Morality, Religion and Capitalism in Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’

The rise and development of English novel, like any other phenomenon in literature, can be seen as a part of a history or the process of the individual development. Romantic novels are non-realistic and considered as the aristocratic literature of feudalism. They are non-realistic in sense that their underlying intention is not to help people cope in a positive way. These novels, express and recommend the attitudes of the aristocratic class to which it was ideally supposed to sustain. The genre, developed, however, as a reaction to the aristocratic romance, and grows with the middle class a new art form that centres on a new middle class values, rather than aristocratic patronage. Thus the period after the Restoration of the 16th to 17th century opened up other discourses, thereby breaking the frontier by allowing social mobility and making female writing possible. This allowed Jane Austen to write on realistic and naturalistic themes as morality, religion, captalism, etc. and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ is its fine example.

Kiran Desai’s ‘Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard’: A Story of a Modern Godman

‘Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard’ is a novel by Kiran Desai published in 1998. It is her first book and won the top prize for the Betty Track Awards in 1998. It is set in the Indian village of Shahkot, [State of Punjab] and follows the exploits of a young man, Sampat Chawla, trying to avoid the responsibilities of adult life. Fed up with his life in Shahkot, Sampat goes to a guava orchard and settles himself in a guava tree, where he uses the gossip he learned while working at the post office to convince people he is clairvoyant and soon becomes a popular “holyman”. In this novel, Kiran’s purpose is to mirror the life of modern man by the tool of satire satirizing the blind religiosity and innocent superstitious faiths of Indians in so-called “Babas”.

The Theme of Love in Sarojini Naidu’s Poetry

Love is the dominant theme of Sarojini Naidu’s poetry. There are a large number of love-lyrics in the store of her poetry. As a love-lyricist, Sarojini Naodu is superb. Her lyrics deal with human love to metaphysical love. Thus, her love-lyrics have an aesthetic approbation of contemplation and sensation.

A Study of Various Problems of Physically Handicapped

Adolescence period is full of stresses and strains. One major problem of adolescents is to be independent of their parants. According to Kiskar [1982], the most destructive and stress-provoking situation is a growing need for independence. It is evident that adolescent boys and girls often make efforts to achieve some degree of freedom from their parents directly or indirectly. This effort may lead to such common symptom of adjustment difficulties as truancy, vagrancy, stealing and sexual misbehaviour. Studies have shown that some of the problems of adolescents are the extensions of those of childhood while others are the anticipations of the adulthood. However, some problems of adolescents are unique to this developmental and transitory period itself. Behavioural scientists have explained the problems of the adolescents under more or less these broader connotations. Personal Data Sheet and Youth Problem Inventory were administrated to 81 physically handicapped and 81 normal respondents to examine whether the two groups differ significantly in terms of their problems relating to family, school, sexual, personal and overall problems. It was hypothesized that there will be significant effect of physical disadvantage over various problems of the respondents. The result revealed that the physical disadvantage showed a significant effect on various problems under study of respondents, namely family school / college, social, personal and overall problems.

Feminism in the Novels of Jane Austen

Jane Austen’s genius was not recognized either by her contemperaries or even by her successors. But about 1890 the tide of appreciation and popularity markedly turned in favour and correspondingly, against her contemporary, Sir Walter Scott. She always strives in her art to remain full conscious of her responsibility to life as an artist. She is known as the last blossom of the 18th century. She has six novels to her credit-‘Sense and Sensibility’, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, ‘Mansfield Park, ‘Emma’, ‘Northanger Abbey’ and ‘Persuasion’. Though she created her stories in her above-mentioned novels more than 200 years ago, her novels were forerunners of feminism. According to a critic, “Jane Austen was a published female novelist, who wrote under her own name, which can be seen as an important feminist quality”.