Where God is a Traveller

 ARUNDHATHI SUBRAMANIAM :-

Arundhathi Subramaniam is the award-winning author of twelve books of poetry and prose, including the recent poetry volume, Love Without a Story, the acclaimed sacred poetry anthology, Eating God and the bestselling biography of a mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life. A well-known prose writer on Indian spirituality, she has been a long-standing arts critic, anthologist, performing arts curator and poetry editor. She is the recipient of various awards and fellowships, including the Sahitya Akademi Award, the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Zee Women’s Award for Literature, the International Piero Bigongiari Prize in Italy, the Mystic Kalinga award, the Charles Wallace, Visiting Arts and Homi Bhabha Fellowships, among others. She has written extensively on culture and spirituality, and has worked over the years as poetry editor, cultural curator and critic.Arundhathi is the author of six books of poetry,most recently Love Without a Storyand, andWhen God is a Traveller.As prose writer, her books include The Book of Buddha, the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life and most recently, Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga . As editor, her most recent book is the Penguin anthology of sacred poetry, Eating God.

Subramaniam won the award for her poetry collection ‘When God is a Traveller’ in English.Poet Arundhathi Subramaniam is among the 20 writers to receive the Sahitya Akademi Award for 2020, reported PTI. The National Academy of Letters announced the names on Friday at its annual ‘’Festival of Letters’’ event.Subramaniam won the award for her poetry collection When God is a Traveller in English.The 2020 winners’ list includes seven books of poetry, four novels, five short stories, two plays, and one each of memoirs and epic poetry in 20 Indian languages. The awards for Malayalam, Nepali, Odia and Rajasthani will be announced later, said the Akademi.Apart from Subramaniam, the others who received the award in poetry include Harish Meenakshi (Gujarati), Anamika (Hindi), RS Bhaskar (Konkani), Irungbam Deven (Manipuri), Rupchand Hansda (Santali), and Nikhileswar (Telugu).

Congress leader M Veerappa Moily also received the award for his epic poem Sri Bahubali Ahimsadigvijayam in Kannada.Other winners included novelists Nanda Khare (Marathi), Maheshchandra Sharma Gautam (Sanskrit), Imaiyam (Tamil) and Sri Hussain-ul-Haque (Urdu).The Akademi named Apurba Kumar Saikia (Assamese), Dharanidhar Owari (Bodo), Hiday Koul Bharti (Kashmiri), Kamalkant Jha (Maithili) and Gurdev Singh Rupana (Punjab) winners in the short stories section. Gian Singh (Dogri) and Jetho Lalwani (Sindhi) received the award for their plays, while Mani Shankar Mukhopadhyay (Bengali) got it for his memoir.

Videos :-

When God Is a Traveller :-

'When God is a Traveller', Subramaniam weaves metaphors, metaphors that are distinctly hers, into language that is simultaneously fluid and simple. Everydayness is woven as a metaphor rife with allusions to the deeper meanings of life. At first glance, the poems from this collection come across as beautiful but not oh-my-god-this-blew-my-mind-away. Not yet. But there is a vulnerability, an intimacy in this text which so exquisitely and slyly draws you in like a comfortable Ikat kurta until you are “drowning in verse” .

Many readings of this award-winning text exist but they highlight the religious aspect of the text. While it undoubtedly adheres to a certain religious context, it differs widely in terms of the figures of the Hindu pantheon represented, that is, the ones within the text are not really the most popular of the Hindu gods. Moreover, what Subramaniam does is that she uses these figures but challenges the canonical religious stories through her representations, as can be observed in the poem ‘Benaras’, an underappreciated piece in my opinion. She tries to highlight the personal side of one’s religious beliefs, for instance in the poem ‘How Some Hindus Find Their Personal Gods’.

Finally, what especially stands out in Subramaniam’s poetry collection is the imagery. Even when the meaning of the poems eludes the reader, the meaning-making processes remain accessible through the vivid images constructed, which interact with each other to produce meaning. In this text, the meaning is created through the words as well as through the imagery. This gives it a subliminal quality of sorts.

All in all, a delightful read. The allusions of Hinduism do leave scope for criticism. However, I think the Hinduism in the text alludes to the Bhakti tradition, a countercultural movement to the canonical tradition. But oh, the words, the language, the imagery- they entrapped me, an unsuspecting reader and I have zero regrets.

This book actually contains 22 poems from the “Deeper in Transit” section of Where I Live, thus there is substantial overlap in poems between books. Still, there are 29 new poems in this book, and it is a beautiful hardcover with very attractive cover art, making it a nice little book of poetry to carry around. The 22 duplicate poems are worth reading again, anyway. “Leapfrog” and “Catnap” were quoted in my review of Where I Live. Writing about gods, goddesses, and heroines as well as daily life, and a favourite topic of writing on writing, this little book is well worth reading and travelling along the various textual references which lead to empty space, which is the terrain of gods, goddesses, and heroines.

The book cover features a rich, blue, green, and gold peacock, feathers spread across about one-third of the cover, flowers blooming on a shrub in another corner, above darkness with the silhouette of a hunter shooting an arrow into a stag leaping in death throes. In “Eight Poems for Shakuntala,” Arundhathi Subramaniam pens some modern lines on Shakuntala whose story is told in the Mahabharata. One day King Dushyanta shot a stag with an arrow and pursued the wounded animal through the forest, when instead of his prey, he stumbled across Shakuntala and fell in love with her and married. Dushyanta gave her a ring, but left back to the palace, saying he would return later to fetch her. In the meantime, Shakuntala, pining for her absent love, accidently insulted a holy man who cursed her, that the man who gave her the ring would not remember her, unless she were to show him the ring he gave her. Time passed and Shakuntala lost the ring while crossing a river and when she arrived to court, Dushyanta did not recognize her. Heart-broken, she returned to the forest and gave birth the child she had conceived on Dushyanta’s first visit. A fisherman found the ring in the belly of a fish, presented it to the king, who then remembered his lost bride and searched for her, finding her again and meeting his son, and thus the family was reunited. Poems 3 and 5 in the series capture the longing of Shakuntala whilst waiting in the forest for Dushyanta’s return.

Subramaniam often writes about the mundane as well as the sublime in her poems, and often there ends up being a poem or two about a cat. In “I Knew a Cat” she writes of the pain of losing a beloved furry friend

In the poem which gives the book its title, “When God is a Traveller,” Subramaniam muses about “Kartikeya Subramania, my namesake.” Kartikeya Subramania is known by all those names, as well as Skanda, and is the son of Śiva, in some legends of him alone, as is born of  parvati alone, but also often considered the son of both Śiva and parvati . Subramania is the god of war who is also known as he renounces war in some legends and retreats to the mountains.

This is a theme not unrelated to Meera's: how to lose Earthly kingdoms, but gain the  self. As Subramaniam puts it, "Bhakti  is very much the spirit of these poems  a passionate, far from anti-carnal or anti-intellectual bhakti. I think we've often turned devotion into an anaemic animal."

This bhakti in her poems also reflects a transition in her life since I was last in touch with her, in the 1990s. "Earlier I thought that my public persona would be about 'the Arts', and my private self would be about 'spirituality'. A near-death experience in 1997 and an encounter with a spiritual guide in 2004 have shaped my life on a very fundamental level."

Many of the old divides blasted away, and the poems in this volume reflect that. But what about the other divide: that between the poet and the reader? "Some would view you as a high-intellectual. How accessible do you think your poems are?"

Subramaniam recalls that when she was 13, she stumbled across a volume of TS Eliot's poems. She did not understand all of it, but "I knew I was in the presence of beauty, and mystery." She didn't know who Eliot was. For the 13-year-old, he was her discovery.

"We all want mystery as much as we want clarity. There is beauty and truth in the patterning of the two. Hundred-watt radiance is fine for shopping malls, not for poems!"

Subramaniam adds that she loves Randall Jarrell's comment, that people haven't stopped reading modern poetry because it's difficult: they find it difficult because they've stopped reading it.

Thank you ,

Dilip Barad sir

                                                words :- 1525

Paper -2 Assigment

• Name : Asari Bhavyang  

• Roll no :-4

• Enrollment No:-3069206420200002

• Course:-M.A (English)Sem1

• Subject:- Literature of the Neo- classical period

• Topic:-What are the realistic elements in Pamela , or virtue rewarded ? 

• Teacher Name :- Dilip Barad sir 

• Batch :- 2020-2022

• Email :- asaribhavyang7874@gmail.com

• Department :- The Department of English

[1.]What are the realistic elements in Pamela, Or Virtue Rewarded?

Ans :-

Samuel Richardson :-

Samuel Richardson was an English writer and printer best known for three epistolary novels: Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740), Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (1748) and The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753). He printed almost 500 works during his life, including journals and magazines, working periodically with the London bookseller Andrew Millar. Richardson was 50 years old when he wrote Pamela, but of his first 50 years little is known. His ancestors were of yeoman stock. His father, also Samuel, and his mother’s father, Stephen Hall, became London tradesmen, and his father, after the death of his first wife, married Stephen’s daughter, Elizabeth, in 1682. A temporary move of the Richardsons to Derbyshire accounts for the fact that the novelist was born in Mackworth. They returned to London when Richardson was 10. He had at best what he called “only Common School-Learning.” The perceived inadequacy of his education was later to preoccupy him and some of his critics.

Richardson was bound apprentice to a London printer, John Wilde. Sometime after completing his apprenticeship he became associated with the Leakes, a printing family whose presses he eventually took over when he set up in business for himself in 1721 and married Martha Wilde, the daughter of his master. Elizabeth Leake, the sister of a prosperous bookseller of Bath, became his second wife in 1733, two years after Martha’s death. His domestic life was marked by tragedy. All six of the children from his first marriage died in infancy or childhood. By his second wife he had four daughters who survived him, but two other children died in infancy. These and other bereavements contributed to the nervous ailments of his later life.
In his professional life Richardson was hardworking and successful. With the growth in prominence of his press went his steady increase in prestige as a member, an officer, and later master, of the Stationers’ Company (the guild for those in the book trade). During the 1730s his press became known as one of the three best in London, and with prosperity he moved to a more spacious London house and leased the first of three country houses in which he entertained a circle of friends that included Dr. Johnson, the painter William Hogarth, the actors Colley Cibber and David Garrick, Edward Young, and Arthur Onslow, speaker of the House of Commons, whose influence in 1733 helped to secure for Richardson lucrative contracts for government printing that later included the journals of the House.
In this same decade he began writing in a modest way. At some point, he was commissioned to write a collection of letters that might serve as models for “country readers,” a volume that has become known as Familiar Letters on Important Occasions. Occasionally he hit upon continuing the same subject from one letter to another, and, after a letter from “a father to a daughter in service, on hearing of her master’s attempting her virtue,” he supplied the daughter’s answer. This was the germ of his novel Pamela. With a method supplied by the letter writer and a plot by a story that he remembered of an actual serving maid who preserved her virtue and was, ostensibly, rewarded by marriage, he began writing the work in November 1739 and published it as Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded a year later.

Video :-

Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded  :-

“Pamela: or virtue rewarded” is an epistolary novel written by Samuel Johnson (1689-1761) and first published in 1740. Being one of the first – if not the first – novel told entirely through fictional letters made it very new and exciting narrative concept at the time. “Pamela” is widely considered one of the first and most influential romance novels in the english language. Many later novels were named after the female protagonist; Clarrissa (Samuel Richardson, Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla (all Frances Burney), Fantomina (Eliza Haywood), Emma (Jane Austen) etc.

So, being very intrigued, I ordered the book and started reading it as soon as it arrived. I had very low expectations and certainly didn’t expect this book to be a pleasure read and I intended to read it for the analytical and historical value. Also, I was/am kind of intimidated by 18th century literature as I’m not an avid reader by any means. English isn’t my native language either so I expected to understand very little of an english text that is almost 300 years old. But I was positively surprised. The edition that I bought had modernised the 18th century grammar for the convenience of the reader though still left in some of the original spelling to give it an old-fashioned feel like instead of spelling it “show” it was spelled “shew”.
Plot-wise the book did drag sometimes for my taste. The main character reiterated the same thing again and again which becomes quite tiresome to read. Although the book definitely afforded much insight into fictional but contemporary 18th century accounts of servitude, marriage life, gender roles. Even the way that the letters were written, the formal, elegant style of letter-writing by the main character was very intriguing to me. It’s such a stark contrast to the way that we communicate today, and our messages are often brief and direct instead of long-winded, sincere and sentimental. I scribbled down some of my thoughts on topics like gender, class etc. while reading the book, and will be sharing them in this blogpost. It’s not an in-depth analysis by any means but just some observations I made.
Pamela’s lady-in-waiting dies shortly before the beginning of the story, and the household management is consequently left to her son Mr. B. The wealthy young ‘gentleman’ sexually harasses Pamela, and when she refuses his advances, he abducts her and keeps her prisoner in a mansion. In the end, Pamela ends up falling in love with Mr. B and marries him. So, essentially, it’s about a victim of sexual harassment and abduction falling in love with the perpetrator. No wonder a lot of people find this story strikingly similar to the  ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ condition.
As a modern reader, you can’t shake off the uncomfortable fact that Samuel Richardson barely acknowledges that Mr. B is a for the majority of the book a sexual predator and attempted rapist. Everything even ends well for Mr. B – he is given a happy ending and marries the underage waiting-maid he’s been trying to seduce. What kind of message does that convey? Because of this, the romantic relationship doesn’t seem very believable. But of course, putting it into historical context, 18th century notions of consent and sexual harassment were radically different than how we see it now. I think the very regressive and problematic understanding of consent and ‘virtue’ is what makes the book interesting.
Like I mentioned, this epistolary novel is one of the first of its kind and caused quite a sensation when it was first released. It was a bestseller. Samuel Richardson had popularised the epistolary novel. Pamela was a bestseller and people were apparently divided into those who were pro-pamela and anti-pamela. Some people the didactic element of the novel was a great way to teach young women about virtue and chastity, while those in the other camp thought the character of Pamela seemed deceitful and hypocritical.

 Samul Richardson may have based his first novel on the story of a real-life affair between Hannah Sturges, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a coachman, and Sir Arthur Hesilrige, Baronet of Northampton, whom she married in 1725. He certainly based the form of the novel on his own aptitude for letter-writing: always prolific in private correspondence, he had recently tried his hand at writing fictionalized letters for publication, during which effort he had conceived the idea of a series of related letters all tending to the revelation of one story. He began work on Pamela on November 10, 1739 and completed it on January 10, 1740.
Richardson’s objects in writing Pamela were moral instruction and commercial success, perhaps in that order. As he explained to his friend Aaron Hill in a famous letter, his goal was to divert young readers from vapid romances by creating “a new Species of Writing that might possibly turn young People into a Course of Reading different from the Pomp and Parade of Romance-writing, and dismissing the improbable and marvellous, with which Novels generally abound, might tend to promote the Cause of Religion and Virtue.” The nature of this “new species of writing” may seem obscure at first. Richardson felt that the best vehicle for a moral lesson was an exemplary character; he also felt that the most effective presentation of an exemplary character was a realistic presentation that evoked the reader’s sympathy and identification, as opposed to an ideal one that rendered the character as inhumanly perfect. For the project of rendering an exemplary character in a realistic manner the appropriate form, he reasoned, was the novel, providing as it did ample scope in which to flesh out psychological complexities and mix dominant virtues with smaller but significant flaws. In itself, Richardson’s idea of combining instruction with entertainment was, of course, hardly original; then as now, it was a highly traditional argument for the moral utility of art. Richardson’s innovation was a generic one consisting, in part, of his producing a respectable and morally elevating work in the despised genre of the novel, hitherto the province of only the cheapest diversions.
Pamela achieved extraordinary popularity among three groups whose tastes do not often coincide: the public, the litterateurs, and the professional moralists. It went through five editions in its first year and inspired a market for Pamela-themed memorabilia, which took such forms as paintings, playing cards, and ladies’ fans. Pre-publication hype doubtless encouraged sales, as the novel’s backers secured and publicized endorsements by such major literary figures as Alexander Pope, and there is some indication that Richardson, with his many connections in the London literary world, may have incentivized some of this “buzz” under the table. The novel had a legitimate claim to its wide audience, however: in addition to its moral utility, there was the aesthetic achievement of Richardson’s narrative method, quite avant-garde at the time. The epistolary form presented Pamela’s first-person jottings directly to the reader, dispensing with the imperious traditional narrator and allowing unmediated access to her personality and perceptions. The intimacy and realism of this method, which Richardson called “writing to the moment,” combined with the liveliness of Pamela’s language and character, proved highly attractive.
Not all were won over, however, and part of what makes the publication of Pamela such a phenomenon in English literary history is the controversy that greeted it and the legion of detractors and parodists it inspired. A Danish observer went so far as to say that England seemed divided.

Reference :-

1. Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Pamela". Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 Mar. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pamela-novel-by-Richardson. Accessed 15 February 2021.
2. Sale, William Merritt. "Samuel Richardson". Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Jun. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Richardson. Accessed 15 February 2021.
3. Yost, Julia. Wang, Bella ed. "Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded Bibliography". GradeSaver, 8 August 2010 Web. 15 Feburuary 2021

 

Thank you 

Dilip Barad sir

words :-1921

Hard times

Charles Dickens :- (1812 – 70)

 He was born in Portsmouth in 1812.  When he was 12, his father was imprisoned for debt, so he was sent to work in a factory, an experience which influenced his works.  Later, he began his career first as a parliamentary reporter and then as a journalist. In 1836 he adopted the pen name “Boz” and he published Sketches by Boz, a collection of articles describing London’s people and scenes. Soon after he published The Pickwick papers, which revealed his humoristic and satirical qualities.  He then started his career as a novelist. The protagonists of his autobiographical novels Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit became symbols of an exploited childhood. Other novels, such as Bleak House, Hard Times, Great Expectations deal with social issues and the consitions of the working classes. He died in London in 1870 and is buried in Westminster Abbey. most of his novels are set in London. He knew well the social scene of London, and was critical against the impact of industrialism to society.

He described the urban slums using Gothic colours, and emphasized their cruelty. With his novels Dickens made the wealthier classes aware of the condition of the working classes. children were very often the moral teachers of the adults, and conveyed the moral message of the novel. Children of working class families were usually sent to work and exploited by adults. Others became criminals. Dickens was obsessed with children and he presents them as either innocent or corrupted by adults.

Hard time :-

A social protest novel of the nineteenth century, “Hard Times” portrays the tough times that the Hand class and other classes of the British society had to face.Dickens divide the book into three parts of which the two parts “Sowing” and “Reaping” represent the most significant reality of life that we reap what we sow in life. The third book “Garnering” is paraphrased from the book of Ruth in which Ruth garnered grain in the field of Boaz.The Nineteenth Century was the age of transformation when the medieval society was into the modern society. The 19th Century was the age when science progressed the most, it was an era of modernization, industrialization, change in government and literature and most importantly, 19th Century was the time when classes such as the hand class struggled to obtain its desired status in the society.
It was for the first time in history that the suppressed men raised their voices against the government thus rising into power and prosperity. The literature of the period is romantic but what is remarkable about the period and what is beautifully portrayed by the novel by Dickens is the struggle of the oppressed classes of the society and also the ruthlessness of the oppressors. The oppressors sacrificed their spiritualistitc and materialistic values in oppressing the weak sections of the society. The struggle of the downtrodden is the theme of the novel and dickens has beautifully portrayed the theme. The readers are mesmerized by the writing and can really feel the pain of these oppressed classes when they read about their conditions. There was a time when false religious dogmas prevailed in the society and thus class distinction was considered to be obvious.

What was made clear in this age of transformation was the fact that it is the birth right of every human being to enjoy an equal status in the society and he or she is equal in the eyes of law. People overthrew the capitalist system and equality was now established. The poor people are forced to work for low wages because they have no other means of livelihood. The novel “Hard Times” has a deep hidden meaning. Each and every human being has to face struggle at one point of his or her life. If that individual decides to give up a miserable life awaits and if that individual decides to fight the adverse circumstances, victory is sure to happen. Dickens in a way motivates the readers not to give up at any point of time to succeed in life.

session video:-

•  Education :-

The contemporary education trend does not revolves around classroom and homework. It focuses more on academic boosting of social and moral experiences. As the academic assessment of every child is requisite part of evaluation. It helps the educational professional to learn and understand the needs of every child.
Neither the education about the sciences we study today in a great detail is imparted in the traditional education system. Traditional education system basically included the knowledge about customs, traditions, and religions. That is why it is called traditional education. Modern Education is very different from the traditional education. Traditional education system basically included the knowledge about customs, traditions, and religions. That is why it is called traditional education. Modern Education is very different from the traditional education. The education which is taught in the schools today is the modern education. If we expect the modern education system to change the world, we have to stop seeing the curriculum alone as the core differentiator. As soon as they graduate, the students will be judged by how well they can turn what they have learned into useful practice. That’s where we should focus our attention.

The story is set in the fictitious town of Coketown. Coketown is used to represent a typical industrial town in the Northern area of England; many agree Coketown has certain similarities to Preston and Manchester but as Dickens had never been there he did not wish to offend them in the novel. Although the industrial revolution did many things to boost the economy of Britain, Dickens reveals the darker side the industrial revolution that consisted of slums, poverty and a monotonous and lifeless existence for many people. Mr Gradgrind's model school in Hard Times is not a real school. Dickens's generalized all the things, he thought were wrong with the education system into this school to show is contempt for the education system.

Marriage :-

        Anyone who’s been married for more than a few months can tell you it’s tough. And it seems to have gotten tougher, considering how divorce rates have climbed over the last few decades. In our book, Making Marriage Work, we reviewed the findings of hundreds of research studies to try to understand whether and in what ways marriage has changed.The evidence suggests that marriage has indeed gotten harder, and we posit that there are a number of reasons why. One has to do with the adoption of no-fault laws in the late 1960s, which, in a nutshell, established that breaking up a marriage is acceptable and the reasons for doing so are nobody’s business. In effect, these laws gave individuals greater freedom to choose our own paths; they also helped to remove divorce’s negative stigma, allowing couples to retain their good standing in the community. Then there’s the movement toward gender equality. With more and better employment opportunities, women have more control over their lives and no longer need a husband for financial security. They can wait longer to get married and don’t have to stay married if they’re not satisfied. Some people may not work as hard to fix a marriage because they're better equipped to make it on their own. Gender equality has also affected the balance of power. Prior to the 1960s, men held all the power in almost every marriage, but that’s not the case today. In some marriages, there can actually be an on-going power struggle, as one party tries to stay in control and the other fights for equality. Additionally, because both partners have an equal say in decisions, there may be more occasions to argue. In heterosexual marriages, the roles held by men and women are no longer as clearly delineated. In the past, husbands and wives held specific roles. One was the breadwinner and the other was responsible for maintaining the home, raising children, and fulfilling other social and family duties. Because each partner filled a functionally different role, couples may have felt they had very useful reasons for staying together. Today there’s a lot of overlap as to who brings home the bacon and who manages the household. The blurring of roles means there’s less inter-dependency and that can weaken the need to stay together. We can add to the mix more liberal attitudes toward sex and a rise in secularism. As marriage is no longer a prerequisite for sex for many people, marriage has lost one of its more popular and exclusive benefits. Religious beliefs and doctrines made divorce untenable in the past. Even today, couples who are more connected to their religion are less prone to get divorced. But many more couples today are less likely to stay together simply because their church tells them they have to. Couples from earlier generations may have also thought differently about marriage. Many regarded the institution as sacred and their marriage as permanent, and they stayed married regardless of how each partner felt about the other. Their happiness and personal needs were sublimated to the needs of the marriage. Couples struggled with many of the same problems but they did so in silence because it was more important to keep the family intact. In contrast, many argue that people today spend more time thinking about themselves and their personal needs. While paying attention to our psychological needs is a good thing, it can work against marriage. We might put our personal interests ahead of those of our relationship. If we then feel our interests are threatened or unsatisfied, we may be more inclined to think the relationship isn’t working rather than make adjustments in our thinking so that it works better. When things don’t go as we want or expect, we’re more prone to throw in the towel.

Marriage and Divorce in Dickens’ Hard Times: A Statement on the Religious Morals of 19th Century British Society The Victorian era in England gave birth to the first real industrial society the world had ever seen. With the rise of industry came large cities, an expanded working class population and the rapid rise of imperialism. Although England was progressing towards a more powerful place in the world, its citizens seemed to be drifting in the opposite direction. Oppressive laws and working conditions set clear boundaries between classes in England. The most oppressive social and state laws were those regarding to marriages and divorces. Just as the people of England felt trapped in the unequal social structure of England, the same is true for those trapped in unwanted marita From the beginning of the novel, Mr. Gradgrind is described as, “A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over” l relations. Marriages were regulated by society and the government, therefore, making them more of a materialistic union than a holy or spiritual one. The marriages in Hard Times represent “industrial society” in England during the Victorian era and portray a separation of society from religion.

 

Industrialism :-

During the information age, the phenomenon is that the digital industry creates a knowledge-based society surrounded by a high-tech global economy that spans over its influence on how the manufacturing throughput and the service sector operate in an efficient and convenient way. In a commercialized society, the information industry is able to allow individuals to explore their personalized needs, therefore simplifying the procedure of making decisions for transactions and significantly lowering costs for both the producers and buyers. This is accepted overwhelmingly by participants throughout the entire economic activities for efficacy purposes, and new economic incentives would then be indigenously encouraged, such as the knowledge economy.
The impact of digital age on the social life of the society today is connected with one’s position in the society, his social class and also his social background, nowadays, there are so many changes in the social aspect of our lives.

A very good example of this is festival, changes in tradition and also in the mood of dressing, all this became possible because of the impact of digital age we have today. If we look around us today, it’s hard to find a person that has not added anything new to his traditional attires , what I mean here is, for instance, for the Hausa’s and also the Fulani’s, there were not know for wearing jeans and tops, but now it has become a common thing based on socialization. Before, many do not believe in going to school especially the Fulani’s, they only believe in rearing cattle’s while the women among them are to stay at home, but now, everyone wants to be in school, illiteracy is darkness, people don’t believe in staying at home doing nothing anymore, for at least even when they lack the opportunity or don’t have the means of going school or seeking for job opportunity, they will prepare engaging themselves in a small business just for them to earn something for a living. There are so many changes due to the impact digital age on the social life of our societies today.

Thank you

Dilip Barad sir

words :- 2218

Jude the Obscure as Hardy’s indictment on Christianity’

 Thomas Hardy :-

Thomas Hardy was raised in a small, rural village in Dorset. His father was a stonemason and his mother educated Hardy until age eight. His family was too poor to pay for university, so Hardy became an architect’s apprentice until he decided to focus on writing. His stories are generally set in the Dorset area, which he translated into the fictional county of Wessex. In 1874 he married Emma Gifford. The two were then estranged, but her death in 1912 had a profound effect on Hardy. In 1914 he married his secretary, Florence Dugdale. Hardy’s first novels were unsuccessful, and even his later works were controversial and censored. Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure drew such an outcry for their sexual frankness and social criticism that Hardy stopped writing fiction, focusing instead on his poetry. Hardy died at the age of eighty-seven.

1840 Born at Higher Bockhampton near Dorchester; His father ran a masonry business and he also played the music for a local church. His mother a cook and servantmaid.1848 Hardy attends village school at Bockhampton. His mother encourages him to read his first books and he visits London for the first time. Thomas was a sensitive and intelligent child; he progressed diligently through his studies.1849-56 His mother was determined he should be well-educated and sent him to school at Dorchester to learn Latin. Begins learning French and German. 1856-61 Apprenticed to one of his father´s employers. Started writing verse. His first poem Domicilium. He reads Darwin´s Origin of Species (1859). His morbid curiosity led him to witness several hangings, a common sight in Dorchester. The most memorable to Hardy was that of Martha Brown, who killed her husband in a crime of passion. This memory inspired Tess. 1862-7 Moves to London where he worked for an ecclesiastical architect. Attends operas and theatre, explores London, visits National Gallery almost daily. Read extensively: Spencer, Huxley, J.S. Mills, Shelley, Browninf, Scott and Swinburne. In 1865 publishes his first article, How I Built Myself a House at the Chambers´Journal. Begins sending poems to periodicals but they are rejected. Became agnostic. 1867-70 Returns to Dorchester. Begins his first novel  The Poor Man and the Lady. 

Jude the Obscure:-

Jude the Obscure takes place in England during the Victorian era, a period that lasted from 1837-1901. English society during this time was marked by sexual repression and a conservative worldview that emphasized the institution of marriage and the family unit, which Hardy criticized. Murders like those of Jack the Ripper in 1888 began desensitizing the public to violence, leading to scenes like Little Father Time’s murder-suicide. The town of Christminster is based on the university town of Oxford, whose colleges were only beginning to accept working-class students during Hardy’s time  Hardy himself was unable to afford a university education.

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Jude the Obscure as Hardy’s indictment on Christianity’ :-

Christminster is a fictional university town based on Oxford, England. Jude first learns of it when he is eleven years old and his teacher, Mr. Phillotson, leaves Marygreen to go there. Christminster then becomes the young Jude’s goal in life, and he idealizes the place as “The New Jerusalem” and a “city of light,” watching its faint, distant glow from the roof of the Brown House. When Jude finally makes it to Christminster, he imagines the shades of dead philosophers speaking to him in the streets. In the first part of the novel Christminster symbolizes Jude’s hope and idealism, and his desire to make a better life for himself despite his low social class.

The reality of Christminster soon strikes Jude (and the reader), however, as he learns that despite his hard work and natural intelligence, the colleges are only open to the upper classes. Phillotson, his predecessor, has also failed and settled back into his earlier role as a schoolmaster, and Jude likewise remains a stonemason. In this way Christminster comes to symbolize Jude’s failed hopes and dreams, and Hardy’s pessimistic worldview. After years of moving about nomadically, Jude returns to Christminster for one last attempt to achieve his goals. It takes him a long time to realize it, but he finally gives up Christminster as a hopeless dream. He recognizes that it would take “two or three generations” to do what he tried to do in one generation – raise his social class through his own hard work and intelligence. Because of the tragedy of Jude’s situation, Christminster ultimately becomes one of Hardy’s greatest critiques of the unfairness inherent in his society.

Jude the Obscure takes place in Wessex, England in the Victorian era. Jude Fawley is a poor orphan raised by his great-aunt, but he dreams of studying at the university in Christminster, a nearby town. He is inspired in this dream by his old teacher, Richard Phillotson, who left with similar ambitions when Jude was a child. Jude starts teaching himself classical languages and learning stonemasonry work, but he is distracted from his studies by Arabella Donn, a vain, sensual young woman. Arabella pretends she is pregnant and tricks the honorable Jude into marrying her, but the marriage soon falls apart. Arabella moves to Australia and Jude finally makes his way to Christminster. At first he is enthralled by the place but he soon finds he cannot enter the university without wealth and social stature.
While in Christminster Jude meets his intelligent, religiously agnostic cousin Sue Bridehead. He immediately falls in love with her, though he tries to resist his feelings. He gets Sue a job with Phillotson, who has also failed to be accepted at a university and is a schoolteacher again. Sue soon gets engaged to Phillotson, but her relationship with Jude also grows stronger and the two cousins become very close. Jude loves Sue passionately but Sue’s own feelings are less clear. Sue is stung to learn about Jude’s previous marriage, however, so she goes through with her marriage to Phillotson.

Jude gets depressed and turns to alcohol, and he is reunited with Arabella for one night. Jude and Sue keep meeting and Sue reveals that she is unhappy in her marriage, as she is repulsed by Phillotson’s physical presence. Soon afterward Sue admits her feelings for Jude to Phillotson, and asks him if they can live apart. Phillotson agrees to let Sue leave him for Jude, but he suffers for this decision, which seems morally right to him, by losing his job and his social respectability.

Jude and Sue are united, but they live platonically for a while and they agree not to get married. Arabella reveals to Jude that she had a son by him while in Australia. Jude and Sue agree to take the unwanted boy in, and he arrives soon after. He has no name but is called “Little Father Time,” and is a gloomy, world-weary child. Jude and Sue begin to lose work and respect because of their unmarried status, but they find they can’t go through with the wedding ceremony. They become lovers and begin to lead a nomadic life, having two children of their own and caring for Little Father Time.
Jude falls ill for a while, and when he recovers he decides he wants to move back to Christminster and pursue his old dream. The family has trouble finding a room because they are unmarried and have children, and Jude has to stay separately from Sue and the children. That night Sue and Little Father Time both grow depressed, and the boy decides that he and the other children are the cause of the family’s troubles. The next morning Jude and Sue find that Little Father Time has hanged himself and the other two children.

Sue breaks down at this tragedy and grows obsessively religious, believing that she is being punished for her disbelief and sexual liberties. She leaves Jude and returns to Phillotson, despite having no change in her feelings for either. Jude is soon tricked into marrying Arabella again, and both marriages are unhappy. Jude gets sick and visits Sue one last time in the rain. They kiss but then Sue sends Jude away for the last time. As “penance” for this kiss Sue begins a sexual relationship with Phillotson. Jude dies soon after, and Arabella immediately starts looking for a new husband.

Conclusion

jude the Obscure, like the characters within its pages, was ahead of its time. Its sympathetic portrayal of Jude, a young working-class man struggling against entrenched attitudes; of Arabella, attempting to secure a stable future for herself via a cynical approach to marriage; and of Sue Bridehead whose free-spirited independence is ultimately broken by the unyielding nature of conventional opinion; all of these look ahead to the work of D H Lawrence, particularly Sons and Lovers (1913) and Women in Love (1920). The clash between spirit and flesh, together with society’s attitudes towards class, had been common themes in Hardy’s work before but in Jude the Obscure they find their most impassioned analysis. As Jude comments at the end of the novel regarding his unmarried relationship with Sue, which only brought condemnation: ‘As for Sue and me when we were at our best, long ago  when our minds were clear, and our love of truth fearless  the time was not ripe for us! Our ideas were fifty years too soon to be any good to us. And so the resistance they met with brought reaction in her, and recklessness and ruin in me!’. Jude and Sue fail in their ambitions and their pursuit of happiness not through their own lack of desire and ambition, but through the unyielding attitudes of the time.

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Dilip Barad

Words :-1611

Alfred Lord Tennyson

 

Alfred Lord Tennyson:-

Alfred Tennyson was born August 6th, 1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire, fourth of twelve children of George and Elizabeth  Tennyson. The poet's grandfather had violated tradition by making his younger son, Charles, his heir, and arranging for the poet's father to enter the ministry.  The contrast of his own family's relatively straitened circumstances to the great wealth of his aunt Elizabeth Russell and uncle Charles Tennyson made Tennyson feel particularly impoverished and led him to worry about money all his life.

He also had a lifelong fear of mental illness, for several men in his family had a mild form of epilepsy, which was then thought a shameful disease. His father and brother Arthur made their cases worse by excessive drinking. His brother Edward had to be confined in a mental institution after 1833, and he himself spent a few weeks under doctors' care in 1843. In the late twenties his father's ,physical, and mental condition worsened, and he   became paranoid, abusive, and violent.

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• Early Life And Work :-

Tennyson was the fourth of 12 children, born into an old Lincolnshire family, his father a rector. Alfred, with two of his brothers, Frederick and Charles, was sent in 1815 to Louth grammar school where he was unhappy. He left in 1820, but, though home conditions were difficult, his father managed to give him a wide literary education. Alfred was precocious, and before his teens he had composed in the styles of Alexander Pope, Sir Walter Scott, and John Milton. To his youth also belongs The Devil and the Lady , which shows an astonishing understanding of Elizabethan dramatic verse. Lord Byron was a dominant influence on the young Tennyson.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, detail of an oil painting by Samuel Laurence, c. 1840; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London
At the lonely rectory in Somersby the children were thrown upon their own resources. All writers on Tennyson emphasize the influence of the Lincolnshire countryside on his poetry: the plain, the sea about his home, “the sand-built ridge of heaped hills that mound the sea,” and “the waste enormous marsh.”
In 1824 the health of Tennyson’s father began to break down, and he took refuge in drink. Alfred, though depressed by unhappiness at home, continued to write, collaborating with Frederick and Charles in Poems by Two Brothers . His contributions are mostly in fashionable styles of the day.
In 1831 Tennyson’s father died. Alfred’s misery was increased by his grandfather’s discovery of his father’s debts. He left Cambridge without taking a degree, and his grandfather made financial arrangements for the family. In the same year, Hallam published a eulogistic article on Poems, Chiefly Lyrical in The Englishman’s Magazine. He went to Somersby in 1832 as the accepted suitor of Emily.
In 1832 Tennyson published another volume of his poems , including “The Lotos-Eaters,” “The Palace of Art,” and “The Lady of Shalott.” Among them was a satirical epigram on the critic Christopher North , who had attacked Poems, Chiefly Lyrical in Blackwood’s Magazine. Tennyson’s sally prompted a scathing attack on his new volume in the Quarterly Review. The attacks distressed Tennyson, but he continued to revise his old poems and compose new ones.
In 1833 Hallam’s engagement was recognized by his family, but while on a visit to Vienna in September he died suddenly. The shock to Tennyson was severe. It came at a depressing time; three of his brothers, Edward, Charles, and Septimus, were suffering from mental illness, and the bad reception of his own work added to the gloom. Yet it was in this period that he wrote some of his most characteristic work: “The Two Voices” , “Ulysses,” “St. Simeon Stylites,” and, probably, the first draft of “Morte d’Arthur.” To this period also belong some of the poems that became constituent parts of In Memoriam, celebrating Hallam’s death, and lyrics later worked into Maud.
In May 1836 his brother Charles married Louisa Sellwood of Horncastle, and at the wedding Alfred fell in love with her sister Emily. For some years the lovers corresponded, but Emily’s father disapproved of Tennyson because of his bohemianism, addiction to port and tobacco, and liberal religious views; and in 1840 he forbade the correspondence. Meanwhile the Tennysons had left Somersby and were living a rather wandering life nearer London. It was in this period that Tennyson made friends with many famous men, including the politician William Ewart Gladstone, the historian Thomas Carlyle, and the poet Walter Savage Landor.
NOTABLE WORKS :-

• “The Princess”

• “Ulysses”

• “Mariana”

• “In Memoriam”

• “Idylls of the King”

• “Maud”

• “Locksley Hall”

• “The Lotos-Eaters”

• “Enoch Arden”

• “The Lady of Shalott”

Major Literary Work:-

In 1842 Tennyson published Poems, in two volumes, one containing a revised selection from the volumes of 1830 and 1832, the other, new poems. The new poems included “Morte d’Arthur,” “The Two Voices,” “Locksley Hall,” and “The Vision of Sin” and other poems that reveal a strange naïveté, such as “The May Queen,” “Lady Clara Vere de Vere,” and “The Lord of Burleigh.” The new volume was not on the whole well received. But the grant to him at this time, by the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, of a pension of 200 helped to alleviate his financial worries. In 1847 he published his first long poem, The Princess, a singular anti-feminist fantasia.
the year 1850 marked a turning point. tennyson resumed his correspondence with emily sellwood, and their engagement was renewed and followed by marriage. meanwhile, edward moxon offered to publish the elegies on hallam that tennyson had been composing over the years. they appeared, at first anonymously, as in memoriam , which had a great success with both reviewers and the public, won him the friendship of queen victoria, and helped bring about, in the same year, his appointment as poet laureate.
in memoriam is a vast poem of 131 sections of varying length, with a prologue and epilogue. inspired by the grief tennyson felt at the untimely death of his friend hallam, the poem touches on many intellectual issues of the victorian age as the author searches for the meaning of life and death and tries to come to terms with his sense of loss. most notably, in memoriam reflects the struggle to reconcile traditional religious faith and belief in immortality with the emerging theories of evolution and modern geology. the verses show the development over three years of the poet’s acceptance and understanding of his friend’s death and conclude with an epilogue, a happy marriage song on the occasion of the wedding of tennyson’s sister cecilia.
after his marriage, which was happy, tennyson’s life became more secure and outwardly uneventful. there were two sons: hallam and lionel. the times of wandering and unsettlement ended in 1853, when the tennysons took a house, farringford, in the isle of wight. tennyson was to spend most of the rest of his life there and at aldworth.
tennyson’s position as the national poet was confirmed by his ode on the death of the duke of wellington though some critics at first thought it disappointing and the famous poem on the charge of the light brigade at balaklava, published in 1855 in maud and other poems. maud itself, a strange and turbulent “monodrama,” provoked a storm of protest; many of the poet’s admirers were shocked by the morbidity, hysteria, and bellicosity of the hero. yet maud was tennyson’s favourite among his poems.
a project that tennyson had long considered at last issued in idylls of the king , a series of 12 connected poems broadly surveying the legend of king arthur from his falling in love with guinevere to the ultimate ruin of his kingdom. the poems concentrate on the introduction of evil to camelot because of the adulterous love of lancelot and queen guinevere, and on the consequent fading of the hope that had at first infused the round table fellowship. idylls of the king had an immediate success, and tennyson, who loathed publicity, had now acquired a sometimes embarrassing public fame. the enoch arden volume of 1864 perhaps represents the peak of his popularity. new arthurian idylls were published in the holy grail, and other poems in 1869 . these were again well received, though some readers were beginning to show discomfort at the “victorian” moral atmosphere that tennyson had introduced into his source material from sir thomas malory.
in 1874 tennyson decided to try his hand at poetic drama. queen mary appeared in 1875, and an abridged version was produced at the lyceum in 1876 with only moderate success. it was followed by harold , becket , and the “village tragedy” the promise of may, which proved a failure at the globe in november 1882. this play his only prose work shows tennyson’s growing despondency and resentment at the religious, moral, and political tendencies of the age. he had already caused some sensation by publishing a poem called “despair” in the nineteenth century . a more positive indication of tennyson’s later beliefs appears in “the ancient sage,” published in tiresias and other poems (1885). here the poet records his intimations of a life before and beyond this life.
tennyson accepted a peerage in 1884. in 1886 he published a new volume containing “locksley hall sixty years after,” consisting mainly of imprecations against modern decadence and liberalism and a retraction of the earlier poem’s belief in inevitable human progress.
in 1889 tennyson wrote the famous short poem “crossing the bar,” during the crossing to the isle of wight. in the same year he published demeter and other poems, which contains the charming retrospective “to mary boyle,” “the progress of spring,” a fine lyric written much earlier and rediscovered, and “merlin and the gleam,” an allegorical summing-up of his poetic career. in 1892 his play the foresters was successfully produced in new york city. despite ill health, he was able to correct the proofs of his last volume, the death of oenone, akbar’s dream, and other poems.
alfred, lord tennyson, was the leading poet of the victorian age in england and by the mid-19th century had come to occupy a position similar to that of alexander pope in the 18th. tennyson was a consummate poetic artist, consolidating and refining the traditions bequeathed to him by his predecessors in the romantic movement especially wordsworth, byron, and keats. his poetry is remarkable for its metrical variety, rich descriptive imagery, and exquisite verbal melodies. but tennyson was also regarded as the preeminent spokesman for the educated middle-class englishman, in moral and religious outlook and in political and social consciousness no less than in matters of taste and sentiment. his poetry dealt often with the doubts and difficulties of an age in which established christian faith and traditional assumptions about man’s nature and destiny were increasingly called into question by science and modern progress. his poetry dealt with these misgivings, moreover, as the intimate personal problems of a sensitive and troubled individual inclined to melancholy. yet through his poetic mastery the spaciousness and nobility of his best verse, its classical aptness of phrase, its distinctive harmony he conveyed to sympathetic readers a feeling of implicit reassurance, even serenity. tennyson may be seen as the first great english poet to be fully aware of the new picture of man’s place in the universe revealed by modern science. while the contemplation of this unprecedented human situation sometimes evoked his fears and forebodings, it also gave him a larger imaginative range than most of the poets of his time and added a greater depth and resonance to his art.
tennyson’s ascendancy among victorian poets began to be questioned even during his lifetime, however, when robert browning and algernon charles swinburne were serious rivals. and 20th-century criticism, influenced by the rise of a new school of poetry headed by t.s. eliot , proposed some drastic devaluations of his work. undoubtedly, much in tennyson that appealed to his contemporaries has ceased to appeal to many readers today. he can be mawkish and banal, pompous and orotund, offering little more than the mellifluous versifying of shallow or confused thoughts. the rediscovery of such earlier poets as john donne or gerard manley hopkins  together with the widespread acceptance of eliot and w.b. yeats as the leading modern poets, opened the ears of readers to a very different, and perhaps more varied, poetic music. a more balanced estimate of tennyson has begun to prevail, however, with the recognition of the enduring greatness of “ulysses,” the unique poignancy of tennyson’s best lyric poems, and, above all, the stature of in memoriam as the great representative poem of the victorian age. it is now also recognized that the realistic and comic aspects of tennyson’s work are more important than they were thought to be during the period of the reaction against him. finally, the perception of the poet’s awed sense of the mystery of life, which lies at the heart of his greatness, as in “crossing the bar” or “flower in the crannied wall,” unites his admirers in this century with those in the last. though less of tennyson’s work may survive than appeared likely during his victorian heyday, what does remain and it is by no means small in quantity seems likely to be imperishable.
 

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Dilip Barad sir

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