, a second was later confined to an insane asylum, and another became an opium addict.

Tennyson escaped home in 1827 to attend Trinity College, Cambridge. In that same year, he and his brother Charles published Poems by Two Brothers. Although the poems in the book were mostly juvenilia, they attracted the attention of the "Apostles," an undergraduate literary club led by Arthur Hallam. The "Apostles" provided Tennyson, who was tremendously shy, with much needed friendship and confidence as a poet. Hallam and Tennyson became the best of friends; they toured Europe together in 1830 and again in 1832. Hallam's sudden death in 1833 greatly affected the young poet. The long elegy In Memoriam and many of Tennyson's other poems are tributes to Hallam.

In 1830, Tennyson published Poems, Chiefly Lyrical and in 1832 he published a second volume entitled simply Poems. Some reviewers condemned these books as "affected" and "obscure." Tennyson, stung by the reviews, would not publish another book for nine years. In 1836, he became engaged to Emily Sellwood. When he lost his inheritance on a bad investment in 1840, Sellwood's family called off the engagement. In 1842, however, Tennyson's Poems in two volumes was a tremendous critical and popular success. In 1850, with the publication of In Memoriam, Tennyson became one of Britain's most popular poets. He was selected Poet Laureate in succession to Wordsworth. In that same year, he married Emily Sellwood. They had two sons, Hallam and Lionel.

At the age of41, Tennyson had established himself as the most popular poet of the Victorian era. The money from his poetry (at times exceeding 10,000 pounds per year) allowed him to purchase a house in the country and to write in relative seclusion. His appearance—a large and bearded man, he regularly wore a cloak and a broad brimmed hat—enhanced his notoriety. He read his poetry with a booming voice, often compared to that of Dylan Thomas. In 1859, Tennyson published the first poems of Idylls of the Kings, which sold more than 10,000 copies in one month. In 1884, he accepted a peerage, becoming Alfred Lord Tennyson. Tennyson died on October 6, 1892, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

-About the poem: 

Part I: The poem begins with a description of a river and a road that pass through long fields of barley and rye before reaching the town of Camelot. The people of the town travel along the road and look toward an island called Shalott, which lies further down the river. The island of Shalott contains several plants and flowers, including lilies, aspens, and willows. On the island, a woman known as the Lady of Shalott is imprisoned within a building made of “four gray walls and four gray towers.”

Both “heavy barges” and light open boats sail along the edge of the river to Camelot. But has anyone seen or heard of the lady who lives on the island in the river? Only the reapers who harvest the barley hear the echo of her singing. At night, the tired reaper listens to her singing and whispers that he hears her: “ ‘Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.”

Part II: The Lady of Shalott weaves a magic, colorful web. She has heard a voice whisper that a curse will befall her if she looks down to Camelot, and she does not know what this curse would be. Thus, she concentrates solely on her weaving, never lifting her eyes.

However, as she weaves, a mirror hangs before her. In the mirror, she sees “shadows of the world,” including the highway road, which also passes through the fields, the eddies in the river, and the peasants of the town. Occasionally, she also sees a group of damsels, an abbot (church official), a young shepherd, or a page dressed in crimson. She sometimes sights a pair of knights riding by, though she has no loyal knight of her own to court her. Nonetheless, she enjoys her solitary weaving, though she expresses frustration with the world of shadows when she glimpses a funeral procession or a pair of newlyweds in the mirror.

Part III: A knight in brass armor (“brazen greaves”) comes riding through the fields of barley beside Shalott; the sun shines on his armor and makes it sparkle. As he rides, the gems on his horse’s bridle glitter like a constellation of stars, and the bells on the bridle ring. The knight hangs a bugle from his sash, and his armor makes ringing noises as he gallops alongside the remote island of Shalott.

In the “blue, unclouded weather,” the jewels on the knight’s saddle shine, making him look like a meteor in the purple sky. His forehead glows in the sunlight, and his black curly hair flows out from under his helmet. As he passes by the river, his image flashes into the Lady of Shalott’s mirror and he sings out “tirra lirra.” Upon seeing and hearing this knight, the Lady stops weaving her web and abandons her loom. The web flies out from the loom, and the mirror cracks, and the Lady announces the arrival of her doom: “The curse is come upon me.”

Part IV: As the sky breaks out in rain and storm, the Lady of Shalott descends from her tower and finds a boat. She writes the words “The Lady of Shalott” around the boat’s bow and looks downstream to Camelot like a prophet foreseeing his own misfortunes. In the evening, she lies down in the boat, and the stream carries her to Camelot.

The Lady of Shalott wears a snowy white robe and sings her last song as she sails down to Camelot. She sings until her blood freezes, her eyes darken, and she dies. When her boat sails silently into Camelot, all the knights, lords, and ladies of Camelot emerge from their halls to behold the sight. They read her name on the bow and “cross...themselves for fear.” Only the great knight Lancelot is bold enough to push aside the crowd, look closely at the dead maiden, and remark “She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace.”

word count: 1169 words 

Resources : 

poetry.com

Litchart.com

Assignment-105 History of English Literature

The Influence of French Revolution on Romanticism

Name: 

divya parmar

Paper: 

105 History of English Literature

Roll no: 05

Enrollment no: 

4069206420210024

Email id: 

divyaparmar07012@gmail.com

Batch:

 2021-2023(M. A sem 1)

Submitted to: 

S. B. Gardi Department of English, maharaja krishnakumarsinhji bhavnagar University.

The Historical Background of The Romanticism:

Romanticism is the 19th century movement that developed in Europe in response to the Industrial revolution and the disillusionment of the Enlightenment values of reason. Romanticism emerged after 1789, the year of the French Revolution that caused a relevant social change in Europe. Based on the same ideals of liberty, fraternity and legality this new movement was born, aiming to highlight the emotions and the irrational world of the artist and of nature as opposed to the prevalence of Reason and Rationality during Neoclassicism.

In England Romanticism was introduced by the first generation of British artists, active in Europe between 1760 and 1780, including James Barry, Henry Fuseli and John Hamilton Mortimer, who liked to paint subjects that departed from the rigid decorum and the historical or classical mythology of those years. The influence of some English poets, such as William Blake, and their visionary images led romantic artists to favour bizarre, pathetic or extravagant themes. A few years later the Romantics were represented by the English painters J.M.W. Turner and John Constable who excelled in picturesque landscapes and portraying the dynamic the sublime natural world evokes in the artist. In France, the main early Romantic painters were Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault, who inaugurated the movement in the country around 1820 with their paintings of the individual heroism and suffering of the French Revolution. In Germany, the romantic painters sought for more symbolic and allegorical meanings. The greatest German Romantic artist was Caspar David Friedrich.

Romanticism spread throughout Europe in the 19th century and developed as an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that embraced various arts such as literature, painting, music and history. Romanticism was also expressed in architecture through the imitation of older architectural styles. In Germany and England the mediaeval Gothic architecture was also influenced by the fantasy and style of the movement and this renewed interest led to the Gothic Revival.

The Influence of French Revolution on Romanticism:

The French Revolution is one of the remarkable events in the history of the world. It started in 1789 in France and continued till 1799. Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau taught individualism. They inspired revolution for more freedom and equality During the reign of Louis-XVI of France, there were several social inequalities among the people. The king and the nobility were enjoying all the good things of the country. But the common people were deprived of their due shares. The law of the country was not equal for all classes of people.The existing social injustices prompted the great revolution known as the French Revolution. The slogan of the revolution was "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity." The king along with his queen was overthrown by the common people. This revolution was able to create a tremendous effect on the life and literature of the people of England. Many contemporary writers went to France and joined the French Revolution. William Blake, William Wordsworth, S. T Coleridge and P. B Shelley were influenced by it to a great extent.

The French Revolution has several aspects and phases. One of the main ideas of the revolution was equality . The marks of the Revolution conceive of mankind as one brotherhood. The essential oneness of man in all countries and climates was realised and stressed .

Another idea of the revolution was that of liberty. The Revolution itself was a protest against oppression and exploitation. The old fortress of Bastille was regarded as a symbol of oppression by the Revolutionaries. It was long used by French kings as a prison. The Paris mob rose on July, 14, 1789. The fortress was their first target of attack. That was the beginning of the end of the Old Regime based on suppression of liberty. Wordsworth and Coleridge heard the crash of its towers. Both of them recorded their joy and welcomed it at the dawn of a new era. Before the Revolution, the rich and the powerful had enjoyed all the rights and privileges. They enjoyed them so long and considered them to be divine. They thought that it was their divine right to exploit the poor for their own good. After the Revolution, such thought came to be regarded as the vilest wrong. It was condemned seriously.

The Revolutionaries were also visionaries. They saw the vision of the universal regeneration of mankind. They thought of a Golden Age to come in the not too distant future. The philosophers proclaimed the right of all mankind to happiness and perfection in the Golden Age to come. Shelley's imagination caught the idea. He flung aside all social and political limitations with the true revolutionary zeal and fiery wrath. He lost himself in a song of welcome to the new era. The Fourth Act of "Prometheus Unbound" is the choral song of the universal regeneration of all mankind in love, peace and joy.

"Ode to the West Wind" is one of the greatest poems. In this ode, he represents a rebel poet. His revolutionary zeal is expressed through a series of symbols and images. He wants to destroy oldness, tyranny, suppression, oppression, orthodoxy and corruption from the world. On the contrary, he wants to preserve newness in the society. He would like to bring about a golden millennium. He is a dreamer and an idealist. He is a prophet and thinker. He makes a prophecy at the end of the poem- 

"If Winter comes,Can Spring be far behind?

His optimism consoles the human breasts with courage. It dreams of their golden and bright future. According to Matthew Arnold, "Shelley is pessimist about the present, but optimist about the future." In fact, Shelley talks about equality, liberty and fraternity in his poems. 

Wordsworth is one of those poets who greeted the French Revolution with much enthusiasm. In the prime of his life, he went to France to join the Revolution. The French Revolution excited his blood, stimulated his revolutionary spirit and throbbed his heart. Returning to England, he expressed his experience in many of his poems. He has written "French Revolution". "It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free" and other poems whose themes are the Revolution.

The French Revolution has its permanent impact upon Romantic poetry. The Romantic Period and its literary ideals are hued with the colour of the spirit of the Revolution. As a result of the stimulus provided by these powerful ideas concerning man and his rights, a great development of individuality took place. The Revolutionary ideals kindled human intellect and passion. Wealth, birth, and rank lost their age-old prestige. "A man is a man for all that."it is his right to say what is in him. The English poets, all from common stock with one exception (Keats) , caught these ideas and proclaimed them in impassioned language. Each of the great romantic poets reacted in a different way to the call of the Revolution.

Characteristics of The Romantic era:

Imagination and Creativity:

Romantic-period writers stress the imaginative and subjective side of human nature, according to Carol Scheidenhelm, English professor at Loyola University Chicago. Characters' thoughts, feelings, inner struggles, opinions, dreams, passions and hopes reign supreme. For example, in William Wordsworth's poem "The Prelude," the narrator is disappointed by his experiences crossing the Alps and imagines unlikely natural phenomenon on his journey, such as powerful waterfalls. Romantic authors don't allow facts or truths to inhibit them from expressing imaginative ideas, especially as they relate to nature.

The Beauty of Nature

Romantic literature explores the intense beauty of nature, and Romantic writers invest natural events and objects with a divine presence, suggests Lilia Melani, English professor at Brooklyn College. For example, in Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself," the poet refers to the grass as a "hieroglyphic" and "the handkerchief of the Lord." Romantic authors understood progress and the changing tide toward industrialization, but they prioritized and glamorized natural beauty over urbanization, commercialism and materialism.

Individualism and Solitude:

Romanticism appeals to individualism, rather than conventional norms or collectivism. For example, in "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, the monster is a Romantic hero because he symbolizes individuality and nonconformity. Shelley wanted readers to sympathize with the monster's plight, praising him for his simplicity, originality and distinctiveness. Even though Frankenstein lives in solitude and experiences rejection, readers see him as a genuine representation of humankind. Romantic authors valued independent thinking, creativity and self-reliance.

Romantic Love:

Characters in Romantic-era stories and poems experience deep, emotional, passionate love. They don't typically marry out of convenience or involve themselves in stagnant romantic relationships and are extremely unhappy if they choose to do so. Romantic love is intensely wistful and amorous. For example, Healthcliff -- the primary male protagonist in "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte -- tears open his deceased lover's casket so he can lie beside her. This heart-wrenching display of love and devotion, Melani suggest, demonstrates the unbridled passion of Romantic characters.

Word count: 1522

Resources: 

https://www.literaturemini.com/2018/08/impact-of-french-revolution-on-english-romantic-poets.html?m=1

https://penandthepad.com/characteristics-romanticism-english-literature-6646393.html

https://useum.org/Romanticism/History-of-Romanticism#:~

Assignment-104 Literature of victorians

Summary of Hard Times and Character Sketch of Mr. Gradgrind

Name: 

divya parmar

Paper:

 104 Literature of The Victorians

Roll no: 05

Enrollment no:

 4069206420210024

Email id: 

divyaparmar07012@gmail.com

Batch:

 2021-2023(M. A sem 1)

Submitted to: 

S. B. Gardi Department of English, maharaja krishnakumarsinhji bhavnagar University.

Summary of hard times

'Hard Time for These Time' is the Novel by Charles Dickens. During Victorian age there were lots of influence of industialism and machanism. Dehumanise become the part of the society and Charles Dickens do stairs by his work. 

Hard Times is an 1854 novel by English author Charles Dickens. Taking place in three parts named after a Biblical verse, “Sowing,” “Reaping,” and “Garnering,” it satirizes English society by picking apart the social and economic ironies of its contemporary life. The novel takes place in a fictional industrial town in Northern England called Coketown, modeled partially on Manchester. The novel is best known for its pessimism regarding the state of trade unions and the exploitation of the working class by capitalist elites.

Book 1, “Sowing,” begins from the point of view of school superintendent Mr. Gradgrind. An exacting educator, he interrogates a student named Sissy, revealing his inclination to punish students who are unable to speak strictly in facts. His two sons are named after famous thinkers, Malthus and Adam Smith, and his daughter is named Jane. Gradgrind’s friend Josiah Bounderby is a rich mill owner who constantly reflects on the fruits of his difficult childhood and unshakable entrepreneurial spirit. The two convene and decide to expel Sissy because they think she is disrupting the school. However, they learn that her father has orphaned her in the belief that she might lead a better life without his influence. Mr. Gradgrind offers Sissy, who wants to join the circus, a chance to return to school to work for his wife. She decides on school in the hope that she will find her father again.

Other characters important to the novel include Stephen Blackpool, a mill worker who struggles with a marriage to an alcoholic wife whom he cannot leave; and Mrs. Sparsit, the assistant to Bounderby who rebuffs Blackpool’s appeal to Gradgrind for advice. Louisa is proposed to by Bounderby and ambivalently accepts. Her rother Tom arrives to say farewell as she leaves for Lyon.

"Reaping” begins at Bounderby’s bank in the middle of Coketown. One of Sissy’s classmates, Bitzer, has teamed up with Mrs. Sparsit to watch over it after dark. A man appears and asks for the way to Bounderby’s, claiming he has come from London at the request of Gradgrind. He introduces himself as James Harthouse. Harthouse meets Bounderby who tries to impress him with absurd stories about his youth, boring him. However, he is infatuated with Louisa, whose brother Tom now works under Bounderby.

Later, a union meeting assembles where the activist Slackridge announces that Blackpool is a traitor for refusing to be part of the union. Bounderby scapegoats Blackpool for the uproar, firing him. Louisa and Tom meet Blackpool, giving him pity money, while Tom asks him to meet him at the bank after his shift. As he does, a robbery occurs in the bank; Blackpool is accused of being the criminal. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sparsit is suspicious of the relationship between Louisa and Harthouse, believing it is adulterous. She follows Louisa on her way to her father’s home but loses her. Louisa faints at her father’s doorstep after an incoherent statement about her repressed emotions.

"Garnering” begins at Bounderby’s London hotel. Mrs. Sparsit informs him of her mistaken finding that Louisa and Harthouse are lovers. Bounderby goes with her to Louisa’s residence at Stone Lodge, where Gradgrind insists that Louisa is not in love with Harthouse, and had merely fainted after a personal crisis. Bounderby grows angry with Mrs. Sparsit, delivering an ultimatum that Louisa return immediately lest he calls off the marriage. Louisa ignores his demand. Sissy tells Harthouse to leave Coketown forever, while Bounderby suspects that Louise and Tom are plotting against him.

One Sunday, Sissy and Rachael come upon Stephen trapped in a pit, having fallen into it on the way to Coketown. A group of locals pulls him out, but he dies after stating his innocence. The two women now suspect Tom of robbing the bank and framing Stephen. Sissy regrets having helped Tom escape to the circus. They go there and find him wearing blackface. Gradgrind appears, working with the circus owner, Sleary, to help Tom escape to Liverpool, from where he will leave the country. Blitzer valiantly arrives, throwing off the plot in an attempt to arrest Tom, inadvertently allowing Tom to escape.

At the end of the novel, Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit for her many mistakes. The narrator projects into the characters’ future lives, stating that Bounderby will die on the street of an unknown affliction. Mr. Gradgrind will become a political outcast, Tom will perish in America after apologizing to Louisa. Louisa never marries again; she will live a life of charity and kindness, and will have a happy and imaginative life with Sissy’s children. Hard Times, though almost all of its many characters face despair, suggests that the actions of individuals deeply affect even the distant futures of their lives.

Character of Mr. Gradgriend:

Thomas Gradgrind is the first character we meet in Hard Times, and one of the central figures through whom Dickens weaves a web of intricately connected plotlines and characters. Dickens introduces us to this character with a description of his most central feature: his mechanized, monotone attitude and appearance. The opening scene in the novel describes Mr. Gradgrind’s speech to a group of young students, and it is appropriate that Gradgrind physically embodies the dry, hard facts that he crams into his students’ heads. The narrator calls attention to Gradgrind’s “square coat, square legs, square shoulders,” all of which suggest Gradgrind’s unrelenting rigidity.

In the first few chapters of the novel, Mr. Gradgrind expounds his philosophy of calculating, rational self-interest. He believes that human nature can be governed by completely rational rules, and he is “ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you what it comes to.” This philosophy has brought Mr. Gradgrind much financial and social success. He has made his fortune as a hardware merchant, a trade that, appropriately, deals in hard, material reality. Later, he becomes a Member of Parliament, a position that allows him to indulge his interest in tabulating data about the people of England. Although he is not a factory owner, Mr. Gradgrind evinces the spirit of the Industrial Revolution insofar as he treats people like machines that can be reduced to a number of scientific principles.

While the narrator’s tone toward him is initially mocking and ironic, Gradgrind undergoes a significant change in the course of the novel, thereby earning the narrator’s sympathy. When Louisa confesses that she feels something important is missing in her life and that she is desperately unhappy with her marriage, Gradgrind begins to realize that his system of education may not be perfect. This intuition is confirmed when he learns that Tom has robbed Bounderby’s bank. Faced with these failures of his system, Gradgrind admits, “The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet.” His children’s problems teach him to feel love and sorrow, and Gradgrind becomes a wiser and humbler man, ultimately “making his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope and Charity.”

Character of sissy jupe:

Sissy is the daughter of a circus performer, who comes to live with the Gradgrinds as a servant when her father abandons her. She is naturally good and emotionally healthy, so the Gradgrind philosophy doesn't affect her, and she is able to take care of Louisa and to arrange Tom's escape. At the end of the novel, she is the only character who gets a happy ending of marriage and children.

Sissy is the main force for good in the novel. She is kind, caring, and loving. In the face of being abandoned by her father and then being forced to learn the Gradgrind philosophy, she never stops being the only grounding, emotionally positive force in Coketown. In a way, she is similar to another one of Dickens's favorite character types, the perfect young woman who selflessly takes care of other people. Check out Esther in Bleak House, Amy Dorrit in Little Dorrit, Lizzie in Our Mutual Friend… OK, there are a lot of them. Take our word for it.

But in this novel, Sissy is also a messenger from the land of imagination, creativity, and selfless actions. For instance, all three are combined when she cheers up her father after a hard day in the circus ring by reading him fairy tales about ogres and giants. What's more, everyone else in the novel is so weirdly screwed up, that the reader is always hugely relieved whenever Sissy appears, because finally someone normal is going to say some normal things in a normal way about all the craziness going on.

And yet Sissy, like Bounderby, is an interesting contradiction. She is obviously tied to the circus, to entertainment, to the life of the imagination. But she is also clearly one of the more realistic and matter-of-fact characters in the novel. The reason she can't deal with most of things Gradgrind's school is trying to teach her is that they are so abstract. Gradgrind's policies don't make any actual sense despite being logical (well, to a Utilitarianist, anyway). Think about when Sissy tells Louisa about her mistakes in school. They are all intersections of economic theory. They're clearly meant to be Sissy's more reasonable, human interpretations of what the world is actually like. For instance, when questioned about how very unimportant a few deaths in a thousand people are, she pretty sensibly answers that to the families of those dead people, those deaths are actually quite significant indeed.

Word count: 1695

Resources : 

https://www.booksummary.net/hard-times-charles-dickens/

https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/strikingly-direct-dickenss-introduction-of-mr-gradgrinds-character/

Assignment - 103 Literature of Romantics

Summary and of Frankenstein

Name: 

divya parmar

Paper: 

103 Literature of The Romantics

Roll no: 05

Enrollment no:

 4069206420210024

Email id: 

divyaparmar07012@gmail.com

    Batch: 

       2021-2023(M. A sem 1)

Submitted to: 

S. B. Gardi Department of English, maharaja krishnakumarsinhji bhavnager University.

Frankenstein summary: 

Frankenstein tells the story of gifted scientist Victor Frankenstein who succeeds in giving life to a being of his own creation. However, this is not the perfect specimen he imagines that it will be, but rather a hideous creature who is rejected by Victor and mankind in general. The Monster seeks its revenge through murder and terror.

Robert walton, English adventurer, undertakes an expedition to the North Pole. While on this expedition (which has been a lifelong dream of his), Walton corresponds with his sister by letter. Amid the ice floes, Walton and his crew find an extremely weary man traveling by dogsled. The man is near death, and they determine to take him aboard. Once the mysterious traveler has somewhat recovered from his weakness, Robert Walton begins to talk to him. The two strike up a friendship (Walton is very lonely and has long desired a close companion). The man is desolate, and for a long while will not talk about why he is traversing the Arctic alone. After becoming more comfortable with Walton, he decides to tell him his long-concealed story.

The speaker is victor Frankenstein, for whom the book is named. He will be the narrator for the bulk of the novel. Born into a wealthy Swiss family, Victor enjoyed an idyllic, peaceful childhood. His parents were kind, marvelous people; they are presented­ as shining examples of the goodness of the human spirit. His father, Alphonse, fell in love with his wife, caroline, when her father, a dear friend of his, passed away. Alphonse took the young orphan under his care, and as time passed they fell in love. He provides for his wife in grand style. Out of gratitude for her own good fortune, Caroline is extremely altruistic. She frequently visits the poor who live in her part of the Italian countryside. One day she chances upon the home of a family who has a beautiful foster daughter. Her name is Elizabeth Levenza. Though they are kind, the poverty of Elizabeth's foster parents makes caring for her a financial burden. Caroline falls in love with the lovely girl on sight, and adopts her into the Frankenstein family. She is close in age to Victor, and becomes the central, most beloved part of his childhood. Elizabeth is Victor's most cherished companion. Their parents encourage the children to be close in every imaginable way ­ as cousins, as brother and sister, and, in the future, as husband and wife.

Victor's childhood years pass with astonishing speed. Two more sons, William and Ernest, are born into the family. At this time, the elder Frankensteins decide to stop their constant traveling: the family finally settles in Geneva. Though Victor is something of a loner, he does have one dear friend: Henry clearver, from whom he is inseparable. The two have utterly different ambitions: Victor has developed a passion for science, while Henry longs to study the history of human struggle and endeavor. Eventually, Victor's parents decide it is time for him to begin his university studies at Ingolstadt. Before his departure, Victor's mother passes away. On her deathbed, she tells Victor and Elizabeth that it is her greatest desire to see the two of them married. Victor leaves for university, still in mourning for his mother and troubled by this separation from his loved ones.

Meanwhile, in Geneva, life goes on. Because Caroline was so generous, Elizabeth learns to be gracious as well. When she is old enough to know her mind, she extends housing and love to a young girl named Justine, whose mother dislikes her and wishes to be rid of her. Though Justine is a servant in the Frankenstein household, Elizabeth, Ernest and William regard her as a sister.

At Ingolstadt, Victor's passion for science increases exponentially. He falls into the hands of Waldeman, a chemistry professor, who excites in him ambition and the desire to achieve fame and distinction in the field of natural philosophy. Thus begins the mania that will end in destroying Victor's life. Victor spends day and night in his laboratory. He develops a consuming interest in the life principle (that is, the force which imparts life to a human being). This interest develops into an unnatural obsession, and Victor undertakes to create a human being out of pieces of the dead. He haunts cemeteries and charnel houses. He tells no one of this work, and years pass without his visiting home. Finally, his work is completed: one night, the yellow eyes of the creature finally open to stare at Victor. When Victor beholds the monstrous form of his creation (who is of a gargantuan size and a grotesque ugliness), he is horror-stricken. He flees his laboratory and seeks solace in the night. When he returns to his rooms, the creature has disappeared.

Henry joins Victor at school, and the two begin to pursue the study of languages and poetry. Victor has no desire to ever return to the natural philosophy that once ruled his life. He feels ill whenever he thinks of the monster he created. Victor and Clerval spend every available moment together in study and play; two years pass.

Then, a letter from Elizabeth arrives, bearing tragic news. Victor's younger brother, William, has been murdered in the countryside near the Frankenstein estate. On his way back to Geneva, Victor is seized by an unnamable fear. Upon arriving at his village, he staggers through the countryside in the middle of a lightning storm, wracked with grief at the loss of his brother. Suddenly, he sees a figure, far too colossal to be that of a man, illuminated in a flash of lightning: he instantly recognizes it as his grotesque creation. At that moment, he realizes that the monster is his brother's murderer.

Upon speaking to his family the next morning, Victor learns that Justine (his family's trusted maidservant and friend) has been accused of William's murder. William was wearing an antique locket at the time of his death; this bauble was found in Justine's dress the morning after the murder. Victor knows she has been framed, but cannot bring himself to say so: his tale will be dismissed as the ranting of a madman. The family refuses to believe that Justine is guilty. Elizabeth, especially, is heartbroken at the wrongful imprisonment of her cherished friend. Though Elizabeth speaks eloquently of Justine's goodness at her trial, she is found guilty and condemned to death. Justine gracefully accepts her fate. In the aftermath of the double tragedy, the Frankenstein family remains in a state of stupefied grief.

While on a solitary hike in the mountains, Victor comes face to face with the creature, who proceeds to narrate what has became of him since he fled Victor's laboratory. After wandering great distances and suffering immense cold and hunger, the monster sought shelter in an abandoned hovel. His refuge adjoined the cottage of an exiled French family: by observing them, the monster acquired language, as well as an extensive knowledge of the ways of humanity. He was greatly aided in this by the reading of three books recovered from a satchel in the snow: Milton's Paradise lost, Goethe's Sorrows of Werter, and a volume of Plutarch's Lives. The monster speaks with great eloquence and cultivation as a result of his limited but admirable education.

He developed a deep love for the noble (if impoverished) French family, and finally made an overture of friendship. Having already learned that his hideous appearance inspires fear and disgust, he spoke first to the family's elderly patriarch: this honorable old gentleman's blindness rendered him able to recognize the monster's sincerity and refinement (irrespective of his appearance). The other members of the family returned unexpectedly, however, and drove the creature from the cottage with stones.

The monster was full of sorrow, and cursed his creator and his own hideousness. He therefore determined to revenge himself upon Frankenstein, whose whereabouts he had discovered from the laboratory notebooks. Upon his arrival in Geneva, the creature encountered William, whose unspoiled boyish beauty greatly attracted him. The monster, longing for companionship, asked William to come away with him, in the hopes that the boy's youthful innocence would cause him to forgive the monster his ugliness. Instead, William struggled and called the monster a number of cruel names; upon learning that the boy was related to Victor, he strangled him in a vengeful fury. Drawn to the beauty of the locket, he took it, and fled to a nearby barn.

There, he found Justine, who had fallen into an exhausted sleep after searching all day and all night for William. The monster's heart was rent by her angelic loveliness, and he found himself full of longing for her. Suddenly, he was gripped by the agonizing realization that he would never know love. He tucked the locket into the folds of Justine's dress in an attempt to seek revenge on all withholding womankind.

The monster concludes his tale by denouncing Victor for his abandonment; he demands that Victor construct a female mate for him, so that he may no longer be so utterly alone. If Victor complies with this rather reasonable request, he promises to leave human society forever. Though he has a brief crisis of conscience, Victor agrees to the task in order to save his remaining loved ones.

He journeys to England with Clerval to learn new scientific techniques that will aid him in his hateful task. Once he has acquired the necessary data, he retreats to a dark corner of Scotland, promising to return to Henry when the job is done. Victor is nearly halfway through the work of creation when he is suddenly seized by fear. Apprehensive that the creature and his mistress will spawn yet more monsters, and thus destroy humanity, he tears the new woman to bits before the monster's very eyes. The creature emits a tortured scream. He leaves Victor with a single, most ominous promise: that he shall be with him on his wedding night.

Victor takes a small rowboat out into the center of a vast Scottish lake; there, he throws the new woman's tattered remains overboard. He falls into an exhausted sleep, and drifts for an entire day upon the open water. When he finally washes ashore, he is immediately seized and charged with murder. A bewildered Victor is taken into a dingy little room and shown the body of his beloved Henry, murdered at the creature's hands. This brings on a fever of delirium that lasts for months. His father comes to escort him home, and Victor is eventually cleared of all charges.

At home in Geneva, the family begins planning the marriage of Elizabeth and Victor. On their wedding night, Elizabeth is strangled to death in the conjugal bed. Upon hearing the news, Victor's father takes to his bed, where he promptly dies of grief.

Having lost everyone he has ever loved, Victor determines to spend the rest of his life pursuing the creature. This is precisely what the creature himself wants: now, Frankenstein will be as wretched and bereft as he is. For some time, the creator pursues his creation; he had chased him as far as the Arctic Circle when Walton rescued him. Though he cautions the sea captain against excessive ambition and curiosity, he contradictorily encourages the sailors to continue on their doomed voyage, though it will mean certain death. His reason: for glory, and for human knowledge. Finally, he is no longer able to struggle against his illness, and dies peacefully in his sleep. At the moment of his death, the creature appears: he mourns all that he has done, but maintains that he could not have done otherwise, given the magnitude of his suffering. He then flees, vowing that he will build for himself a funeral pyre and throw his despised form upon the flames.

Word count: 2025 words

Resources: 

https://www.gradesaver.com/frankenstein/study-guide/summary

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z8w7mp3/revision

Assignment-2 102 The Literature of Neo-classical

The Rape of The Lock 

Name:

 divya parmar

Paper: 

102 Literature of The Neoclassical period

Roll no: 05

Enrollment no:

 4069206420210024

Email id:

 divyaparmar07012@gmail.com

   Batch: 

        2021-2023(M. A sem 1)

Submitted to: 

S. B. Gardi Department of English, maharaja krishnakumarsinhji bhavnagar University.

The Rape of The Lock by Alexander pope: Summary and Themes 

Introduction: 

'The Rape of the Lock' written during 1712 to 1717. It is divided into 5 cantos. It is written by the great figure of English Literature Alexander pope. This poem is a mock-heroic poem. Alexander Pope's one of the important poem, The Rape of the Lock (1712), is his most original and readable work. The occasion of the poem was that a fop stole a lock of hair from a young lady, and the theft plunged two families into a quarrel which was taken up by the fashionable set of London. Pope made a mock-heroic poem on the subject, in which he satirised the fads and fashions of Queen Anne's age. Ordinarily Pope's fancy is of small range, and proceeds jerkily, like the flight of a woodpecker, from couplet to couplet; but here he attempts to soar like the eagle.

He introduces dainty aerial creatures, gnomes, sprites, sylphs to combat for the belles and fops in their trivial concerns: and herein we see a clever burlesque of the old epic poems, in which gods or goddesses entered into the serious affairs of mortal. The craftsmanship of the poem is above praise; it is not only a neatly pointed satire on eighteenth-century fashions but is one of the most graceful works in English verse.

Summary and Analysis:

The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic poem (in five cantos published in 1714) of great power. Here Pope satirises the trivial matter of snipping a lock of hair from the head of Miss Arabella Fermor by Lord Petre in a grand heroic style.

      The society darling Belinda wakes at noon and after an elaborate toilet sails up the Thames to Hampton Court. Belinda flirts with all the gentlemen aboard ship and plays the fashionable game of ombre. As Belinda pours coffee, the baron from behind cuts off a lock of the hair. Belinda cries and the ladies decide to take stem measures against the men. Tossing snuff at the Baron's nose, Belinda causes him to sneeze. At the point of a hair pin he is ordered to return the lock.

Dr. Johnson called the poem "the most attractive of all ludicrous compositions". Pope satirises the fashions and follies of the society. The didactic success of the poem is achieved by the big gap between the silliness of the episode and the deadly seriousness with which its participants regard it. The mock heroic style brings the whole quarrel into absurdity. The delicate manner and gay wit are its principal charms.

   Pope imitates the maximum elements of epic poetry - its invocation, games, battle, journey similes and descriptions and supernatural machinery sylphs and gnomes. The contrast between the grand style and the silly matter produces irony. The sylphs and gnomes give the delicacy to the poem. Indeed, the satire is full of delicate fancy and humour. Here the imaginative fervour of Pope is in evidence in his nature-descriptions

An excellent supplement to The Rape of the Lock, which pictures the superficial elegance of the age, is An Essay on Man, which reflects its philosophy. That philosophy under the general name of Deism, had fancied to abolish the Church and all revealed religion, and had set up a new-old standard of natural faith and morals.

      Of this philosophy Pope had small knowledge; but he was well acquainted with the discredited Bolingbroke, his "guide, philosopher and friend," who was a fluent exponent of the new doctrine, and from Boling broke came the general scheme of the Essay on Man. The poem appears in the form of four epistles, dealing with man's place in the universe, with his moral nature, with social and political ethics, and with the problem of happiness. These were discussed from a common-sense viewpoint, and with feet always on solid earth. As Pope declares:

Know then thyself, presume not God nto scan; The proper study of mankind is man.... Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled; The glory, jest and riddle of the world.

      Pope's most famous poem is The Rape of the Lock, first published in 1712, with a revised version published in 1714. A mock-epic, it satirises a high-society quarrel between Arabella Fermor (the "Belinda" of the poem) and Lord Petre, who had snipped a lock of hair from her head without her permission. The satirical style is tempered, however, by a genuine and almost voyeuristic interest in the "beau-monde" (fashionable world) of 18th-century English society.

Throughout the poem these two doctrines of Deism are kept in sight: that there is a God, a Mystery, who dwells apart from the world; and that man ought to be contented, even happy, in his ignorance of matters beyond his horizon: "All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, One truth is clear: whatever is, is right."

The result is rubbish, so far as philosophy is concerned, but in the heap of incongruous statements which Pope brings together are a large number of quotable lines, such as: "Honour and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part, there all the honour lies."

      It is because of such lines, the care with which the whole poem is polished, and the occasional appearance of real beauty (such as the passage beginning, "Lo, the poor Indian") that the Essay on Man occupies such a high place in eighteenth- century literature.

      It is hardly necessary to examine other works of Pope, since the poems already named give us the full measure of his strength and weakness. His talent is to formulate rules of poetry, to ist fashionable society, to make brilliant epigrams in faultless couplets. His failure to move or even to interest us greatly is due to his second-hand philosophy, his inability to feel or express emotion, his artificial life apart from nature and humanity. When we read Chaucer or Shakespeare, we have the impression that they would have been at home in any age or place, since they deal with human interests that are the same yesterday, to-day and forever; but we can hardly imagine Pope feeling at ease anywhere save in his own set and in his own generation. He is the poet of one period, which set great store by formality, and in that period alone he is supreme. 

Themes of The Rape of the Lock : 

In this mock heroic poem ALEXANDER POPE Satire on so many things like religion, class difference, society etc. In this poem we can see the theme of beauty, religion and morality, femininity, pride, love, pursuit, morality of the upper class etc.

1. Beauty:

Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” offers an ironic glance of court life in the 18th-century, highlighting societies centralized on beauty and appearance. The poem’s center of focus is around the experience of a beautiful woman, Belinda, who lost her lock of remarkable hair to a nobleman known as the Baron. As the poem starts to go along, it steadily becomes sillier and sillier and the characters collapse into a battle over the lock. Pope’s added Clarissa’s speech into the poem, which argues that women spend much time on their looks rather than thinking to become a better person and serve society. The main thesis of Pope was that this kind of self-obsession is useless and radically nonsense. However, the poem’s conclusion seems to suggest that true beauty would be of some value, but if it becomes the subject of poetry, thus it achieves a kind of literary immortality.

Pope mocks Belinda’s obsession with her beauty by comparing it with a hero which is about to go into battle. She beautifies herself all day and appears at court as insignificant. When she lost the lock of her hair, her furious reaction allowed Pope to poke fun at her vanity. Alexander Pope kept defending the intellectual and moral authority of his female characters through the wisdom of Clarissa’s speech, demonstrating female intellect and morality. He further questioned the wisdom of such a maternal system by outlining the Baron’s behavior as immoral. His fellow male courtiers are foolish. They allowed him to suggest that a maternal society is both unfair and unfounded.

It is important to note that at the time the Pope wrote the poem it was generally believed that women were both intellectual and moral inferiors of men. The Pope seems to say that vanity itself is folly, but to appreciate great art, thus it can be said that one should be careful not to underestimate the role of beauty in inspiring great works like poetry. By using a mock epic into the poem, he not only glamped up the whole scenario by giving it huge fairy dust powder, but also entertained the question of responsibility in the poem.

2. Religion and Morality:

Religion and morality is also also on of the major themes in Rape of the Lock. Pope’s poem is full of moral questions about religious culture and life in the 18th-century. The time when the poem was written, England’s last Catholic monarch had been deposed. England, once again, became a Protestant Nation. At that time, Protestant bitterly criticised Catholics, believing that Catholics had strayed from the worship of God. Pope was from a Catholic family. Throughout the poem, it is possible to detect humorous evaluation of Protestantism. Protestants made life very difficult for Catholic families to own a land or live in London. Pope parodies the hypocritical religious rhetoric of that time and suggests that Christianity is not the best lens. It cannot be used to understand the mysteries of human behaviour and self-obsession.

This has profound significance for the Pope's treatment of Christianity. At the heart of Christianity is that people are in control of their wills and actions, but God will judge people accordingly.

The Pope shows his ideology that the whole Christian religion, Catholic or Protestant, follows human actions. These actions are mysterious and their motives are opaque. Because of this, it is absurd to believe that anyone could be straightforwardly judged.

3. Theme of Immorality and Carefree Nature of Upper Class:

Pope has presented that in a matter of times the careless and casual response of high society is dangerous. He presented the society where the upper class is busy in pursuit of their own goals through trivial and vain. He portrayed that upper class people just think about themselves and obsessions. In this poem, the society displayed is one that fails to distinguish between things that matter and things that do not. What they care about is their personal life, luxuries, pomp, vanity. A life that is matchless to the ordinary and the common. He makes fun of their stupid deeds and self-obsessed attentions. He has disguised that this society just leads to immorality and distraction between humans. Alas, in the end, all upper-class people stay empty-handed.

 It is serious that a woman’s hair is cut but she has rejected a lord and such crimes are frivolities and fun of life in ease of nobility.

4. Female Desire and Passion:

Pope has made fun of women; they just think and are concerned about their beauty aids alone. He presents Belinda like an epic heroine. He symbolises that this mock-heroic epic is Belinda’s maidenhood. The Pope says that women do not have a fair chance because they are even more self-conscious and limited by society’s rules and regulations than men are. Clarissa’s speech is a fine example of this attitude and also deals with the situation ideally with a smile rather than doing anything to change it. Women, in the poem, are illustrated as being more in control of society than men are. 

It is obvious to us that if you put a bunch of attractive, well-off, and bored young men and women together. They will get attracted to one another, feel desire for one another, have dreams about one another; maybe they even fell in love. Pope depicts in The Rape of the Lock the trouble with the society is absolutely threatening and no way for anyone in it to safely express or act on his or her sexuality, desire, lust, life, feelings or love.

5. Theme of Love in Rape of the Lock:

The Pope thinks that love has no importance for the characters in this poem. For the Alexander Pope, the upper class believes only in victory and defeat. Love has no value in their unthinking minds. Belinda meets with a smile but yields and bow down to none. The poem has also symbolised Belinda’s character as a strong modern woman, who loves her beauty more than anything else. Baron loved to have an affair but without feelings and pure attention, it would be considered a victory. The society portrayed in The Rape of the Lock seems constructed to deny each other’s real feelings. For them, live-in relationships were common, but love in those relationships was counted as something odd.

6. Theme of Pride in Rape of the Lock:

Pride is also one of the major themes in the Rape of the Lock. We can say that the pride of a woman is natural to her, never sleeps, until modesty is gone. Beauty can be without pride and our dear Belinda handles it best of all. She takes care that no one would go without looking at her with a full glance. Baron decides to take revenge on Belinda by stripping her beloved lock of hair. Baron tried to get Belinda by force but not by marrying her, he tried to win over her but failed. Belinda's pride, self-respect and beauty were more important for her than anything else.  

The Rape of the Lock, reveals that the central concerns of the poem is pride, at least for women like Belinda and other social ones found in that society. The Pope wants us to recognize that if Belinda has shown all her typical female weakness, then that would be against her pride, partly it is because she has been educated and trained to act in this way. The society as a whole community is as much to blame as she is or the men free from this judgement.

Conclusion: 

Thus to conclude we can say that mock heroic epic by Alexander pope is very well satire on society. The characters of the poem makes clear satire. The theme of beauty, religion and morality, femininity, pride and love etc. portray very well in this poem by Alexander pope.

Word count : 2505 words

Resources : 

https://literaryenglish.com/major-themes-in-the-rape-of-the-lock/

https://www.englishliterature.info/2021/03/the-rape-of-lock-summary-analysis.html

Assignment of Paper no.101 Literature of Elizabethan and Restoration period

Life and Writing Style of William Shakespeare 

Name: Divya Parmar

paper: 101 Literature of The Elizabethan and Restoration Period

Roll no: 05

Enrollment no : 4069206420210024

Email id: divyaparmar07012@gmail.com

Batch : 2021-2023(M.A sem 1) 

submitted to: S. B. Gardi Department of English, maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Life of William Shakespeare : 

William Shakespeare is considered by many as the Father of English Literature. It is not just his popularity and influence on modern writers that allows for this title to be attributed to him but because of the massive contributions he made to the development of the English language. There are a multitude of words and phrases that Shakespeare invented that we still use today. 

Life of William Shakespeare : The life of William Shakespeare divided in following parts: 

Birth and childhood:

William Shakespeare was probably born on about April 23, 1564, the date that is traditionally given for his birth. He was John and Mary Shakespeare's oldest surviving child; their first two children, both girls, did not live beyond infancy. Growing up as the big brother of the family, William had three younger brothers, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund, and two younger sisters: Anne, who died at seven, and Joan.

Their father, John Shakespeare, was a leatherworker who specialised in the soft white leather used for gloves and similar items. A prosperous businessman, he married Mary Arden, of the prominent Arden family. John rose through local offices in Stratford, becoming an alderman and eventually, when William was five, the town bailiff—much like a mayor. Not long after that, however, John Shakespeare stepped back from public life; we don't know why.

Shakespeare, as the son of a leading Stratford citizen, almost certainly attended Stratford's grammar school. Like all such schools, its curriculum consisted of an intense emphasis on the Latin classics, including memorization, writing, and acting in classic Latin plays. Shakespeare most likely attended until about age 15.

Marriage and children:

A few years after he left school, in late 1582, William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. She was already expecting their first-born child, Susanna, which was a fairly common situation at the time. When they married, Anne was 26 and William was 18. Anne grew up just outside Stratford in the village of Shottery. After marrying, she spent the rest of her life in Stratford.

In early 1585, the couple had twins, Judith and Hamnet, completing the family. In the years ahead, Anne and the children lived in Stratford while Shakespeare worked in London, although we don't know when he moved there. Some later observers have suggested that this separation, and the couple's relatively few children, were signs of a strained marriage, but we do not know that, either. Someone pursuing a theatre career had no choice but to work in London, and many branches of the Shakespeares had small families.

Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet, died in 1596 at the age of 11. His older daughter Susanna later married a well-to-do Stratford doctor, John Hall. Their daughter Elizabeth, Shakespeare's first grandchild, was born in 1608. In 1616, just months before his death, Shakespeare's daughter Judith married Thomas Quiney, a Stratford vintner. The family subsequently died out, leaving no direct descendants of Shakespeare.

London theatre:

For several years after Judith and Hamnet's arrival in 1585, nothing is known for certain of Shakespeare's activities: how he earned a living, when he moved from Stratford, or how he got his start in the theatre.

Following this gap in the record, the first definite mention of Shakespeare is in 1592 as an established London actor and playwright, mocked by a contemporary as a "Shake-scene." The same writer alludes to one of Shakespeare's earliest history plays, Henry VI, Part 3, which must already have been performed. The next year, in 1593, Shakespeare published a long poem, Venus and Adonis. The first quarto editions of his early plays appeared in 1594. For more than two decades, Shakespeare had multiple roles in the London theatre as an actor, playwright, and, in time, a business partner in a major acting company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men (renamed the King's Men in 1603). Over the years, he became steadily more famous in the London theatre world; his name, which was not even listed on the first quartos of his plays, became a regular feature—clearly a selling point—on later title pages.

Final years:

Shakespeare prospered financially from his partnership in the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men), as well as from his writing and acting. He invested much of his wealth in real-estate purchases in Stratford and bought the second-largest house in town, New Place, in 1597.

Among the last plays that Shakespeare worked on was The Two Noble Kinsmen, which he wrote with a frequent collaborator, John Fletcher, most likely in 1613. He died on April 23, 1616—the traditional date of his birthday, though his precise birthdate is unknown. We also do not know the cause of his death. His brother-in-law had died a week earlier, which could imply infectious disease, but Shakespeare's health may have had a longer decline.

Writing style: 

Shakespeare used the conventional style of his age to write his early plays. The plays were written in the stylized language, though it was not always the demand of the drama/play or character. The verses of his play have extended and elaborated conceits and metaphors.

The language he used is, most of the time, rhetorical as it was written to be acted by an actor rather than to speak. However, in the play Titus Andronicus, the critics say that the grand speeches delay the action. Similarly, in the play Two Gentlemen of Verona, the verses have been described as artificial.

Depth of Character:

Shakespeare wrote about people who seemed real instead of using stock characters as was common in the theatre during his days and in the generations that came before it. This literary device allowed him to make characters like MacBeth or Hamlet sympathetic even though they did some terrible things throughout the course of the play. It is because the Bard made them seem real and human, but flawed that he was able to do this. This influence can be seen in works from the 20th and 21st centuries in both movies and plays by writers like Sam Shepard or Arthur Miller.

Additionally, Shakespeare’s work deviated from that of his contemporaries in that he wrote for every type of person who came to the theatre or read poems, not just for the upper class as was common. His plays like “Henry the 4th, part 1” featured not only a king and prince, but also one of the Bard’s most famous comedic characters, Falstaff, which brought a comedic and common touch to the play and appealed to the members of the lower class who attended the plays—often sitting in the same theatre as the nobles of the day and during the same performance.

Romeo and Juliet shows Shakespeare’s witty writing style and his creative mastery. At this point in his life (around 1595), he favoured a more theatrical structure, such as changing between comedy and tragedy to increase suspense. He expanded minor characters and developed sub-plots to amplify the story. Shakespeare also associated various poetic styles to different characters, occasionally evolving the style as the character developed.

The Soliloquy

“To be or not to be, that is the question.”

These famous lines from Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet” are the opening lines to his most famous—although not the only—soliloquy. The soliloquy or monologue was a common device that the famous playwright used to tell his stories. This monologue served to reveal the character’s thoughts—as in the “Hamlet” example—as well as to create the play’s setting or advance the plot. It serves to bring the audience into the story and let it in on secrets that the rest of the characters in the play may not know.

The narrator character in the play “Our

Town” by Thornton Wilder uses monologues extensively to let the audience in on the secrets of the town and to set the stage since typically this play features a mostly empty stage with the actors creating the settings with their words. This shows Shakespeare’s strong influence as his plays relied on the same devices and often through the soliloquy of a single character, although not always.

After completing Hamlet, Shakespeare adopted a more centred, swift, distinct, and non-repetitive writing style. He began to use more run-on lines, uneven pauses and stops, and excessive alterations in sentence length and structure. Macbeth, his darkest and most dynamic plays, shows this refined writing style in which Shakespeare used wording that sprinted from one unconnected analogy or metaphor to a different one, forcing the reader to complete the “sense” and subliminal meaning.

Iambic Pentameter:

Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter. The results were plays and sonnets that had ten syllables per line and with his plays, these lines were unrhymed. The simplest way to describe the rhythm of iambic pentameter is to liken it to a heartbeat, which means a series of stressed words, then unstressed words. In the case of the heartbeat, it would sound like bump BUMP, bump BUMP. Using an example from Shakespeare’s sonnets, this would be:

When I do count the clock that

tells the time

This style of writing lent itself to the theatricality of a play, which was as much about using the language beautifully as it was about telling a good story or furthering the plot.

A Midsummer night's dream Latin edition

While writing such classics as A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Richard II in the late 16th century, Shakespeare gradually developed and changed his writing style from the traditional form to a more self-expressive style. He progressively used his metaphors and tropes to the desires of the melodrama itself.

conclusion : 

Shakespeare was a great figure of the Elizabethan age and he was a great Dramatist, playwright, poet and actor also. Elizabethan age known as the golden age for literary development and artists development. Shakespeare also known as the 'Dramatist of the all time' means still in modern time dramas of Shakespeare are famous.  

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." by William Shakespeare.

Word count: 1720

Resources :

https://www.folger.edu/shakespeares-life

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/writingstyle.html

History of English Literature by W. J. Long

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10609/pg10609-images.html