British Novel (Second Year) (1)

51 Mrs. Morel, he is drawn outside by the smell of the lilies drifting in on the breeze. Paul goes outside and looks at the moon. He finds a patch of irises growing beneath the lilies and is startled by the strength of their smell. When Paul goes back inside, he tells his mother that he is going to end things with Miriam. Mrs. Morel thinks this is probably for the best. On Sunday, he goes to tell Miriam and meets her after church. Miriam is shocked and hurt when Paul ends the engagement; he tells her that he cannot marry her because he never wants to get married. Miriam complains that he has often asked her to marry him and it is she who has refused. Paul feels guilty about this and it makes him hostile towards Miriam. Eventually Miriam accepts that he is serious and believes that he is, unconsciously, under the influence of Clara. She complains that this has been their whole relationship, him fighting against her, and Paul feels bitter and furious that she has known all along something he has only just discovered in himself. Miriam pointedly asks him when he will tell Clara, and Paul tells her that he will do so soon. He tells her that their engagement has failed because she does not have faith in him, and Miriam is bitterly amused by this. Miriam leaves and Paul watches her go. He feels that a large part of his life has been made meaningless. Paul wanders home and, on the way, stops in at a pub for a drink. He flirts with some women who feed him chocolates and then returns home to his mother. Mrs. Morel listens to his story about the pub, but she is aware that he is putting on a brave face and that he is horrified by what has occurred with Miriam. Over dinner, Paul tells Mrs. Morel that Miriam has not been disappointed because she never thought that it would work out. He worries that she will not let the relationship go, however, and will wait for him to come back. Mrs. Morel warns him to stay away from Miriam and Miriam is left alone, wondering if Paul will return to her. Chapter- XII Paul does well with his painting and his designs and believes that he can be a success as an artist. He sells his designs to a department store to be printed on upholstery and furniture. He often teases his mother about how rich they will be, and how she will need to learn to manage servants and let them do the housework (which she still does much of despite employing a maid), and he likes to work while she is in the room with him. While on a holiday to the Isle of Wight, Mrs. Morel suffers another bad fainting fit and, for a while, is ill. She recovers but Paul often worries about her health. As soon as he has broken up with Miriam, Paul begins to spend time with Clara. He flirts with her at work and then, finally, kisses her in the street one evening before he catches his train home. They arrange to go for a walk together on Monday afternoon and Paul finds the weekend torturous as he waits for Monday to come. When Monday finally arrives, Paul rushes down to the spiral room to see Clara and confirm their date. She tells him she will probably meet him that afternoon. Paul feels as though he is moving at a great distance from life and as though he will faint with anxiety. Eventually, he can stand it no longer and tells Clara to meet him at two o’clock in the town. She agrees but Paul is nearly mad with dread because she is five minutes late. When Clara arrives, Paul buys her a red flower to wear in her coat. They catch a tram out towards the castle. Paul feels tense but excited being close to Clara as they sit together. It is a wet CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

5 2 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II day and the river almost overflows. They walk into the woods, which are muddy and dripping with rain, and take the path along the riverside. Clara asks Paul why he ended things with Miriam and Paul struggles to explain. Clara says Paul has treated Miriam unfairly and Paul acknowledges this. As they trudge along under the soggy canopy of trees, Clara asks Paul if he ever wants to get married. He says no, and she asks how old he is; he is twenty-five and she is thirty. They climb over a stile together and Paul kisses Clara’s face. They continue through the woods and Paul asks Clara why she hated Baxter Dawes. She does not reply but leans over and kisses him. Paul asks Clara if she will climb down to the water’s edge with him and she agrees. They scramble down the steep, muddy bank, clinging to the trees as they go. When they reach the riverbank, they find that the swollen river has eaten away the path and that there is not much space to stand. Paul drops Clara’s parcel, which she has given him to carry, and it falls into the river. Clara only laughs, however, and the pair decide to traipse on along the crumbling path. They are almost at the spot Paul has chosen when they come across two fishermen. They slink past the men but find that there is no way back up the path because of the mud and the swollen river. Paul leads Clara to a secluded patch in the trees where the pair lie down together. When Clara gets up again, the flower on her coat has been shredded to pieces. Paul worries that Clara seems sad, but she kisses him tenderly and dismisses his concerns. They hike back up the hillside to rejoin the path. Paul stoops in the road and cleans Clara’s boots of mud. They stop for tea in a cottage and the old lady who serves them is charmed by their cheerful manner. They laugh pleasantly together and think, “if only she knew.” On the walk back, Paul asks Clara if she feels guilty. Clara says no, but Paul suggests that Eve enjoyed her guilt in the garden of Eden. That night, Paul tells Mrs. Morel about his walk with Clara. Mrs. Morel rebukes him and says that he should have thought of Clara before he went. Paul dismisses his mother’s concerns because he does not care for other people’s opinions and, besides, Clara is a suffragette. Mrs. Morel objects that Clara is married, but Paul insists that his mother would like Clara and tells her what a fine woman she is. He asks if he can invite her to the house for tea during the weekend and Mrs. Morel agrees. Paul still sees Miriam after church and often walks home with her. That weekend, he tells her about his walk with Clara and Miriam berates him because she says that he forfeits Clara’s reputation. Paul is blasé about this, but Miriam says that he does not understand the position women are in. Another day, Miriam asks Paul about Clara’s situation with Baxter Dawes and Paul tells her that he thinks Clara treated Dawes badly. He thinks that she felt superior to him and did not take him seriously. Paul is certain, though, that Clara and Baxter Dawes had “real passion.” Miriam asks if it was like his mother and father and Paul says yes; he believes their love was real. Miriam wonders if Paul has felt passion with Clara, but she is resigned to let him have this if it is what he needs before he returns to her. Paul tells Miriam that Clara is coming to meet his mother on Sunday and Miriam feels bitter about this because Mrs. Morel has always disliked her. On Sunday, Paul can hardly believe that Clara is coming and is convinced that she will not arrive. He goes to the station to meet her and before the train has even come in is almost angry with her for failing to turn up. Clara does arrive on the train and is just as apprehensive and excited as Paul. They have a CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

53 lovely walk through the fields and, when they arrive at the house, Paul introduces Clara to Mrs. Morel. Clara is slightly intimidated because she has heard so much about her from Paul. Mrs. Morel is friendly with Clara and chats happily with her about a mutual acquaintance. She watches Clara and Paul together, but thinks Paul is a little detached. Clara feels quite at home, however, as Paul shows her around and tells her about the family. She is greeted warmly by Mr. Morel and seems to fit in perfectly with the household. After tea, Clara helps Mrs. Morel wash up. Paul wanders into the garden and Clara feels confined and strained to be left in the kitchen without him. It is a relief to her when the dishes are put away and she follows him outside. He shows her the flowers in the garden and, while they are flirting, Miriam arrives. Paul is not surprised to see Miriam and does not feel awkward as he walks the two women round the garden. Miriam asks if she can borrow a book and Paul goes inside to get it. His mother asks tersely why Miriam is outside and she is shocked that Paul invited her. Paul tells his mother not to nag and returns to give Miriam his book. Back outside, he asks her again to come in, but Miriam says she is on her way to chapel and will see them there. She takes the book and leaves, a little bitter to see Clara accepted into the family where she has not been. Paul sees Miriam off and then heads back to the house. As he enters, he hears Mrs. Morel and Clara discussing Miriam. They both agree that they dislike her “blood hound quality” and that it “makes them hate her.” Paul is irritated with them for talking this way about Miriam, who he believes is extremely good. He and Clara attend the church service and Miriam watches as Paul helps Clara find the right hymn in the book, just as he used to with her. After the service, Paul feels slightly guilty as he says goodbye to Miriam. At the same time, however, he feels glad that she will see him walk away with Clara, who is very good looking. On the way home, Clara asks if Paul will stay friends with Miriam and turns cold and silent when he says he will. Paul is irritated by this and kisses Clara roughly. They walk up the hills in the dark and look at the stars and down over the coal pits. Clara asks about the time – she wants to catch her train – and Paul reluctantly tells her. He is annoyed that she wants to go but, when she insists, he runs with her to the station so that she will just make the train. She jumps on without time to say goodbye to him and he walks home, very sullen and angry. Mrs. Morel is surprised when he arrives home in this state and thinks he has been drinking. He asks his mother if she likes Clara and Mrs. Morel says that she does, but that she knows Paul will grow bored of her. Paul goes to bed and weeps with rage. He is angry with Clara and treats her coldly when he next sees her at work. Not long after, Paul invites Clara to the theatre. He buys tickets and arranges to wear a suit for the performance. His mother is slightly snooty about this, but Paul says that it is not very often he does these things. Paul meets Clara and her friend, one of the suffragettes, just before the play starts. He thinks that Clara looks very beautiful in her evening gown. During the performance, Paul struggles to focus on the play and is tortured with desire because Clara is so near to him. It almost makes him hate her because he feels that she is the cause of his pain. When he can no longer resist, he leans down and kisses her arm. Paul misses his train and plans to walk home, but Clara insists that he should come and stay at hers and that her mother won’t mind. They enter Clara’s house and Mrs. Radford appears in the CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

5 4 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II lounge and greets them suspiciously. Clara explains what has happened and her mother wryly invites Paul to join Clara for supper. She gives him what’s left of the meagre meal. When Paul and Clara take off their coats and reveal their fine costumes, Mrs. Radford makes several sarcastic jibes. Clara eats quietly, embarrassed by her mother, but Paul spars with Mrs. Radford and gradually placates her to a slightly friendlier tone. Clara goes to fetch Paul some pajamas and Mrs. Radford makes no sign that she is going to go to bed. Paul feels tense and hostile towards her and the atmosphere in the room is bad. Mrs. Radford says it is time they went to bed, but Paul says that he wants to play a card game. Mrs. Radford says this is fine by her and sits up determinedly as Paul and Clara play. Finally, Mrs. Radford says that they should go to bed and Paul gives in, hiding his hatred of the woman. Paul is sent upstairs to Clara’s room; Clara will share with her mother. He finds a pair of Clara’s stockings in the room, puts them on and sits on the bed in them, listening. He hears Clara tell her mother that she will stay up a bit and she asks Mrs. Radford to undo her dress. Mrs. Radford wearily agrees that her daughter may stay up and then lumbers upstairs to bed. Paul tries to sleep but finds he cannot. He is mad with desire for Clara. He sneaks downstairs and shuts the door to the kitchen loudly, so that Mrs. Radford will not come down, then he creeps into the living room. Clara is crouched before the fire, naked. Paul approaches her and finds that she looks ashamed. Paul strokes her shoulder and the pair begin to kiss and embrace. They hold each other for a long time but Clara refuses to follow Paul upstairs. Back in bed, sometime later, he wonders why she will not defy her mother. Mrs. Radford wakes Paul early the next morning by bringing him a cup of tea in bed. Although the older woman teases him, he can tell that she likes him. Clara seems calm and pleased over breakfast and Paul is happy. He tells them that he is to get some money for a painting that day and wonders if they should go to the seaside. Mrs. Radford says that she will not go but agrees to let Clara “do as she likes.” Chapter – XIII Not long after his night out with Clara, Paul goes to the “Punch Bowl” for a drink and runs into Baxter Dawes, Clara’s husband. Paul is talking about the possibility of war in Europe with his companions. He is not very popular in the pub; he annoys the older men because he is too cocky and quick to give his opinion. Paul know Baxter hates him and he hates Baxter is return, but he also feels strangely bonded to the man because they are enemies. He offers Baxter a drink, but Baxter sullenly refuses. Paul goes back to his conversation and Baxter makes a spiteful comment about him getting his knowledge from the theatre. Paul tries to ignore Baxter, but the other men begin to join in and tease Paul about going to a play. Baxter hints that he knows the woman Paul spent the night with and the other men hassle Paul to name her. Baxter makes a comment which angers Paul and Paul throws his beer in Baxter’s face. Baxter rushes at Paul but another man intervenes and throws Baxter out of the pub. Paul does not tell Mrs. Morel about this altercation. He is frustrated because he keeps no secrets from his mother and the only thing that he does not tell her about is his sex life. At times, he feels smothered by her and that his love for her has nowhere to go. He feels it is like a circle where CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

55 the love she has for him flows back into herself. He and Clara continue to get on well, but Clara is upset when she hears about his feud with Baxter. Paul suggests that Baxter could have been a good man. Clara thinks that Paul blames her for the way Baxter has turned out and insists that Paul does not know Baxter and that he shouldn’t be quick to get into a fight with the man. Paul says that he is not a natural fighter and Clara says that he should carry a weapon. Paul brushes off her fears, although Clara insists that Baxter is dangerous. A few days later, at work, Paul bumps into Baxter on the stairs. Paul apologizes and goes on with his work, but Baxter lingers in the door, shouting things and threatening Paul. Paul insolently ignores him. He tries to get past Baxter in the doorway to go about some business, and Baxter grabs Paul’s arm. Mr. Jordan comes out of his office to see what the commotion is about and tries to physically remove Baxter, who is a known troublemaker, from the building. Baxter shakes Mr. Jordan off and the manager falls and bruises himself. He fires Baxter immediately and has him arrested for assault; Paul must give evidence at the trial. Baxter is dismissed with a warning and Paul worries a little about what will come next. He has had to tell the magistrate about his and Baxter’s fight over Clara, and Clara is furious that she has been publicly dragged into the dispute. Although he and Clara still get on, Paul feels a sense of coldness or indifference for her creep in. He agonizes over this to Mrs. Morel and complains that, although he cares about Miriam and Clara, he feels that he cannot really care about them and that, sometimes, he is cruel to them. He thinks he cannot love another woman while his mother is alive. Mrs. Morel listens quietly and broods over this. Clara is disappointed by Paul’s offhand manner with her at work. She is very attracted to him and wants to show him this, but he is often cold and businesslike. Paul and Clara often spend the evenings together and then they are like lovers and get on very well. One night, however, Paul seems frustrated and tense and Clara asks him what is wrong. He tells her that he is restless and that he wants to go abroad and make something of himself as an artist. He cannot go yet, he says, because he will not leave his mother. Clara asks what he will do if he becomes successful and he tells her that he will buy a nice house for him and his mother to live in. Although Clara is hurt by his words, she can tell he is suffering. Paul begs her not to plan for the future, but, instead, to live in the moment. He is hurt and she comforts him as they sit together in the dark and look out over the canal. They listen to the birds and the sounds of nature all around them and, as Paul looks into Clara’s eyes, he feels the immensity of life and of the darkness all around them. He thinks this must have been how Adam and Eve felt, lost in the wilderness. The next morning, Clara feels desperately in love with Paul and knows she wants something “permanent.” Paul, however, wakes feeling satisfied and content and feels that, although he has learned something with Clara, it does not have anything to do with her. For a while, Clara cannot keep away from him at work. She always wants to kiss and touch him and follows him around. Eventually, Paul gets annoyed and is frosty with her. He tells her to be more professional and that there isn’t time for love at work. Clara is deliberately distant with him after this. The next spring, Paul and Clara rent a cottage at the seaside and stay there together for some time. They often go down to the shore in the mornings and Clara swims in the sea while Paul watches the sun rise. He sees Clara’s form in the water, a long way off, and thinks about how small and insignificant she looks from this distance. He wonders why she holds his interest and feels confused and almost afraid of her as she emerges from the water and dries herself. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

5 6 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II That afternoon, Clara and her mother go into town and Paul goes out to draw. Clara can sense that he is pulling away from her and Paul finds that, during the day when he is alone, he feels oppressed by the thought of her. Clara only feels that he is really with her at night, and she asks him about this sensation. Paul says that he does not want love during the days but insists that he wants to marry Clara. Pressed by him, Clara admits that she does not want to divorce Baxter because she feels like he “belongs to her.” Paul says that Clara treated Baxter badly because she believed he was something he was not and would not accept what he was. Clara replies sarcastically. Paul complains that women always make him feel trapped and that he should be able to do as he likes. Clara says that, if this is the case, his woman should be able to do as she likes, but Paul says that he wants the woman he loves to want to be with him. Clara feels that she hates Paul for a moment. Overall, though, Clara feels fulfilled by the relationship. She feels satisfied with the passion between her and Paul and has gained back her confidence and self-assurance through the liaison. They are destined to part, however, even if they stay together, because Paul cannot be tied to her. One night, when they are walking through the fields near Clara’s home (she and her mother have moved from the town), they pass a man on the road who reminds Paul of Baxter. Paul makes a joke to Clara as the man passes. Paul wonders who the man is, and Clara tells him it is Baxter. Clara calls Baxter “common” and Paul asks her if she hates him. Clara says no and gets angry with Paul. She hates that he accuses her of being cruel to Baxter when he has no idea how cruel men can be to women. Paul is taken aback, but Clara continues and says that, although Baxter would not let her know him, she feels that Paul knows nothing about her. She sometimes feels that he does not care about her but only about the act of sex. Paul is confused but wonders if this is true. When he has sex, he feels as though he becomes one with everything in the world and everything is swept away in his own pleasure. She does not enjoy the sex as much as he does, and they begin to feel embarrassed with each other afterwards. Paul even begins to dislike Clara afterwards, as if it is her fault. One night, when Paul leaves Clara’s and has to rush to catch his train, he is ambushed by Baxter, who waits for him in the dark by a stile which is on the way to the station. The two men fight and, even though Paul has never been in a fight before, he almost strangles Baxter with his scarf. He lets go as he realizes what he is doing and Baxter struggles to his feet and begins to kick Paul. Just then, the train goes past in the distance and Baxter sees the lights and thinks that someone is coming. He hurries away and leaves Paul lying on the ground. Paul lies still for a short while, dazed and bruised after the fight. Eventually, he drags himself up and limps home. His mother is horrified when she sees him and faints with shock. Paul has dislocated his shoulder and comes down with bronchitis the next day. Mrs. Morel nurses him and Miriam and Clara come to visit, but he does not care to see either of them. When Paul is healed, he begins to avoid Clara and to spend more time with his male friends. Clara is frustrated and pained by the way he treats her, and Paul begins to hate her. Mrs. Morel’s health gets worse and Paul worries about her constantly. She has problems with her stomach and her heart. For his next holiday, Paul goes to Blackpool with a friend and sends Mrs. Morel to Sheffield to have a holiday at Annie’s. At the end of his time in Blackpool, Paul travels to Sheffield to join Annie and Mrs. Morel. He is in good spirits and looks forward to seeing them. When he arrives, however, Annie looks grim and CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

57 greets him somberly. Mrs. Morel has been taken ill and is in bed. Paul rushes upstairs to see her and breaks down in tears when he sees how ill she looks. She tells him not to fret, but she has a tumor. Paul hopes that the tumor can be cured but, later, when he has dinner with Annie, she tells him that Mrs. Morel has a huge lump on her side. Annie discovered it when Mrs. Morel fell ill the day before and, when she asked her mother about the lump, Mrs. Morel said it had been there for several months. Paul is shocked; Mrs. Morel has never mentioned this to him and has been often to see the doctor. Annie laments that if she had been at home, she would have noticed the tumor. Paul goes to speak to the doctor himself. The doctor tells him that the lump may be cancer, but he must do an examination to be sure. When Paul arrives back at Annie’s, he carries Mrs. Morel downstairs and feeds her brandy. He is horrified and weeps over how thin and weak she seems, and because she is in so much pain. Paul arranges a consultation with another doctor for Mrs. Morel before he leaves, and then travels home to check in with his father. Paul finds his father well but thinks that he looks very old and sad as he putters about the little house alone. Mr. Morel asks timidly about his wife and is sorry to hear she is so ill. He hopes she can be brought home soon, but Paul insists that if she cannot travel, Mr. Morel must come up to visit her. Mr. Morel worries about the train fare and the doctor’s fee, but Paul says that he will cover these things. He returns to Sheffield that evening to help Annie care for Mrs. Morel. The next day, Paul must return to Nottingham for work and Mrs. Morel implores him not to worry about her. He tries his best to forget and goes for a walk with Clara to distract himself, but he cries on and off all day. Mr. Morel comes to visit Mrs. Morel at the end of the week, but he is awkward and unhappy in the presence of his wife’s illness and Mrs. Morel does not like to have him in the room. After staying for two months at Annie’s, Mrs. Morel travels home. Her health has not improved and has, instead, grown worse, and the family accompany her home in a rented motorcar because she is too sick to catch the train. On the way home, Mrs. Morel is bright and lively, though her body is weak. When the car drives into their street, all the neighbors come out to see her pass and know, from her face, that she will soon die. Still, she is happy to be home and pleased to see her sunflowers growing in the yard. Chapter – XIV While Paul is in Sheffield with Mrs. Morel, he hears that Baxter Dawes is in a hospital nearby. The doctor tells him that Baxter has no visitors and, though he is no longer ill, he seems very depressed. Paul says he will go and see him and travels to the hospital. He feels somehow connected to Baxter, especially since their fight, as though they have a close, unconscious bond. Baxter is sulky when Paul arrives, but he gradually softens up as the pair discuss Mrs. Morel’s illness. Baxter has had typhoid but is almost fully recovered. He does not want to go back to work because he doesn’t know anybody and is miserable with the world. Paul tells him that he will get Leonard to pop in and give him some newspapers and tries to cheer Baxter up a bit. Paul rarely sees Clara now and the next time he does, he tells her about Baxter. Clara is frightened when she hears that Baxter is ill and condemns herself for not being kind to him. She says that Paul is right and that she treated Baxter badly. She goes to visit him soon after this and, although they are not friendly towards each other, she gives Baxter some money and flowers and wishes, in some sacrificial way, to make amends. She also likes that she feels such distance from him at their CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

5 8 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II meeting, and even feels glad that she seems to scare him a bit. Although Paul and Baxter are still rivals, Paul goes to visit him often and feels a close connection with the man. Mrs. Morel’s health, meanwhile, steadily declines. Paul cares for her tenderly but they are timid with each other because they both know that she is going to die but dare not say it. They are afraid of this new, strained intimacy between them and feel that curtains are being pulled away from their eyes. Sometimes, Mrs. Morel grows bitter and talks about her marriage. She despises her husband and cannot forgive him for the past. Paul hates to listen to this and feels as though his life is being dismantled. He cries often and cannot concentrate on his work. He sometimes goes to see Clara, but there is a great distance between them. In November, Clara reminds Paul that it is her birthday and the pair arrange a trip to the seaside. Paul is distant and unhappy on this trip and he talks often of his mother’s death. He is horrified by the idea that she does not want to die, and that she is determined to live, even while in so much pain. This thought frightens Clara. Paul cannot bear to see his mother in pain and admits to Clara that he wishes “she would die.” Back in Nottingham, Paul goes to see Baxter and tells him about his trip away with Clara. Baxter says that Paul may “do as he likes,” but Paul explains that Clara is sick of him. He tells Baxter that he will go abroad after his mother’s death. Baxter mentions the scar on Paul’s face while the two men play draughts together. Paul says it happened when he fell off his bike. Baxter says that he attacked Paul because Paul laughed at him when he walked past with Clara, but Paul tells Baxter that he didn’t laugh at him. As he walks home that night in the dark, Paul feels that he is walking away from earth and towards death but that this path only ever ends in “the sick room.” As he approaches his house, he sees the firelight in the window of Mrs. Morel’s room and thinks bleakly that when she passes away, the fire will go out. He goes up to see her and finds her awake and fretful. He does his best to soothe her until she falls asleep. Paul has a letter from Miriam and goes to see her. Miriam tries to comfort him when she hears about his mother’s illness, but Paul finds her touch a torment and pulls away. Annie lives at home with him to care for Mrs. Morel, and in the evenings they often have friends come around, and are very fun and lively to relieve the stress of their days. Mrs. Morel is relieved to hear them laughing but she is in a great deal of pain all the time. Paul does his best to comfort his mother, but she remains determined not to die. Sometimes, he looks into her eyes and feels as though he is making an agreement that, if she dies, he will die too. However, Mrs. Morel will not die; her pulse grows weak and she cannot eat or drink, but she endures. As Christmas approaches and Mrs. Morel grows ever weaker, Paul and Annie feel that they cannot cope and that they will “go mad” with the strain. Annie fears that Mrs. Morel will live through Christmas and Paul says that he will give her all the “morphia” that the doctor has sent him if this seems likely to happen. A few nights later, Paul crushes the remaining morphia tablets into a glass of milk. Annie giggles hysterically when she sees this, and they take the drink to their mother. Mrs. Morel complains that it is bitter but drinks it down. Annie and Paul sit with her and comfort her. She is very small and fragile, like a child. Finally, she falls asleep and her breath begins to come as a long, low rattle. She keeps on like this with difficulty all night while Paul and Annie take turns to sit up with her. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

59 The next morning, she is still the same and Paul sends Mr. Morel to work as usual. Paul is horrified as he watches his mother die and sits with her all day, terrified by the awful sound of her breath. At last, late that morning, Mrs. Morel dies. When Mr. Morel comes home, he does not notice that the blind is pulled down in her window. Paul tells him that she has died, and Morel is shocked for a moment, then eats his lunch in silence. The undertaker is called, and Paul goes into his mother’s room to wait. He weeps over the sight of her body – she looks young again and peaceful in death – and he feels that he cannot let her go. When the undertaker arrives, Paul and Annie watch over their mother and see that she is treated gently. Paul goes out that night to spend time at a friend’s house. When he gets home, Mr. Morel is still up. Paul registers, with a shock, that his father has been afraid to go to sleep with his dead wife in the house. Paul goes to Nottingham to see Clara and Clara is pleased to find that Paul is, externally, stoic and resigned to his mother’s death. The funeral is held during a rainstorm and Mrs. Morel is buried with William. After the funeral, Mr. Morel frets and cries to Mrs. Morel’s family that he always “did his best by her.” His behavior infuriates Paul because he feels that his father dismisses his mother. A few nights after this, Paul finds Mr. Morel sitting up by himself, very white and scared looking. He says he has dreamed about his wife. Paul says that he has very pleasant dreams about his mother. Mr. Morel does not answer and stares into the fire. Baxter Dawes, meanwhile, has recovered in a hospital in Skegness. Paul goes out to visit him at Christmas. He and Baxter have become close friends and Paul hardly ever sees Clara now. A couple of days before he leaves, Paul tells Baxter that Clara is coming the next day and that he has told the landlady that Baxter’s wife will be arriving. Baxter seems a little shaken by this but does not protest. Paul says that Baxter is almost better, and Baxter agrees and says that Leonard thinks he will be able to “get him on in Sheffield.” Paul admits that he feels more lost than Baxter. Baxter assures Paul that he will be alright, and the two men awkwardly discuss Clara. Baxter says that he does not know if he wants her back, but Paul insists that she wants him. He tells Baxter that Clara never really “belonged to him” and that was why she would not get a divorce. Baxter admits that he has been foolish, and Paul says that he will leave the next day. Nonetheless, he feels a sense of rivalry return between him and Baxter and they spend the rest of the evening in silence. The next morning, Paul walks on the beach and feels that he is “cutting himself off from life.” He takes a bitter kind of pleasure in this. He goes to the station with Baxter to meet Clara from the train. She is rather aloof with the two men and sits and looks demurely out of the window when they get to the house. Baxter explains to her that Paul will leave them that night but that they have the house for another day. He tells her that he has a job and a house in Sheffield, and Clara listens thoughtfully. From time to time, Clara glances at Paul, but she thinks, looking at him beside her husband, that there is something meagre and small about him. She finds him unmanly and thinks that he lacks conviction, unlike Baxter who can at least commit to something. She feels that Paul is fickle and unstable, and that Baxter appears dignified by comparison. She feels that she has a better understanding of men now and thinks that she will not miss Paul when he leaves. The trio have dinner together and Clara feels irritated with Paul because she feels that he is deliberately absenting himself from the circle and leaving her for her husband. Paul feels forlorn and CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

6 0 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II at a loss without his mother. She has been his support and his true companion and, now that she is dead, he feels as though he yearns for death himself. He does not fear death and feels that Clara cannot support him. He can see that Baxter does fear death and, although he has been careless with his life, he admits now that he was wrong and that he wants to live, and this makes him seem noble. Paul leaves Clara and Baxter after dinner and goes to catch his train. When he has gone, Clara pours Baxter some tea and Baxter asks her uncertainly if she will leave that night; he says she shouldn’t travel in the rain. Clara asks if he wants her to stay and Baxter admits that he does. They hold each other and Clara joyfully pleads with Baxter to take her back. He tearfully asks her if she wants him. Chapter – XV Paul feels lost and friendless. Clara is gone, and he and his father part ways and leave the family home. Mr. Morel lodges with a family and Paul takes a room in Nottingham. He tries to lose himself in his work and spends a lot of time in pubs, but he is haunted and miserable. He cannot see the point in life or feel the “reality” of anything around him. The only thing that feels real is the darkness at night. One night, when he gets home late and eats no dinner, he wonders what he is doing with himself and a voice from his unconscious tells him that he longs to destroy himself. Paul is determined not to die, but he cannot get in touch with life. He feels, since Mrs. Morel’s death, that he is nothing and that he has no future and nothing to live for. He no longer cares about painting and he does not want to get married. He struggles to find a reason not to kill himself. He is extremely restless and becomes frustrated when he tries to paint. He drinks and flirts with barmaids, but these interactions mean nothing to him. In his grief, Paul remembers Miriam and wonders if he can go back to her. He runs into Miriam one evening at Church and, as he watches her sing the psalms, he thinks she looks like a saint. Paul approaches her after the service, and she is very surprised to see him. She tells him that she is staying with a relative but will go home the next day. Paul asks her if she must go and she says no. He invites her to dinner at his house with him and she agrees. Paul goes to fetch them coffee and Miriam looks around his room. She finds it grim and “comfortless” and feels sorry for him. When Paul returns, Miriam tells him that she has been accepted into college and that she is going to be a teacher once she is trained. Paul is surprised that Miriam did not tell him and is slightly disappointed with the news. Miriam is indignant; she is very excited about her success and proud of her prospects. Paul thinks that it is a waste for her to work. He tells her that while a man can commit himself fully to his work, a woman only uses a small, insignificant part of herself when she takes a job. Miriam is offended and replies sarcastically. Paul thinks that she looks old and he is internally critical of her. Suddenly, Miriam begins to laugh in a cold, cheerless way. She asks Paul if he is still with Clara and Paul tells her he is not. Miriam says that she thinks they should get married. Paul brushes her off again with his usual protests; she would smother him, and he would not be able to bear it. He tells her he will travel abroad. Miriam sinks to her knees on the rug, crushed by despair. She suddenly knows, inside herself, that if she stood up and drew him to her and told him that he “belonged to her” that he would stay, and they would be married. She is too afraid to move, however; afraid that she will unleash something unknown and that she cannot handle in him if she does so. She remains kneeling there and, eventually, CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

61 Paul takes her in his arms and comforts her. Paul feels that Miriam is not strong enough to support and contain him. She is willing to sacrifice herself for him, but he does not want this. She asks him if he wants to marry her and he says no. If they are not married, Miriam says, there can be nothing between them. Paul sits back in his chair and thinks about his mother. Miriam can see that he does not care about her and that he is set on ruining himself. She decides to leave him to it, but she feels sour that he will not accept her sacrifice. Miriam admires the flowers on Paul’s table, and he gives them to her. He accompanies her back to her cousin’s house, and she broods resentfully and thinks that, when he is tired, he will return to her. After he has said goodbye to her, he takes a car out into the country. He feels as though he is emanating empty space from his body and that he is becoming part of the night. Paul leans against a stile and feels himself surrounded by the night. He feels that time has ceased to exist and that, as he is part of the night and the universe, his mother is still with him even though she is dead. He calls out for her in the dark and knows that he wants to join her. Determined not to give in, however, after a short time resting in the dark, he turns and walks doggedly back towards the lights of the town. 3.4 THEMES: SONS AND LOVERS Family, Psychology, and the Oedipus Complex: D. H. Lawrence’s novel Sons and Lovers examines the emotional dynamics of the Morel family and charts the gradual decline of the middle son, Paul Morel, as he navigates tensions between his romantic life and his family life. Many of the conflicts in Sons and Lovers are driven by underlying psychological forces, which even the characters themselves do not understand. This makes it difficult for them to respond in ways that help, rather than worsen, their situations. Lawrence was interested in psychology and loosely incorporates aspects of Freud’s Oedipus complex into the plot of the novel. The Oedipus complex is the theory that infant children are attracted to their parent of the opposite gender and that they become jealous of the parent of the same sex. Lawrence’s blend of family drama and psychology suggests that people’s unresolved childhood pain and confusion can, unfortunately, lead to lives in which many of their emotional needs remain misunderstood and unfulfilled. The Morel family is defined by conflict and division, which begin with the unhappy marriage of Mr. Morel and Mrs. Morel. Mrs. Morel, a young English woman from a “good family,” marries Mr. Morel after she meets him at a country dance. She soon finds, however, that she and her husband have little in common and that the life of a miner’s wife is one of hardship and poverty. Their relationship quickly becomes volatile and Mr. and Mrs. Morel never emotionally reconcile. Their children side with their mother against their father, and the rift within the family foreshadows the conflicts that the children, especially William and Paul, will psychologically inherit. This legacy of conflict and division is continued by William and Paul in their relationships with women. Both William and Paul rely on their mother well into adulthood for emotional guidance, psychological support, and personal validation. When they try to build relationships with women their own age, they are divided within themselves because they feel disloyal to their mother, who often resents these women. This split is most clearly represented in Paul’s relationships with Miriam and Clara, which are depicted as CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

6 2 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II a “battle;” Miriam, on one side, feels she owns “Paul’s soul,” while with Clara he experiences physical passion. This divide between body and soul, which Paul can never reconcile, stands in for the most significant psychological tension in his life: his strong attachment to his mother. The force of their bond means that Paul constantly feels that he must choose between her and his lovers and, because of their deep familial connection, Paul ultimately sides with his mother and eventually casts off Miriam and Clara, which leaves him rootless and alone after Mrs. Morel’s death. The repetition of such toxic psychological patterns throughout the novel suggests the power of early familial bonds and implies that these forces often direct decisions made in later life. If these early familial experiences are divisive or volatile, Paul’s experience indicates, this can lead to the continuation of disruptive or unfulfilling relationships in adulthood. What’s more, many of the psychological conflicts in Sons and Lovers take place unconsciously and are not obvious to the characters. Paul and Mrs. Morel are driven by underlying needs and desires rather than explicit knowledge of themselves. For example, throughout his relationship with Miriam, Paul is often confused as to why he cannot fully “give himself” to her. Paul is even hurt when Miriam displays insight into his psychology during one of his many attempts to break up with her. Miriam says bitterly that their whole relationship has been Paul “fighting her off”; Paul feels that Miriam has “always known” and understood his emotional condition, while he himself has not, and that she has spitefully concealed the truth from him. This suggests that it is sometimes easier to gain insight into others than it is to examine oneself, especially when one has inherited psychological confusion from a tumultuous family life. Similarly, Mrs. Morel does not consciously know that she prevents her sons from being successful in love because her love for them is so possessive. Indeed, Mrs. Morel believes that she wishes Paul would marry “a nice girl” and is never aware that she is the aspect of his life that stops him from doing so. Her lack of awareness implies that, while it is often easy to speculate on psychological problems in others, it is harder to address conflicts in one’s own emotional life. The novel’s overall theme of twisted family psychologies is most prominent in the somewhat ambiguous relationship between Paul and his mother.Although there is no explicitly sexual relationship between Paul and Mrs. Morel, their relationship nonetheless reflects Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex. Paul and Mrs. Morel do not consider their relationship incestuous, but there are several incidents which suggest that their relationship makes other suspicious. For example, it is noted that they often “sleep together” in the same bed and when Mr. Morel walks in on them kissing, he complains that they are “up to their mischief.” Incidents like these imply that their relationship is Oedipal in a Freudian sense and contains elements of inappropriate desire. This parallel is further implied by Paul’s relationship with Clara and her estranged husband, Baxter Dawes. Paul is drawn to Baxter and, even though he dislikes him, he craves his respect. Baxter is very like Paul’s father and Clara is similar to Paul’s mother. After the death of his mother, Paul loses interest in Clara and encourages her and Baxter to reunite. This sequences of events suggests that Paul acts out his parents’ reunion, which never actually occurred, through Clara and Baxter. The ending, in which Paul leaves Clara and Baxter together and goes off by himself into the night, symbolizes Paul being forced at last to progress beyond the Oedipal phase of his childhood in which he was trapped while his mother was alive. Just as Mrs. Morel transferred her love from her husband onto her sons, Paul transfers his desire to sexually fulfill his mother onto Clara and Baxter. However, just like his mother, this does not help Paul; it only leads him to confusion and desolation at the novel’s end. Through CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

63 Paul’s fate, the novel suggests that one must gain psychological insight into oneself, rather than making one’s problems external and seeking resolution through others. Christianity, Propriety, and Physicality: Christianity was an important aspect of life in Britain in the early 1900s, when Sons and Lovers is set, and Lawrence uses frequent references to Biblical stories to underpin much of the action of the novel. However, when paired with social notions of propriety (which were standard in this period in Britain and which encouraged celibacy outside of marriage), Christian beliefs disrupt the lives of the characters by discouraging them from exploring their physical urges and desires. Lawrence believed that physical sensation was a manifestation of the divine, and that through bodily experiences human beings could achieve spiritual transcendence which united them with God. Accordingly, the novel argues that Christian belief, when it discounts the importance of the physical world in favor of the purely spiritual, is a source of confusion and emotional pain rather than fulfillment. Although Christianity might seem like a source of insight, in the novel it is symbolic of false revelation and confusion rather than guidance. Paul, Mrs. Morel’s second son and the main protagonist of the novel, is associated with the Biblical figure of St. Paul. This association begins when Paul is a baby and Mrs. Morel lifts him up to show him the sun. This parallels St. Paul’s revelation on the way to Damascus, when he was struck temporarily blind and received a revelation from God. However, while in the biblical episode St. Paul’s blinding leads to religious understanding, Mrs. Morel holds baby Paul up to the sun because she is worried that he understands too much–specifically, that he already understands the pain of life, which she feels he has learned because of her unhappiness while pregnant. As she looks into the baby’s eyes, she feels that he has learned something which “stunned” a part of his soul and she holds him to the light to dazzle this revelation away. This moment reverses the meaning of the biblical episode and signifies the beginning of emotional confusion, or blindness, in Paul’s life. The image of the blinding light is repeated later in the novel, when Paul sees the orange moon when he is at the beach with Miriam, his lover, whom he is striving unsuccessfully for sexual connection with. He knows that Miriam, who is very religious and averse to sex and physical sensation, expects him to feel a moment of spiritual connection with her at the sight of the moon. Paul, again, is “struck” by the image but cannot understand the emotion he feels – his desire is sexual, and therefore Miriam rejects it. Paul cannot connect with Miriam through spirituality alone and yearns for physical connection. Therefore, the restrictions of religion obstruct Paul’s attempt to form a bond with Miriam and takes him further away from emotional and spiritual clarity, rather than towards it. In contrast to Christian ideals, physical connection is a source of clarity and relief; it often provides spiritual meaning within the novel. While Paul has the capacity to be a deep thinker and has spiritual tendencies which come out in his art, he is acutely aware that “painting is not living,” and he often finds comfort in the material world rather than in the nuances of abstract thought. Paul enjoys his intellectual discussions about books and art with Miriam, but his relationship with her always leaves him unfulfilled because he cannot share a mutual enjoyment of physical life with her. Miriam admires Paul’s physicality – his ability to completely “lose himself” to the motion of the swing in her yard, as well as his physical grace and quickness – but she cannot enjoy physical activity herself because she is naturally cerebral and can never let herself go. In contrast, Paul finds that he is physically satisfied with Clara, although their relationship leaves him intellectually unfulfilled. Clara, unlike Miriam, is robust and strong and enjoys the sensation of sport and vigorous activity. When CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

6 4 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II Clara and Paul have sex on the canal bank, Paul feels that he “almost worships” Clara, as though she extends beyond herself into something abstract and spiritual. He feels that their passion is not separate from, but rather “encompasses” the grass they lie on and the birds they hear overhead. This moment frames sexual contact as something spiritual and physical. Lawrence is antagonistic to social conventions that reject the possibility of physical connection outside of marriage for the sake of propriety and Christian convention; through the novel’s events, he shows how the repression of physical urges does more harm than good. It was considered improper for people to have sex outside of marriage in this period, as shown when Mrs. Radford determinedly sits up half the night with Paul and Clara to prevent Clara sneaking into Paul’s room. Mrs. Radford tries to prevent this because Clara is married to Baxter Dawes and to have sex with a man who is not her husband would be considered improper and shameful. Similarly, Miriam’s aversion to sex is not driven purely by her religious tendencies, but also by her belief that sex is sinful outside of marriage. At the end of the novel, when Paul refuses to marry her, Miriam firmly tells him that there “can be nothing between them” if they are not married, even though they love each other. Paul, however, in another discussion with Miriam, suggests that to be so pure and averse to physical sensation may be more offensive to God than impurity itself. He suggests that purity is a rejection of the world that God has created—a world which is not entirely composed of the spiritual plane but is also material and tangible. Through scenes like these, Lawrence implies that it is not spirituality, or Christianity, which conflicts with physical pleasure, but rather social convention. As something man- made, this convention is not a true reflection of the divine; rather, it often obstructs genuine religious transcendence. Women’s Work and Women’s Rights: Throughout the novel, Paul’s attitude towards women is defined by his love for his mother, Mrs. Morel, which leads him to compare his female lovers with her. Since Paul’s love for his mother is rooted in idealism and not in reality, the other women in his life, Clara and Miriam, cannot compare with Paul’s romantic idea of how women should be, and they find themselves cast aside by Paul as they fail to live up to his impossible expectations. The story is set in the early twentieth century, during a period in which rights for women and societal expectations placed on women were gradually changing. Paul’s inability to understand the women in his life mirrors society’s failure to respect women during this period. Through Paul and his relationships with women, the novel suggests that social attitudes need to change so that women can find fulfillment in life and equality in society and relationships. Paul believes that his mother has lived a fulfilling life and that, because she has dedicated her life to the domestic sphere of childrearing, she has been happy. Paul’s experience of his mother is defined by her devotion to him. Mrs. Morel “casts off” her husband, Mr. Morel, early in their marriage, when he cuts her older son William’s hair without her permission. After this event, Mrs. Morel turns her affections solely onto her children, and almost exclusively onto Paul when William dies in his twenties. Since Mrs. Morel shows such affection towards Paul and such investment in the pursuits of his life, he believes that she lives happily through him. This belief mirrors social attitudes towards women at the time, which insisted that, rather than cultivating interests or passions of their own, women should be happy to live through their male family members—their husbands and sons—to achieve society’s standard of ideal womanhood. While Paul knows that Mrs. Morel does not love her husband, he believes that she has known “passion” with Paul himself and that this has brought her fulfilment. However, although Mrs. Morel does love her children, the consequence CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

65 of her lack of passion for her husband is a life of hardship with a man who is abusive and whom she does not respect. The harsh reality of Mrs. Morel’s life suggests that Paul’s attitude towards his mother, and by extension all women, reflects society’s idealized, unrealistic belief that women should be completely satisfied by domestic life. When Paul does encounter women who differ from this ideal, he is unable to understand them and compares them unfavourably with his mother. Miriam and Clara, Paul’s two lovers, are younger than Mrs. Morel and enter society under a different set of social conditions. Although it would be a long time before progress was made in gaining equal rights for women, the early 1900s saw the rise of women’s suffrage (women campaigning for the right to vote) and an increase in women entering the workplace and education. This new trend is demonstrated in Miriam and Clara; Miriam is highly intellectual and interested in books, and Clara is a working woman, a member of the suffragettes, and has separated from her husband, Baxter Dawes, because he has been abusive towards her. Although Clara and Baxter do not officially divorce, separation was unconventional and looked down upon in this period. Paul also looks down on Clara because of her interest in the suffragettes. Although he becomes her lover, he blames her for her husband’s abuse and, despite their mutual passion, he never fully understands Clara because she refuses to conform to feminine stereotypes. Instead, she asserts her own independence and demands respect from her husband, leaving him after he “bullies” her. Paul’s inability to comprehend Clara’s behavior suggests that Paul, and society in general, has a misogynistic outlook on women and views those who rebel against gender conventions as unfeminine and unnatural—even when, like Clara, their behavior is totally rational. Paul’s longstanding belief that his mother’s life has been happy is challenged by the events at the novel’s end: his mother’s death and the breakdown of both his romantic relationships. Although Mrs. Morel dislikes Miriam because Miriam is intellectual, Mrs. Morel is highly intelligent herself. She “reads a great deal” and helps the minister, Mr. Heaton, compose his sermons. Mrs. Morel might have wished to pursue a career or education, but she has been denied these opportunities because of her gender; societal pressures stated that men must work, and women must take care of the home. The parallel between Miriam and Mrs. Morel suggests that Paul’s rejection of Miriam because of her intellect is a misogynistic convention which his mother has encouraged; this convention is what she has learned and experienced herself, and she feels she has no choice but to perpetuate it. Mrs. Morel’s death causes a crisis of faith in Paul because he sees, for the first time, that his mother has not been happy. While Paul expects her to die gracefully, as someone who has lived a fulfilling and meaningful life, Mrs. Morel’s death is actually drawn out, bitter, and brooding, and Paul begins to see that she considers her life a waste. As her life has been so closely bound up with his, this realization shatters Paul’s sense of self and his sense of his own importance as reflected through his mother. Lawrence’s sympathetic portrayal of Mrs. Morel, as a woman who is left miserable after sacrificing her life for the sake of convention and domesticity, reveals that the reality of women’s work and women’s rights is far different than social norms suggest. Meanwhile, his depiction of Paul as a confused and disillusioned young man at the novel’s close suggests that old-fashioned and idealized depictions of women are not in the best interests of either women or of men. Paul’s story demonstrates how men who expect women to be fulfilled by living vicariously through them, rather than having ambitions and passions of their own, will be left behind by the social changes beginning in this period. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

6 6 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II Death, Grief and Self-Destruction: Life and death are closely interlinked throughout Sons and Lovers, and grief has a palpable and lasting impact on the lives of the characters. Sons and Lovers was concluded in the aftermath of the death of Lawrence’s own mother, and his experiences with grief shape the events of the novel. Death is portrayed as an ever-present force in the novel, something which is both terrifying and, at times, terribly seductive. Throughout the novel, Lawrence demonstrates the ways that people often walk the tenuous line between life and death, and the novel argues that fixating on the past (particularly through grief) can turn this constant threat of death into full-fledged self-destruction. Danger of death was a perpetual threat in mining communities where the book is set, and Lawrence’s own experiences inform his portrayal of day-to-day life in this setting. Mining was an extremely dangerous profession in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although conditions did gradually improve, the risk of death or serious injury meant that mines suffered many fatalities and that early death or widowhood was a common concern in mining communities like “The Bottoms.” Mrs. Morel often worries about her husband’s safety when he is at work or does not return at the usual time. Although she generally assumes that he is out drinking, she worries about what will happen to herself and the children if her husband is killed, since he supports the family financially. This was a typical worry for wives in mining communities. Since industrial mining towns were built for the explicit purpose of housing miners and their families, there was little alternative work nearby, and Paul and William, who do not grow up to be miners, must travel to the nearby cities to find paid work. The dangerous working conditions in the mines therefore caused many potential problems for miners and their families and meant that, even when the coal industry was thriving, death was an ever-present factor in these communities. Due to the constant proximity of death within the novel, grief also has a large impact on the progression of the characters’ lives. William’s death nearly kills Mrs. Morel, because her grief destroys her will to live. It is also insinuated that her health problems begin after William’s death, because of the physical toll that grief takes on her. In turn, Mrs. Morel’s grief impacts the direction Paul’s life takes. Shortly after William’s death, Paul is struck down by pneumonia and is close to death himself. During his illness, Mrs. Morel regrets that her grief for William has caused her to neglect Paul; she feels she should have “watched the living rather than the dead.” Although this is, of course, a harsh judgement she makes about herself (her extreme grief over her child’s death is completely understandable), the guilt she feels causes her to transfer her love for William, whom she loved excessively to compensate for the fact that she does not love her husband, over to Paul. In turn, this transference leads to the development of her close relationship with Paul which, despite Mrs. Morel’s good intentions, contributes to his inability to love other women and to find fulfilling relationships. William’s death sets off a chain of grief that reverberates for years. Then, just as Mrs. Morel was almost destroyed by William’s death, the end of the novel finds Paul reeling from Mrs. Morel’s own demise and he ends the novel in darkness, walking across a field at night. This image potently conveys the emotional experience of grief and underscores the ways in which grief has altered the course of Paul’s life and made it difficult for him to leave the past behind. Despite—or perhaps because of—the devastating effects of loss and grief, many of the characters are drawn towards death and self-destructive behavior throughout the novel. For example, when William moves to London, he sacrifices his health to pursue a shallow, hedonistic lifestyle which he does not even really enjoy. This suggests that William is compelled to ruin his life by self- CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

67 destructive, almost suicidal tendencies. William’s carelessness with his own life, which leads him to squander his money and ruin his health, also impacts the course of Mrs. Morel’s life and contributes to her own untimely death. This chain reaction demonstrates that self-destructive tendencies often have destructive consequences for others, as well as for oneself. Paul also demonstrates self-destructive tendencies and, at several points throughout the novel, feels that he wishes to die. When he leaves Miriam one evening after they have fought, he hopes that he will fall off his bike and be killed. Although in this case, Paul wishes to die to spite Miriam, he frequently feels drawn towards the idea of death and self-obliteration; he feels that such experiences may mirror the loss of self he feels during sex. He also becomes suicidal after Mrs. Morel’s death and feels that he wants to join his mother. What’s more, Paul’s and William’s unconscious attraction to death is also reflective of their relationship with their mother. By focusing on their love for their mother, rather than moving on emotionally to new relationships, the young men reject the possibility for new life (through reproduction and child rearing). That is, their futures contains the inevitable loss of their mother, and Paul and William are so fixated on the past and their mother that they reject this future—creating a kind of symbolic death for themselves by refusing to move on. An unhealthy fixation on the past, the novel suggests, leads to a lack of hope for the future, which can cause individuals to be self-destructive and careless with their own lives. Nature and Industrialism: Lawrence uses nature and the natural world to represent the inner lives of the characters throughout Sons and Lovers, suggesting that human beings are not separate from the natural world but rather extensions of it. Lawrence indicates that the closer and more harmonious the relationship between humans and the natural world, the happier and more fulfilling human lives will be. The further the characters travel from the natural world, the more unstable and unhappy their lives become, as the links between humans and their environment are weakened by processes such as industrialism, mass production, and the materialism of modernity. Nature is a source of beauty, inspiration, hope, and human connection in the novel. The characters in Sons and Lovers are depicted as being at their best when they are surrounded by nature which has not been interfered with by the modern world. For example, after Mrs. Morel has a huge fight with her husband and has been locked out of the house, she comforts herself by looking at the moon and by smelling the flowers that are growing nearby. This suggests that harmony with nature brings harmony within oneself and, after this moment of calm, Mrs. Morel is able to return to her house and persuade her husband to let her back in, thereby making an attempt to heal the rift between them. Another example of nature’s role in human connection shows up in Paul’s sexual relationships with Miriam and with Clara. Both begin in nature: in the woods with Miriam, and on the riverbank with Clara. What’s more, Paul grows up surrounded by nature and is very sensitive and attuned to his environment. This leads him to his career as a painter, as he draws inspiration from the beauty of the natural world. Nature, therefore, is associated with self-expression. The fact that Paul’s self- expression as a painter comes in the form of pictures of natural scenes suggests that to express oneself is also to express the natural world, again emphasizing that humans are part of nature and the environment. Some industrial practices, such as mining, are still closely linked to nature in the novel, even though they represent human interference with the natural world. Although mining is an industrial process and relies on technology and machines, mining is still associated with nature because it is a process which extracts natural resources, and which relies on the land rather than producing something CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

6 8 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II external to the natural world. The mining communities which the Morels are part of, and which are similar to the one that Lawrence himself grew up in, are totally reliant on natural resources for their own survival. For the miners and mining communities, life is dependent on nature and on natural ecosystems, even if the result of this process is ugliness and pollution. The miners, like Mr. Morel, are also shaped by their environment, in the same way that Paul is shaped into an artist by his contact with nature. Mr. Morel prefers to sit in darkness even in the daytime because he is so used to operating in the natural darkness of the mine. Similarly, the bodies of the miners, which grow gradually hunched over time from crouching in the pits, reflect the idea that people’s external environments play large roles in their internal lives. Finally, those furthest from nature in the novel are people who live in the cities and who work in manufacturing, and these people generally end up alienated and unhappy. For example, Paul and William both leave the mining town and get jobs in the city. William takes a job in London, and Paul gets a job closer to home, in Nottingham. Both contract pneumonia because of the long hours, pollution, and poor working conditions in the cities, and William’s death is ultimately associated with his rejection of nature in favor of a materialistic and modern lifestyle. Paul, in contrast, maintains his connection to the natural world and the beautiful countryside he grew up around. Therefore, he recovers from his illness and is eventually able to cut down his hours spent in the city. The contrasting fates of William and Paul reflect both Lawrence’s philosophy—that connection with the natural world is the healthiest and most fulfilling way for people to live—and the real-life conditions in cities in the early twentieth century, in which air pollution, overcrowding, and poor sanitation made for unhygienic and hazardous places to live and work. The novel’s argument about the ills of cities is also reflected in the type of work that Paul does at the factory. Although Paul quite enjoys his job in Nottingham, his life at the factory is described as though he is a cog in a machine, and the manufacture of garments (which he oversees in the factory) is broken down into separate parts undertaken by different individuals. The literal nature of Paul’s work mirrors Lawrence’s belief that modernity and manufacturing jobs alienated people from each other and from their work, unlike the miners who are so defined by their work that they almost become part of the rural landscape. This modern isolation is taken to its logical conclusion through Clara: after she loses her job, she must produce lace alone in her house and is miserable as a result of this alienation from society. Lawrence was deeply opposed to modernity’s interest in materialism and the manufacture of consumer goods, which only increased throughout the twentieth century. He favored a more natural lifestyle in which people had a closer bond with the environment and with natural sources of production. Throughout, the novel argues for Lawrence’s belief that the further humans travel from their connection with nature, the more essentially alienated they become from each other and themselves. 3.5 SUMMARY OF THE UNIT Gertrude (soon to be Mrs. Morel), an intelligent young woman from a middle-class English family, meets a young miner, Mr. Morel, at a country dance. Although Gertrude has a religious and ascetic temperament, she is attracted to Walter Morel’s vigorous nature and CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

69 thinks he is very handsome when she sees him dance at the party. The pair are married a few months later and soon Mrs. Morel becomes pregnant. The first few months of their marriage are happy, but Mrs. Morel finds that she cannot really talk to her husband and that, despite their initial attraction, the couple have little in common. She discovers that Walter is not as wealthy as she believed and that they do not own the house they live in, but rather rent it from Walter’s mother. She dislikes life in the mining community and does not get along with the other women, who find her haughty and superior. Mrs. Morel gives birth to a son, who she names William, and she adores him immensely. Although she and Mr. Morel are still friendly with each other, she has lost interest in him and the rift between them widens after the birth of the child. One morning, when William is a toddler, Mrs. Morel comes downstairs and finds that Mr. Morel has cut all the boy’s hair off. Mrs. Morel is horrified, and this action drives a wedge between her and her husband. She focuses all her love on her son and delights in planning for his future and watching him grow up. Mrs. Morel has a second child, Annie, and then gets pregnant with a third. One day, not long before her due date, a fair comes to town and Mrs. Morel reluctantly goes along to please William, who cannot enjoy the fair without her. While she is there, Mrs. Morel sees that Mr. Morel, who has taken to drinking frequently, is in the beer tent and she is not surprised when he returns home drunk that evening. A few weeks later, there is a public holiday and Mr. Morel uses this time to go out drinking with his friend Jerry Purdy, whom Mrs. Morel cannot stand and who is a misogynist. When Mr. Morel comes back that night, he is very drunk and the couple fight. Mr. Morel locks Mrs. Morel out of the house and she calms herself down by looking at the moon and the flowers in her garden. When she returns, Mr. Morel lets her back in but goes to bed without talking to her. Mrs. Morel gives birth to another boy. One night, shortly after the birth, when she has taken the children out of the house to avoid Mr. Morel’s temper, she sits and watches the sunset on a nearby hill and decides to name the baby Paul. As she looks down at the little infant, she is overcome with guilt and sadness. She thinks that the baby looks sad because she did not want him while she was pregnant. Paul grows into a serious and thoughtful child. William, meanwhile, is very active and charming. Mrs. Morel gives birth to a third son, Arthur, whom Mr. Morel is instantly fond of. When William is old enough, he gets a job as a clerk and is very successful and well-liked. He is offered a position in London and gleefully accepts. Although Mrs. Morel is proud of William, she is devastated to see him leave home. At first, William visits home a lot and sends money to his family. However, as time goes on, he begins to get caught up in city life and spends his money on his fiancée, Louisa Lily Denys Western. William brings the young woman home to meet his family and they are disappointed to find that she acts superior to them and treats them like her servants. As their relationship goes on, William comes to despise his fiancée, but he will not end the engagement. Mrs. Morel is shocked and depressed when, during another visit, William is openly cruel to Louisa. Not long after this, William contracts pneumonia and dies, leaving Mrs. Morel heartbroken. Paul, meanwhile, grows into an intelligent young man and takes a job as a clerk in Nottingham. He enjoys the work and gets along well with his colleagues, but the long CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

7 0 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II hours take a toll on his health. Mrs. Morel continues to grieve for William, and Paul, who is also very close to his mother, is desperate to bring her out of herself and to win her attention back. When Paul is struck down with pneumonia, Mrs. Morel realizes, to her horror, that she has neglected him. She does everything in her power to nurse him back to health. Paul recovers well and from then on, Mrs. Morel is committed to him and pins all her hopes for the future on him. During his time off work after his illness, Paul begins to visit a nearby farm owned by Mr. Leivers. He strikes up an unusual friendship with the Leivers’daughter, Miriam, who is very timid, religious, and intellectual. Mrs. Morel dislikes her and feels that she is bad for Paul. Although Paul and Miriam get along well, there is a physical awkwardness between them. They are both immature and neither understands that they are attracted to each other. Mrs. Morel watches their relationship closely and wishes that Paul would break things off; she is jealous of the time he spends with Miriam. Paul returns to his job at the factory after a while, but his hours are shorter and he has more time to work on his painting, which is his real interest. During this time, Miriam realizes that she is in love with Paul, but she feels ashamed of this physical attraction because it clashes with her religious views. Miriam does not tell Paul about her feelings. The family goes on holiday to the seaside and Miriam goes with them. Paul spends most of his time with Mrs. Morel, however, and only sees Miriam in the evenings. Around this time, Paul wins a prize for his painting in a Nottingham exhibition. One night, he meets Miriam at the exhibition along with a young woman called Clara Dawes. Clara is married to a man named Baxter, who works in the same factory as Paul, but the pair have separated. Paul thinks Clara is snooty and believes she is a “man hater” because she is involved with the suffragettes. He also dislikes Baxter, who was rude to him on his first day at the factory. Miriam and Paul continue their platonic relationship, but it puts a strain on them, as they both wish to become a couple but do not know how to do so. Paul resents Miriam because he feels she is too spiritual and that this hampers him from behaving physically, or being “ordinary,” with her. Miriam is hurt and confused, but she continues to maintain that she is good for Paul and that he “belongs to her.” One night, when Paul is out with Miriam, Mrs. Morel is taken ill. When Paul returns, Annie berates him for neglecting his mother. Paul tries to break things off with Miriam, but he still visits the farm often because he is friends with her brother, Edgar. One afternoon, Paul is invited to Miriam’s house to have tea with Clara Dawes. Although Paul still dislikes Clara, he finds her impressive and attractive. Not long after this, Paul delivers a parcel to Clara’s house, which is near the factory where he works. He learns that she lives with her mother, Mrs. Radford, and that she is desperately unhappy. Paul gets Clara a job in the factory, but still finds her haughty and reserved at work. Her presence irritates him and he goes out of his way to annoy her. During the summer, Paul and Miriam get engaged, but Paul breaks off the engagement several weeks later. He strikes up a relationship with Clara but continues to see Miriam often. Baxter Dawes finds out about Paul and Clara, and Baxter and Paul get into a fight in a pub. Baxter later attacks Paul in the dark, while he is walking back from Clara’s house. Paul is not seriously hurt and feels a strange bond with Baxter after this incident. During this period, Mrs. Morel’s health begins to decline. While she is on holiday in CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

71 Sheffield, staying with Annie, she falls ill and is diagnosed with cancer. Paul is horrified at the thought that his mother may die. He stays in Sheffield to nurse her and, while he is there, learns that Baxter is in the hospital nearby, recovering from typhoid. Paul goes to visit him, and the two men become friends. After a few weeks, Mrs. Morel is able to travel home, but it is understood by everyone that she will not live very long. Although Paul is still in contact with both Miriam and Clara, he finds that he no longer cares for them and he dedicates all his time to caring for his mother. Mrs. Morel dies gradually and painfully; Annie and Paul, who care for her, can hardly bear the strain. Finally, after Mrs. Morel has grown unbearably ill, Paul poisons her with the painkillers he has been given by the doctor. She is buried alongside William, and Mr. Morel can no longer bear to live in the house that he shared with his wife. He and Paul move out and take separate lodgings in Nottingham. Not long after Mrs. Morel’s death, Paul goes on a trip to the seaside with Baxter and invites Clara to join them. He has lost all interest in her, and in life generally since his mother’s death, and he is suicidal with grief. He believes that Clara wishes to reconcile with Baxter and arranges things so that he leaves them together in the cottage. Clara is angry with Paul for manipulating her, but she does forgive Baxter and agrees to return to him as his wife. For a long time after this, Paul wishes to die and feels he has no connection with life. One night, he sees Miriam outside church and invites her back to his house. Miriam is sad to see that he has deteriorated and suggests that they get married. Paul rejects her, and Miriam decides that she will never see him again. After she has gone, Paul catches a car out into the country and walks across the fields in the dark. He calls out to his mother and wishes to end his life so he can be with her. He is determined not to die, however, and knows he cannot kill himself. Miserable yet resolute, Paul walks back across the dark fields, in the direction of the town. 3.6 CONCLUSION In Sons and Lovers Lawrence is concerned above all to offer a subtle, balanced and truthful account of a highly complex reality, and he does so through the integration of the formal elements of drama and poetry, the achievement of an organic unity, and the maintenance of an almost clinical artistic impersonality. Although the carefully sustained equilibrium between sympathy and judgement is occasionally disturbëd by authorial intrusions of the kind referred to earlier, when the narrator affirms that Morel had ‘denied the God in him’ (p. 102), or when we are informed that already, as he looks out of the window of the library reading-room, Paul was a ‘prisoner of industrialism’ (p. 131), such instances are rare, because this equipoise—this balanced view of every character, relationship and human situation—is an essential aspect of Lawrence’s art. It is manifested in the superbly realistic ambivalence of the novel’s conclusion, which is created by Lawrence’s emphasis on the almost overwhelming complexity of Paul’s final moral and instinctual choice. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

72 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II 3.7 KEYWORDS/ABBREVIATIONS 1. Fiancee: a person to whom another is engaged to be married. 2. Intimacy: close familiarity or friendship. 3. Seashore: an area of sandy, stony or rocky land bordering and level with the sea. 4. Vicariously: acting or done for another person 5. Bound: going towards somewhere. 6. Eroticized: give erotic qualities to. 7. Transcendence: not realizable in experience. 3.8 LEARNINGACTIVITY 1. What is the theme of the novel Sons and Lovers? 2. How one can consider Sons and Lovers a psychological novel? 3. Comment on Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers as a novel about human relationships. 3.9 UNIT END QUESTIONS (DESCRIPTIVE, SHORT & MCQS) (A) Descriptive Questions 1. Discuss Sons and Lovers as a modern novel. 2. Discuss the importance of the title Sons and Lovers? 3. In Sons and Lovers, how can the relationship between Paul and his mother be categorised? (B) Short Questions 1. When and why does Clara return to her husband? Ans. Baxter Dawes once becomes seriously ill and he imagines that he is going to die soon. When Clara comes to know about Dawes condition, she is obviously moved. Remorse fully she says that she has been very rude to him. She further admits that her husband has loved thousand times better than Paul. Thus Clara ultimately returns to her husband and become man and wife again. 2. How does Paul react to his mother’s death? Ans. At his mother’s death Paul bewails the event most lamentably. He, alike a possessive, did not CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

73 allow the neighbors to see the dead body. At the sometime Paul is angry with him father for sentimentalizing over the death of his wife. A kind of nihilism overcomes the young man and there is a kind of emptiness in the objects about him. 3. Give the first name of Mrs. Morel and the names of her children. Whom did she love best among her children? Ans. Mrs. Morel’s full name is Mrs. Gertrude Morel belonging to a middle class family of the coppards. Mrs. Morel gave birth to four children-Three sons and one daughter. They are William, Paul, Arthur and Annie respectively. Among her children Paul was favourite. 4. Once, while teaching Miriam algebra, “Paul threw the pencil in her face”- What does this express? Ans. The thought processes of Paul are not only sadistic but positively cruel. Paul’s nature is fierce and as he once threw a pencil at Miriam’s face, his anger burst like a bubble surcharged’. Paul is found getting angry when his ego is confronted with a foreign threat. 5. Where does William go to work, and in what capacity? Ans. When William of thirteen his mother got him a job in an office. There he becomes a best shorthand Clark and book-keeper. When William was 19 years, he left his office for a job in Nottingham. But finally, William got a job in London on an attractive salary of hundred and twenty a year. 6. “Never my lord, I’d wait on a dog at the door first “- Who says this and to whom? What was the consequence of it? Ans. One day when Mr. Morel came home and asked if there was anything to eat, Mrs. Morel uncivilly and sarcastically spoke to him thus. All this enraged Mr. Morel and flung the drawer at her. A corner of it caught her brow and it began to bleed. 7. Who was ‘Gypsy’? Ans. ‘Gypsy’ was the name of the girl with whom William, white in London, fell in love. Her real name was Louisa Lily Denys Western. 8. Why didn’t Paul and Miriam get their first love kiss? Ans. There was certainly love in them but they did not accept that they were loves. They said that they were only friends. The intimacy between the two was platonic. Their purity prevented even their first love-kiss. (C) Multiple Choice Questions 1. Who makes the Morel family uncomfortable? (from Death in the Family) (a) Paul’s boss (b) William’s fiance (c) The midwife (d) Mr. Heaton 2. On what day does Clara join Paul’s family for tea? (from Passion) (a) Sunday (b) Saturday (c) Friday (d) Monday 3. Who does Paul seem to be following in the footsteps of in Mrs. Morel’s eyes? (from Lad-and- Girl Love) (a) Mrs. Morel (b) Annie (c) Mr. Morel (d) William 4. What is one thing that Miriam absolutely does not want to be? (from Lad-and-Girl Love) CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

7 4 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II (a) An employee (b) A mother (c) A farmer’s wife (d) A teacher 5. Who actively tries to keep Paul and Miriam apart? (from Lad-and-Girl Love) (a) Annie (b) Mrs. Morel (c) Miriam’s brothers (d) Mr. Morel. 6. What causes William to die? (from Death in the Family) (a) Ear infection (b) Scarlet fever (c) Pneumonia (d) A wound from an animal 7. What activity does Miriam invite Paul to do in the chapter, “Derelict”? (from Derelict) (a) Have a French lesson (b) Eat dinner (c) Have tea (d) Go swimming 8. What is causing Mrs. Morel’s illness? (from Baxter Dawes) (a) An infection (b) A mental disorder (c) A heart disease (d) A tumor Answers: 1. (c), 2. (a), 3. (a), 4. (c), 5. (b), 6. (c), 7. (d), 8. (d) 3.10 REFERENCES Black, Michael. D H Lawrence: The Early Fiction. Palgrave MacMillan, 1986. Black, Michael. Sons and Lovers. Landmarks of World Literature.Cambridge University Press, 1992. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

75 UNIT - IV NOVEL IN 20TH CENTURY STRUCTURE 4.0 Learning Objectives 4.1 Introduction 4.2 20th Century Novel 4.3 Characteristics of 20th century novel 4.4 Twentieth Century Novelists 4.5 Factors affected 20th Century Novels 4.6 Summary of the Unit 4.7 Conclusion 4.8 Keywords/Abbreviations 4.9 Learning Activity 4.10 Unit End Questions (Descriptive, Short & MCQs) 4.11 References 4.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After reading this unit, the students will be able to: Display a working knowledge of international fiction of the 20th century Identify and describe distinct literary characteristics of modern literature Write analytically about modern literature using MLA guidelines Effectively communicate ideas related to modern works during class and group activities 4.1 INTRODUCTION The twentieth century broke with the mission of the Victorian novel which is storytelling and entertainment it rather focuses on character to unravel the intricate web of thoughts and feelings that activate the individual. Many novels were mainly concerned with propaganda and social issues. Early in the twentieth century the novel was impacted by the works of some prominent nineteenthcentury writers such as the Russians Feodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstory, and the French CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

7 6 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II novelists Honoré de Balzac, Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, and Gustave Flaubert. From them they learned to present people as they usually are: neither wholly good nor bad, but with a mixture of character traits. The older structure of a protagonist and antagonist (or hero and villain) gave way. In modern works, one seldom encounters a villain, pure and simple. Characters struggle with themselves or with a situation, but not with a figure of evil incarnate. 4.2 20TH CENTURY NOVEL The modern age is essentially the age of the novel. This is the most important and popular medium in modern times. English fiction (novel) is the only literary form which can compete for popularity with the film and the radio. The publication of new English fiction (novel) by a novelist is received now with the same enthusiastic response as a new comedy by Dryden or Congreve was received in the Restoration Period and a new volume of poems by Tennyson during the Victorian Period. Poetry, which had for many centuries, held the supreme place in the realm of literature had lost that position. The main reason for this change is that the novel is the only literary form which meets the needs of the modern world. 4.3 CHARACTERISTICS OF 20TH CENTURY NOVEL Realism: The novel of the Modern Age is realistic in nature. The realistic writer is one who thinks that truth to observed facts (facts about the outer world or his own feelings) is the great thing, while an idealist writer wants to create a pleasant picture. The modern novelist is realistic in this sense. He tries to include within the limits of the novel almost everything and not a merely one-sided view of it. Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Eliot’s Middlemarch had proven that the novel can be made as flexible as life itself. modern novelists have continued this experiment still further, and are trying tomake the novel more elegant and flexible. Love for Romance: Against the tendency of realism and materialism perceptible in the early years of the 20th century with an accent on the discussion of social problems, stands the tendency for the criticism of material values, and a love for sex, romance, and adventure. The note of disillusionment against the realism in fiction and too much concentration on material values of life was sounded by psychological novelists of the age like Virginia Woolf and a few critics of modern life like Samuel Butler, Huxley, Forester etc. Samuel Butler satirized the realism of modern civilization and its insistence on machinery in Erewhon. Virginia Woolf, too, severely criticised the Edwardian Realism. Frank in Sexual Matters. During the Georgian Period, a new tendency began to be perceptible in English fiction, and it centred around the glorification of sex and primal human emotions and passions. The Victorian CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

77 Novelists showed no interest in the naked dance of sex and their novels they preferred married love over illegal flirtation. The Victorian’s anti-sexuality got a great jolt by the Georgian novelists who presented sex- relationships in their novels. Sexual frankness is used by writers like D.H. Lawrence. The result is that whereas the earlier English novel generally dealt with the theme of the relation between gentility and morality, the modern novel deals with the relationship between loneliness and love. Stream of Consciousness Technique: According to Diaches, Stream of Consciousness is a means of escape from the tyranny of the time dimension. The stream of consciousness technique is a revolutionary modern technique which had tried to transform the art of narrative almost in every respect. The first user of this technique was the French novelist EdouardDujardin. The phrase “Stream of Consciousness” however was coined by the psychologist William James who wrote Principles of Psychology (1890). By calling consciousness a stream, James meant that human consciousness in something fluid; it is an unbroken current of feelings, impressions, fantasies, half-formed thoughts and awareness in general. Consciousness is continuity like time and is independent of time. At any given instance of time, an individual’s consciousness may not be entirely concerned with the present. He may be living through an experience of the past or fantasies about the future. Advantages: The Stream of Consciousness Technique bestows at least three major advantages on the novelists. They are: Freedom from the constraints of time Complete objectivity Greater inwardness and profundity Disadvantages: There are mainly two disadvantages; Disregard for material/outer reality. Lack of form and pattern and even meaning Novel of Ideas In the first decades of the 20th century, English fiction was mainly confined to the discussion of problems, confronting us in social life. The Edwardian novel was essentially a novel of ideas including in its scope, a free discussion of all kinds of ideas; scientific, social, political industrial and so forth. The Edwardian novelists considered it to be a sin to escape into a world of romance and psychology when the gaping wounds of social life were pleading for reform and healthy treatment. H.G. Wells, Galsworthy, Arnold Bennet particularly centralized their attention to the social problems of their times and made the novel an instrument of social propaganda. 4.4 TWENTIETH CENTURY NOVELISTS The novels of the nineteenth century were written at a time when there was confidence and CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

7 8 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II stability in British society. But the twentieth-century novels are influenced by the changes in beliefs and political ideas after the events of the First World War and the disappearance of the British Empire. This change can be noticed if we look at the works of the two writers who are not so far from other in terms of time. August Wilson: His novels present a picture of modern twentieth century life and its problems. But he uses the traditional form of novel. His novels contain various sorts of characters, but all of them belong to the same middle class social group. His stories, which belong to his earlier collections, are satirical and express moral judgments indirectly. His Anglo Saxon Attitude is about a historian’s life who is compelled by some events to tell the truth. His another novel The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot is about a woman’s life who makes herself familiar with the outside world around her, in spite of the family’s suggestion to live a lonely life after her husband. Her other novels are No Laughing Matter and As If By Magic. Rudyard Kipling: He was born and brought up in India. He spent most of his adult life there when it was under the rule of the British Empire. In his best works, The Jungle Book and Kim he has written with great confidence about Indian wildlife, British army, Navy, power and glory of the British Empire. At this time the power and influence of British Empire was at its height. Kipling wrote with the hope that the beliefs and values of his stories are accepted and shared completely by his readers. E.M. Forster: Forster wrote novels a short time later than Kipling. He held the different view of India and the British Empire. The main theme of this novel was human relationship. Howard’s End explores the relation between inward feeling and outward behavior. There are two families The Wilcoxes and the Schlegel, who believes in two different aspects of life, material and spiritual, respectively. Foster’s theme is how to connect these two aspects of life, the outer and the inner. Only this connection will make human love of a higher and greater kind. A Passage to India is a Forster’s masterpiece in which he takes the relations between the English and the Indians in the early 1920’s. Adela Quested, and English girl comes to India to marry an English officer. She makes friendship with some Indians and travels with them. Once she accuses an Indian of sexually attacking her in the cave. The case begins in the court. This incidence breaks the relationship between the English and the Indians. Forster as a liberal humanist is on the side of Indian independence. His main theme in this novel is the importance of bringing together opposites in order to create unity. Arnold Bennett: He used the traditional form of the novel, but with realistic presentation of the details of the characters. Most of his novels are set in the five towns, the center of English Pottery industry. His novels deal with the lives of the same sort of people of the industrial society. They present the dull and difficult picture of life. His famous novels include, Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways and These Twain. H.G. Wells: He also often took characters from a lower social level, but many of his characters are given a chance of happiness. Kipps and The History of Mr Polly both deal with men working in shops. They think that money and running away change their lives. But they do not bring them what they hoped for. At the end of the novels they know better what they need to be happy. Wells also used modern scientific advances in his novels in a new way. The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The First Men on the Moon, use the material of science. He also wrote Ann CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

79 Veronica about a girl who wants to choose for herself what to do in life, which in many ways also looks ahead to the women’s movement much later this century. Somerset Maugham: He is good novelist, but his popularity as a story writer is even higher. His first novel, Lisa of Lambeth presents a realistic picture of slum life. Of Human Bondage is his autobiographical novel which shows the difficulties that the writer met in his early life. In The Moon and Sixpence a French artist tries to break away and fight against the conventional society. Maugham satirizes the social and literary life of the English people in Cakes and Ale. Ashenden is his well known collection of short stories. His stories often have a bitter or unexpected ending. D.H. Lawrence: He created a new kind of novel. He believed that a novelist’s duty is to show how a person’s view of his own personality is influenced by the conventions of language, family and religion and how a person’s relation with other people is always changing. Sons and Lovers is his autobiographical novel, which deals about his attachment to his mother. Paul Morel, the hero of the novel is brought in the English Midlands as Lawrence was brought up. The novel is mainly concerned with the relationship between Paul and his mother. Paul wants to be a creative artist, but for this he has to free himself from the influence of his mother and take his own decisions in his personal matters. The novel ends with the mother’s death and a sort of liberation for the hero. The Rainbow deals with the story of three couples of families of different ages. He takes three generations and explores all the basic human relationship- relationship between man and his environment, men and woman, intellect and instinct and different generations. The first couple has a deep and loving understanding of each other, the second couple has a physical passion for each other, and the third couple use language as a wall to keep them apart and each tries to force their own wishes on the other. James Joyce: He was born and brought up in Ireland. He is noted for his experimental use of language and exploration of new literary method. Dubliners are his collection of short stories which gives the realistic pictures of Dublin life with symbolic meaning. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is his autobiographical novel in which Joyce has appeared in the form of his hero, Stephan Dedalus, who is under the influence of Irish nationality, politics and religion. But he realizes that the artist must be outside the society in order to be objective. So to make himself free he escapes from Dublin life. James Joyce’s Ulysses is one of the strangest novels written in English. Stephen Dedalus also appears as a character in Ulysses. The central character, Leopold Bloom is an antihero rather than a hero. The characters and some events of the novel have been derived from Old Greek stories, as the title suggests. The novel is concerned with the artist and the nature of the artistic creation. Joyce has used stream of consciousness technique a new style of writing, in this novel. It is funny, satirical and partly realistic work and it contains many literary references and many kinds of language. Virginia Woolf: She has also used the technique of stream of consciousness in her novels. But unlike Joyce she is interested to explore the consciousness in her novels. But unlike Joyce she is interested to explore the consciousness of her novels. To the Lighthouse has an abrupt opening without any background of setting. A family is on holiday in Scotland. The intense of James Ramsay, a six year boy to visit to the lighthouse by boat is prevented by his father, Mr. Ramsay. The novel ends with the revisiting of the house by the same family ten years later. James Ramsay finally goes to the lighthouse with his father unwillingly. He hates his father both for preventing him to go at the earlier time as well as insisting him to go at last. The novel presents a fine pattern of symbolic CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

8 0 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II relations and the study of the moral and psychological problems. Woolf’s Orlando might be called a symbolic biography of the author’s friend, Victoria Saukville- West, with the hero, Orlando. In the novel, Orlando begins as a man in the sixteenth century and ends as a man in 1928. It is a lively and humorous work containing a considerable number of private jokes. Woolf also wrote other novels and critical writings. Graham Greene: He divides his many books into two groups. In the first group there are sophisticated adventure stories which he calls entertainments. His next group contains serous novels in which he explores the difference between human decency and religious virtue, between moral intention and irreligious act. The characters, which are seen nearer to God, are failure than those who are successful in worldly affairs. Brighton Rock and The Power and the Glory are his famous novels. William Golding: He is a symbolic novelist. His first and well known novel Lord of the Flies has been probably the most powerful English novel written since the war. It is the story told with clear realism and symbolic meaning of a group of small children wrecked on a desert island. The novel shows how the effects of civilization break down and they return to their essential animal nature. For, Golding it is the essential nature of all human beings. His later novels also contain his sense of human inadequacy and his own vision of man. Anthony Burgess: He wrote various sorts of novels. He praised Joyce and imitated his way of using language. His early three novels, which have the setting of Malaya take a lot form Forster’s A Passage to India. A Clockwork Orange is his most famous novel, which present the picture of the future in which a character named Alex willingly chooses the evil course in his life. He intends to hurt the people and to make them suffer the pain because he takes delight in doing so. Later he is taken to the doctor for cure. Burgess here wants to make a moral point that Alex can choose both the options, either good or evil. The language of the novel contains words from other languages, particularly Russian. The Wanting Seed is his satirical novel, which has the setting of the future England. Evelyn Waugh: He is famous as the greatest comic novelist of the century. He satirizes the unpleasant situations by presenting comic events of characters who are often treated unkindly. The events of comic situations are impossible to believe, but they are very amusing indeed. His first novel Decline and Fall is about a young man’s innocence and the world’s dishonesty. Scoop is a very humorous novel in which a wrong British reporter is sent to East Africa during the war. When he returns another man is rewarded for the act which the first man did not do. His later novels Men at Arms and Officers and Gentleman are serious and religious. George Orwell: He became a very famous writer, mainly because of his political and critical writing. His best works are written on the political subjects. There is no doubt that he is considered to be the most important political writer after the war. Orwell presents with great clarity, the realities of social and political life of this time. In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four he describes how government uses language in order to hide the truth and betray the people. The novel gives a picture of a future world where the state provides a kind of television for the people to watch. The state slowly changes people’s language and only such words are left in use among the people, which are suitable for the purpose of the state. Thus, the language and action are controlled in order to control the people by the state Orwell CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

81 realizes that people must be given their freedom and the state should not control them so strictly. Animal Farm is his best-known novel. It is a political allegory which presents wrong political events and revolution which were carried out just to capture the power and rule over the country. He satirizes the absolute power holders who always believed in suppressing the people and fulfilling their selfish desires. This is very well done by the novelist by using the animal characters. In the story of the novels the animals on the farm are led by the pigs to dismiss their master Jones. But when they hold the power, they become as selfish and cruel as their master Jones. Women Writers of Twentieth Century Novels and Prose: One of the interesting development in the twentieth century literature is the remarkable increase in the number of women writers especially novelist. Some woman novelist, generally deals with the same kind of subjects as men do, for example, Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch. Ivy Compton-Burnett: Her novels deal with the family life in a very original way. She presents the reality of Victorian family life in her novels. Mostly her cruel and evil characters succeed where as good characters remain unsuccessful in their lives. No force form outside or inside can change her characters. The bad are never punished and good are never rewarded. In her novels she deals with the traditions of the Victorian family to show that the realities of their lives are basically cruel and destructive. Her famous novels include Brothers and Sisters, Parents and Children and A Heritage and its History. Doris Lessing: She is mainly concerned with the women’s problems in her novels. Her first novel, The Grass is Singing is about the sad life of a poor white farmer’s wife. It has the setting of Southern Africa. In Children of Violence the central character, Martha Quest, tries to break away from old social ideas and traditions in order to live a free life. In her famous novel, The Golden Notebook, Lessing deals with women’s lives, beliefs and problems with her great courage, power and honesty. She explores how the pressures of the social and political events have been put on women. The people in the novel are seen hostile and unfriendly towards women. They hurt and treat female characters cruelly because they themselves are weak. Margaret Drabble: Her novels also present women as main characters. But they do not express ideas and feelings much about themselves; rather they are concerned mainly to receive higher education. In her novels, The Millstone and The Waterfall the central characters who find themselves in loneliness and frustration are brought into the happy world with love and human feelings. Drabble creates a picture of unhappy in The Ice Age. The people in the novel are seen unhappy because they only live in one part of their personality. It is shown as a danger to the whole of society. Over a few decades, there has been a tremendous interest in the books written by and about women. Virago Press has helped in this field by publishing the books about women and their experience. Several important women writers from the first half of the country include Rebecca West, Elizabeth Bowen, Storm Jameson and Rosamond Lehman. They have found a new audience in this way. Science Fiction: The stories which are based on developments in science technology are known as science fiction. Because of the development in science many writers have turned to the subject of science in their writing. Their work includes either exciting developments or fictional developments of the future. Early science fiction falls into three main areas:- * If the present scientific developments are carried further, it may be dangerous to man and CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

8 2 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II destroy the human races. * What may happen after man has defeated the problem of war, disease and poverty- perhaps he will be able to go beyond the limits of the human body and gain some of qualities of machines. * Although man may have lost something of natural life on earth; he can explore the world of space. Many writers who have been mentioned in terms of their other work have also written science fiction. One of such writers is H.G. Wells. He was very interested in the scientific advances of his age and looked ahead to imagine what the result might be in the future. He was optimistic about the advantages of science. Many of his novels present a struggle between two ways of life, the human and the non-human. Like Wells there are other writers who have written in the area of science fiction, such as E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, Kingsley Amis and Doris Lessing. George Orwell and Anthony Burgess also give pictures of a future world in their work. There is another group of writers who have mainly written science fiction. John Wyndham in The Day of the Triffids and The Krakam Wakes show a different world after the destruction of present society. Brian Aldiss has written many books in this area. His Graybeard presents a group of people trying to be alive even after the destruction of most of the world. Arthur C. Clarke has written many science fictions, including The City and the Stars. His 2001: A Space Odyssey is about the exploration in the space. 4.5 FACTORSAFFECTED 20TH CENTURY NOVEL 1. Modernism introduced a new kind of narration to the novel, one that would change the entire soul of novel writing. The novelists have a conscious desire to change traditional ways of representation and express the new sensibilities of their time. 2. The war was a common theme shared by many novelists, including the social changes caused by the war. Many popular novels simply included pre-war plots about spies or romantic encounters onto a wartime setting. 3. “The history of humanity’s changing attitudes toward space and time ... the history of our growing understanding of the universe and the position of our species in that universe.” Robert Scholes. 4. Science fiction developed and boomed in the 20th century, as the deep integration of science and inventions into daily life encouraged a greater interest in literature that explores the relationship between technology, society, and the individual. 5. The rapid industrial growth that began in Great Britain during the middle of the eighteenth century and extended into the United States for the next 150 years provided a wide range of material for many nineteenth-century writers. 6. Charles Dickens’s realistic and ironic depictions of industrial towns in Hard Times (1854), underscored the deleterious affects of urbanization on the working class. Works by Benjamin Disraeli, Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontë sisters, and W. M. Thackeray also presented accurate CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

83 accounts of the industrialisation. 7. Christianity, encompassing the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Protestant faiths, asserted a tremendous influence on the literature of the twentieth century. 8. At the beginning of the twentieth century, literature challenged those beliefs and placed religion behind such scientific, political and psychological theories. There are examples of novelists who have spoken out directly against religious orthodoxies in their works such as: E.M. Forster, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. 9. Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) 10. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) 11. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) 12. James Joyce (1882-1941) 13. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) 14. In conclusion, the twentieth-century novels are influenced by the changes in beliefs and political ideas after the events of the WWI and the disappearance of the British Empire. 4.6 SUMMARY OF THE UNIT Fred B. Millet, in his book “Contemporary British Literature”, states that “the physical environment in which the men of letter and artists live conditions their production in the most intimate and elusive of ways”. In this respect the twentieth century novelists are of no exception. Their writings are profoundly conditioned by the new climate of social and moral experience culminating from “the thoroughgoing transformation of the physical world” around them. Factors such as a world war reveling out-numbered atrocities of what man had done to man, the fact of the Bomb, and the realization that Hitler’s concentration camps were no different from Statin’s camps in the Soviet Union heightened the awareness of literary intellectuals who where then prepared to be ‘less deceived’. Perhaps, in an atmosphere of such disillusionment and dissatisfaction, the novel proved to be the only suitable literary genre. Its openness and flexibility, owing to its lack of any obligatory structure, style or subject-matter permitted the writer to fulfill the desire for self-expression. However, this is not to say that the characteristics of the fiction of 20th century are the same as those of the previous centuries. Fluenced by the rapidly changing social, political and intellectual environment, the novel became predominantly realistic in tone. Furthermore, the impetus of the scientific influence upon fiction stimulated the accurate and impartial observation of the contemporary world. For example Conrad who despite being a romantic artist has a content of realism in his writing. In his novel, ‘Heart of Darkness’, he offsets his most exotic scenes by minutely observed details. On one hand, there is the seduction of the savage life all around, on the other, there are Marlow’s routine tasks bandaging the leaky steam pipes and supervising the native fireman who would otherwise be “clapping his hand and stamping his feet”. According to Conrad a novelist’s purpose ought to be “by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel, before all to make you see”. In order to fulfill this CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

8 4 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II purpose, the writer of 20th century fiction makes use of powerful imagery and symbols. For instance, Conrad in ‘Heart of Darkness’ employs an obvious image of light and darkness to bring out the natural darkness of the jungle of Congo ,as well as the darkness in the heart of the white-men. Similarly ,in Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’, the alternating light and darkness of the lighthouse symbolizes the rhythm of joy and sorrow in human life and the alternating radiance of even the most intimate human relationship. Commenting upon Woolf’s imagery David Lodge writes: ‘Woolf exemplifies very clearly the tendency among modernist writers to develop from a metonymic (realistic)to a metaphoric (symbolist) representation of experience’. Her recurrent images, e.g., ‘sea’, ‘wave’, coined with impressionism signify the ‘ebb and flow’ of human life’. Another unique feature of 20th c. fiction is the presentation of unconscious mind as against portrayal of conscious activities in Victorian novels. This development in the fictional writing owes to the advancement in analytical psychology. With this experimentation in literary form the phrase, ‘stream of consciousness’ found its way into literary criticism, it is defined as a representation of continuous flow of sense perceptions, thoughts, feelings and memories in the human mind usually in a disjointed form of ‘interior monologue’. To elucidate further, the steam of consciousness is the subject matter while interior monologue is a technique of presenting it. In an attempt to defend this technique, Virginia Woolf, in ‘The Common Reader’ states “…life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the tasks of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumcised spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display with as little mixture of the alien and the external as possible?’’. Nothing perhaps could better illustrate this technique than the opening page of “Jacob’s Room”, where Woolf gives the child’s impressions of the sands—the rock pool. The red faced holiday makers asleep, the sheep’s skulls with seeming inconsequence and with the shock of a first encounter. It is important to note here that it is this technique which gave rise to complicated characterization in 20th c. fiction. Yet another feature reflected by the 20th century fiction is the distaste for the element of plot shared by almost all its writers. There is little or no trace of an elaborate concatenation of events. This looseness of form admitted of an inclusiveness which permitted the insertion of another’s comment on life and characters. In Woolf and Joyce the plot may be said to be non-existent . The 20th c fiction also reflects a freedom in the representation of sexual behavior which was previously not allowed, e.g., in ‘A Portrait’, Joyce describes Stephen’s (protagonist) first sexual encounter. Having discussed some of the salient features of 20th c. fiction, let us focus on the thematic concerns of the three chosen writers. Conrad’s strength as a novelist lies in his penetrating insight into the heart of a modern man. He perceived man’s fate being threatened not merely by natural and impersonal forces, but also by evil in the heart of man, and weakness and uncertainly in his own. His writings depict his fascination for situations that are extreme and which test humans to their uttermost limits. His characters do not always survive that test for instance, Kurtz in CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

85 ‘Heart of Darkness’ found to be ‘hollow at the core’ and thus crumbles under pressure while Jim in ‘Lord Jim’partly failed. Moreover, with the employment of ‘complex narrative techniques and devices such as ‘time shifting’, and the presentation of ‘changing view points’, he is often found examining political issue, colonial system and man’s inherent strengths and weaknesses .In fact, the empire is a crucial setting in Conrad’s writing. ‘Heart of Darkness’ represents the white-man in Congo, while ‘Nostromo’ is set in a Central American Republic. If Victorian novelists examined society, Woolf examines individuals. In ‘Mrs Dalloway’, set in the post war period, she presents one day in the life of Mrs. Dalloway and hence the idea of a whole life-time. Moreover, in Woolf’s world is a pathos evoted by the perception of the transistoriness. ‘To the Lighthouse’ is good of this. Another aspect of her novel is the theme of communication which in all its forms is a significant theme in many 20c novels, e.g., Mrs Ramsay incarnates the feeling for privacy for the desire to be freed of intrusion into the private world and sometimes a desire to communicate to acquire certainty that can only be brought to a mind through its relationship with the outside world and other people. Orwell is apolitical writer. Increasingly disillusioned by communism and the fascism prevalent in 1930s he formed ‘Animal farm’ in which he uses the example of a small farm on which the animals rebel against their human owners as an emblem for the corruption of communication and totalitarianism ( particularly Russian revolution in 1917), and the urge of man to dominate his fellows. In fact all his writings depicts that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely. In ‘Nineteen eighty-four’, Orwell extends many of idea of Animal Farm. He brings to life with remarkable vividness the appalling seedy decay of the world of 84. The world is permanently at war, the war being an excuse to justify privation and to rally the masses. Perhaps Orwell summed up his thoughts in “Nineteen eight-four”: Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past”. In conclusion, the writers of 20th c. fiction appear to be ‘engaged’ in revealing the feeling of fear and impending room created by the onward march of civilization. Their writings are a “kaleidoscope’ of impression, thoughts and literary styles, reflecting man’s disillusionment resulting from the unfulfilled promise of material well being. Perhaps what George Orwell wrote in his essay “Why I write” manifests the motif of all the writers of 20th c. fiction: “I write…because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention,…But I could not do the work of writing a book,…if it were not also an aesthetic experience”. 4.7 CONCLUSION This unit has demonstrated that writers played an important role in people’s emancipation inthe twentieth century in Europe. English writers broke with the traditional issues of the Victorian novel related to the storytelling and entertainment and focussed on individuals and their daily dilemmas, CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

8 6 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II developing propaganda and social concerns. Prominent among the twentieth century writers, David Herbert Lawrence abundantly uses Oedipus complex to reveal the social discomfort many British citizens are caught in their dissatisfaction with social norms and principles. 4.8 KEYWORDS/ABBREVIATIONS 1. propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view. 2. enthusiastic: having or showing intense and eager enjoyment, interest, or approval. 3. disillusionment: a feeling of disappointment resulting from the discovery that something is not as good as one believed it to be. 4. perceptible: able to be seen or noticed. 5. inadequacy: the state or quality of being inadequate; lack of the quantity or quality required. 6. orthodoxies: authorized or generally accepted theory, doctrine, or practice 4.9 LEARNINGACTIVITY 1. What do you know by the novel? Describe in detail origin of novel in English literature. 2. What do you know about 20th century novel in English literature? 3. What are the characteristics of 20th century novels? 4.10 UNIT END QUESTIONS (DESCRIPTIVE, SHORT & MCQS) (A) Descriptive Questions 1. What is novel? And write down about 20th century novel. 2. Who are the novelists of 20th century? Discuss in detail. 3. Which factors affected 20th century novels? (B) Short Questions 1. What are the main features of 20th century novel? Ans. Characteristics of 20th Century Literature CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

87 Fragmented Structure. Prior to the 20th century, literature tended to be structured in linear, chronological order. ... Fragmented Perspective. If there’s one thing readers could count on before the 20th century, it was the reliability of an objective narrator in fiction. ... The Novel of the City. ... Writing from the Margins. 2. Which type of novel emerged in early 20th century? Ans. The twentieth century broke with the mission of the Victorian novel which is storytelling and entertainment it rather focuses on character to unravel the intricate web of thoughts and feelings that activate the individual. Many novels were mainly concerned with propaganda and social issues. 3. Who called the 20th century the age of extremes? Ans. Eric Hobsbawm Vintage Books (U.S.) The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 is a book by Eric Hobsbawm, published in 1994. 4. What are the themes of modernism? Ans. Modernist art describes the avant-garde styles that emerged in the early twentieth century, while postmodern art describes the evolution of art in the aftermath of World War II. Both Modernist and Postmodern fiction explore the themes of alienation, transformation, consumption, and the relativity of truth. 5. What will best describe modernism? Ans. Modernism describes things you do that are contemporary or current. ... Modernism can describe thought, behavior, or values that reflect current times, but it can also be used to describe an art and literature movement of the 19th and 20th centuries that intentionally split from earlier conservative traditions. 6. What is the difference between Victorian and modernist era? Ans. A Victorian man had to be strong and independent because it reflected the ideals of British society. ...Unlike the Victorian Era, the Modernist era consisted of trying new things and individualism was also embraced. (2) The Modernist Era gained steam due to a change in public opinion on social issues and cultural norms. 7. How did World War 1 led to the rise of modernism? Ans. The disillusionment that grew out of the war contributed to the emergence of modernism, a genre which broke with traditional ways of writing, discarded romantic views of nature and focused on the interior world of characters. 8. How the world wars changed the world? Ans. One of the most significant impacts of World War One was huge advances in technology, which would transform the way that people all around the world travelled and communicated, in particular, in the years after the conflict. ... France only had 140 aircraft when war began, but by the end of it, it had used around 4,500. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

8 8 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II (C) Multiple Choice Questions 1. Which war marked the beginning of Modernism? (a) The Civil War (b) WWI (c) WWII (d) The French and Indian war 2. What is the term associated with modernism that means “loss of false belief.” (a) Disappointment (b) realization (c) epiphany (d) disillusionment 3. Some characteristics of modernist literature are (a) Radical break with tradition (b) doesn’t usually make sense (c) different points of view (d) all the above 4. A flow of images and thoughts (a) Stream of consciousness (b) realism (c) beat movement (d) the lost generation 5. What important event happened for women in 1920? (a) They were allowed to keep their own last names. (b) They were allowed to work in business offices. (c) They were allowed to vote. (d) They were allowed to earn equal pay with men. Answers: 1. (b), 2. (d), 3. (d), 4. (a), 5. (c) 4.11 REFERENCES Defoe. The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble. Oxford: Oxforsd University Press,1996. Lewis, Barry. “Postmodernism and Literature.” The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism NY: Routledge, 2002 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

89 UNIT - V MODERN WOMEN NOVELIST STRUCTURE 1.0 L 1.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After going through this unit, students will be able to learn the following: T 1.1 INTRODUCTION A CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

9 0 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II UNIT - VI VIRGINIA WOOLF : THE NOVELIST STRUCTURE 6.0 Learning and Objectives 6.1 Life and Works of Virginia Woolf 6.2 Characteristics of Virginia Woolf as a Novelist 6.3 Mental Illness of Virginia Woolf 6.4 Stream of Consciousness Technique 6.5 Feminist Critiques 6.6 War and Its Impacts 6.7 Bloomsbury Group 6.8 Conclusion 6.9 Summary of the Unit 6.10 Keywords/Abbreviations 6.11 Learning Activity 6.12 Unit End Questions (Descriptive, Short and MCQs) 6.13 References 6.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After going through this unit, the students will be able to: Describe the life of woman novelist Virginia Woolf, one of the important 20th century modernist. Describe the stream of consciousness technique as used by her and other novelists. Describe her various works in a nutshell and various characteristics of her as a novelist. 6.1 LIFE AND WORKS OF VIRGINIAWOOLF Introduction: Virginia Woolf original name in full Adeline Virginia Stephen was the daughter of the eminent Victorian critic and scholar Sir Leslie Stephen, and was one of the great women CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

91 writers of the 20th century. She was born on January 25, 1882, near Romell, Sussex. She was a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness technique as a narrative device. She occupies a position of importance in 20th century fiction for she gave to the stream of consciousness novel a new twist which James Joyce had not been able to impart to it. Before we deal with the contribution of Virginia Woolf to fiction. Woolf was born into a rich household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child in a blended family of eight which included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. Her mother was Julia Prinsep Jackson and her father Leslie Stephen. While the boys in the family received college educations, the girls were home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature. An important impact in Virginia Woolf’s early life was the summer home the family used in St Ives, Cornwall, where, she first saw the Godrevy Lighthouse, which was to become central in her novel To the Lighthouse (1927). Woolf’s childhood came to an abrupt end in 1895 with the death of her mother and her first mental breakdown, followed two years later by the death of her half-sister and a mother figure to her, Stella Duckworth. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies’ Department of King’s College London, where she studied classics and history and came into contact with early reformers of women’s higher education and the women’s rights movement. Other important influences were her Cambridge-educated brothers and unfettered access to her father’s vast library. Encouraged by her father, Woolf began writing professionally in 1900. Her father’s death in 1904 caused Woolf to have another mental breakdown. Following his death, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury, where they adopted a free-spirited lifestyle. It was in Bloomsbury where, in conjunction with the brothers’ intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group. Marriage: In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917 the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which published much of her work. They rented a home in Sussex and moved there permanently in 1940. Throughout her life, Woolf was troubled by her mental illness. Her Novels Her first novel was ‘The Voyage Out’ published in 1915 followed by ‘Night and Day’ (1919). Jacob’s Room (1922) exhibits a fuller advance into maturity. “It is the first novel in which her personal vision of the flowing nature of all experience is given full and complete expression.” The novel sets forth the impression of Jacob Flanders about his own life as a student at Cambridge, as a young man in love and as a solider in war. Though the flowing nature of consciousness and the reality of the life of the spirit are finely brought out in Jacob’s Room, yet the novel suffers from lack of unity and cogency of impression. Mrs. Dalloway (1925) exhibits a further advance in her art of suggesting impressions in a loose and scattered manner. There is no attempt at organized story- telling in this novel. All that we have is “a most carefully selected and fully harmonized picture of life in London in one summer’s day in 1919.” The impression of Mrs. Dalloway are represented lyrically in this novel though in her musings there is a streak of sadness. The book opens with Mrs. Dalloway going out to buy flowers for a party and closes with a description of the party, but within these limits CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

9 2 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II a most complex and fascinating pattern of human experience is woven. It is composed of the day dreams, memories, and immediate impressions of this central character, enriched by transitions into the consciousness of other characters who are connected with Mrs. Dalloway in some emotional or even merely passing relationship. ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ is as patterned as a post-impressionist painting but is also so accurately represented that the reader can trace Clarissa’s and Septimus’s movements through the streets of London on a single day in June 1923. Mrs. Dalloway was followed by ‘To the Light House’ which is considered as the best novel of the celebrated artist. It was published on May 5, 1927 the 32nd anniversary of Julia Stephen’s death. As a narrative it broke narrative continuity into a tripartite structure. This novel is divided into three parts. Parts I “The Windows”, Part II “Time Passes”, and Part III “The Light House”. The experiences of professor Ramsay and his wife on a holiday are presented graphically, “Mrs. Ramsay is seen not merely as the selfless centre of her own existence, but as the focus of concentric series of exigencies or less intimately involved with her.” The Waves (1931) represents the technique of the flow of consciousness and inner thought in a heightened tone and is a high water mark of Mrs. Woolf’s experimentation. “Concerned from the beginning with the nature of personality and convinced of its fluid formlessness, she suggested here that personality has no existence apart from the society in which it develops that the so-called individual existence is really no more than a facet of the existence of a group. She illustrated this conception of personality in ‘The Waves’ by presenting the lives of a closely knit group of seven characters in a series of poetically stylized dialogues or interior monologues. The basic unity under the appearance of diversity is emphasized by the fact that all the characters express themselves in the same style, a highly imagistic, deeply rhythmical utterance that is constantly on the verge of becoming poetry. The least easily approached of Mrs. Woolf’s novels, it is also her most brilliant and original creation.” ‘The Years (1937)’ shows a return to the style and method of ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ and ‘To the Light House’. ‘Orlando’ takes us to the Elizabethan days and stretches time to include almost eternity. A.C. Ward describes the books of Virginia Woolf as “exasperatingly shapeless”. He regards her books as ‘snippets cut from a number of cinematograph films and indiscriminately, joined up.” But as compared to the works of James Joyce, the novels of Virginia Woolf have a form and a shape of their own. They are lucid and luminous thought they may be disjoined in their impressionistic presentation of life. Virginia Woolf as a Novelist Stream of Consciousness Technique: Virginia Woolf left the conventional conception of the novel as a realistic portraiture of life from the objective point of view and attacked the work of Bennett and Galsworthy with characteristic candidness. She once wrote with directness against the work of these masters of fiction. “It is because they are spirit but with the body that they have disappointed us, and left us with the feeling that the sooner English fiction turns its back upon them, as politely as may be, and matches, if only into the desert, the better for the soul.” Virginia Woolf adopted the method which James Joyce and Dorothy Richardson had practiced in their novels. She adopted the method of psychological truth and aimed at expressing in her novels the reality of the life of the spirit. She laid emphasis not on incident, external description and straightforward narration but on the presentation of character through the ‘stream of consciousness’ method. In her novels CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

93 we can trace without difficulty the evolution of her vision of life, and feel at every stage her concentration on the life of the mind and the spirit. She takes us to the subconscious and unconscious regions and seeks to convey “the flickering of that innermost flame which flashes its message through the brain.” Virginia Woolf has followed the technique of the internal monologue and the stream of consciousness, yet her work is free from the vices and taints of her fellow worker. There is no trace of filthiness or dirt in her novels. She does not wallow in the mire of filthiness and is always clean and fresh. We seem to breathe in a rarefied atmosphere as we go through her work. There is a poetic quality and a love of lyricism in her writings. “Her work has a lyric rather than an epic quality, but it has a greater sense of order about it, also of cleanliness and purity.” She had determined in 1908 to “reform” the novel by creating a holistic form embracing aspects of life that were ‘fugitive’ from the Victorian novel. She experimented with such a novel called “Melymbrosia” In November 1910, Roger Fry, a new friend of the Bells, launched the exhibit “Manet and the Post-Impressionists,” which introduced radical European art to the London bourgeoisie. Virginia was at once annoyed over the attention that painting garnered and intrigued by the possibility of borrowing from the likes of artists Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso. As Clive Bell was unsincere, Vanessa began an affair with Fry, and Fry began a lifelong debate with Virginia about the visual and verbal arts. In the summer of 1911, Leonard Woolf returned from the East. After he resigned from the colonial service, Leonard and Virginia married in August 1912. She continued to work on her first novel; he wrote the anticolonialist novel ”The Village in the Jungle (1913)” and ”The Wise Virgins (1914)”, a Bloomsbury expose. Then he became a political writer and a supporter for peace and justice. Between 1910 and 1915, Virginia’s mental health became worse. But she completely recast Melymbrosia as ”The Voyage Out” in 1913. She based several of her novel’s characters on real- life prototypes: Lytton Strachey, Leslie Stephen, her half brother George Duckworth, Clive and Vanessa Bell, and herself. Rachel Vinrace, the novel’s central character, is a sheltered young woman who, on an excursion to South America, is introduced to freedom and sexuality (though from the novel’s inception she was to die before marrying). Woolf first made Terence, Rachel’s suitor, rather Clive-like; as she revised, Terence became a more sensitive, Leonard-like character. After an excursion up the Amazon, Rachel contracts a precarious disease that throws her into delirium and then death. As possible causes for this disaster, Woolf’s characters suggest everything from poorly washed vegetables to jungle disease to a malevolent universe, but the book put up no explanation. That indeterminacy, at odds with the certainties of the Victorian era, is echoed in descriptions that distort perception: while the narrative often describes people, buildings, and natural objects as featureless forms. Rachel goes in dreams and then delirium, journeys into surrealistic worlds. Rachel’s voyage into the unknown began Woolf’s voyage beyond the conventions of realism. Woolf’s manic-depressive anxieties triggered a suicide attempt in September 1913. Publication of The Voyage Out was delayed until early 1915. Then, that April, she sank into a depressed state in which she was often delirious. Later that year she overcame the “vile imaginations” that had threatened her sanity. She kept the demons of mania and depression mostly at bay for the rest of her life. Hogarth Press In 1917 the Woolfs bought a printing press and founded the Hogarth Press, named for Hogarth CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

9 4 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II House, their home in the London suburbs. The Woolfs themselves published their own ”Two Stories” in the summer of 1917. It consisted of Leonard’s ”Three Jews” and Virginia’s ”The Mark on the Wall”, the latter about contemplation itself. Since 1910, Virginia had kept (sometimes with Vanessa) a country house in Sussex, and in 1916 Vanessa settled into a Sussex farmhouse called Charleston. She had ended her affair with Fry to take up with the painter Duncan Grant, who moved to Charleston with Vanessa and her children, Julian and Quentin Bell; a daughter, Angelica, would be born to Vanessa and Grant at the end of 1918. Charleston soon became an extravagantly decorated, unorthodox retreat for artists and writers, especially Clive Bell, who continued on friendly terms with Vanessa, and Fry, Vanessa’s lifelong devotee. Virginia had kept a diary, off and on, since 1897. In 1919 she envisioned ”the shadow of some kind of form which a diary might attain to,” organized not by a mechanical recording of events but by the interplay between the objective and the subjective. Her diary, as she wrote in 1924, would reveal people as “splinters & mosaics; not, as they used to hold, immaculate, monolithic, consistent wholes.” Such terms later inspired critical distinctions, based on anatomy and culture, between the feminine and the masculine, the feminine being a varied but all-embracing way of experiencing the world and the masculine a monolithic or linear way. Critics using these distinctions have credited Woolf with evolving a distinctly feminine diary form, one that explores, with perception, honesty, and humour, her own ever-changing, mosaic self. Proving that she could master the traditional form of the novel before breaking it, she plotted her next novel in two romantic triangles, with its protagonist Katharine in both. Night and Day (1919) answers Leonard’s The Wise Virgins, in which he had his Leonard-like protagonist lose the Virginia-like beloved and end up in a conventional marriage. In Night and Day, the Leonard-like Ralph learns to value Katharine for herself, not as some superior being. And Katharine overcomes (as Virginia had) class and familial prejudices to marry the good and intelligent Ralph. This novel focuses on the very sort of details that Woolf had deleted from The Voyage Out: credible dialogue, realistic descriptions of early 20th-century settings, and investigations of issues such as class, politics, and suffrage. Woolf was writing nearly a review a week for the Times Literary Supplement in 1918. Her essay ”Modern Novels” (1919; revised in 1925 as “Modern Fiction”) attacked the “materialists” who wrote about superficial rather than spiritual or “luminous” experiences. The Woolfs also printed by hand, with Vanessa Bell’s illustrations, Virginia’s Kew Gardens (1919), a story organized, like a Post-Impressionistic painting, by pattern. With the Hogarth Press’s emergence as a major publishing house, the Woolfs slowly ceased being their own printers. Monk’s House In 1919 they bought a cottage in Rodmell village called Monk’s House, which looked out over the Sussex Downs and the meadows where the River Ouse wound down to the English Channel. Virginia could walk or bicycle to visit Vanessa, her children, and a changing cast of guests at the bohemian Charleston and then retreat to Monk’s House to write. She visualized a new book that would apply the theories of “Modern Novels” and the achievements of her short stories to the novel form. In early 1920 a group of friends, evolved from the early Bloomsbury group, began a “Memoir CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

95 Club,” which met to read irreverent passages from their autobiographies. Her second presentation was to exposé Victorian hypocrisy, especially that of George Duckworth, who hid inappropriate, unwanted caresses as affection honouring their mother’s memory. In 1921 Woolf’s minimally wrote short fictions were gathered in Monday or Tuesday. Meanwhile, typesetting having heightened her sense of visual layout, she began a new novel written in blocks to be surrounded by white spaces. In “On Re-Reading Novels” (1922), Woolf debated that the novel was not so much a form but an “emotion which you feel.” In ”Jacob’s Room (1922)” she achieved such emotion, transforming personal grief over the death of Thoby Stephen into a “spiritual shape.” Though she takes Jacob from childhood to his early death in war, she leaves out plot, conflict, even character. The emptiness of Jacob’s room and the irrelevance of his belongings convey in their minimalism the depth of emptiness of loss. Though ”Jacob’s Room” is an antiwar novel, Woolf feared that she had ventured too far beyond representation. She vowed to “push on,” as she wrote Clive Bell, to graft such experimental techniques onto more-substantial and solid characters. 6.2 CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGINIAWOOLFAS A NOVELIST Introduction: Virginia Woolf was extremely dissatisfied with the current form of the novel as represented by the great Edwardians, Bennett, Wells or Galsworthy. The form of the novel that existed in the first quarter of this century seemed to her to obscure or even falsify her experience. She has very clearly and candidly expressed her own views in her great essay, Modern Fiction. To her ‘life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged;’ but it ‘is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.’And task of the novelist, according to her, is ‘to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display….’ And then there were the prominent literary developments of the age, which were making it impossible for a sensitive writer to remain in a fixed and narrow groove. And Virginia Woolf had the zeal and zest to put aside the orthodox linear narrative of the Edwardians after her first two novels and used instead a distinctive impressionistic technique, characterised by lyrical intensity and deep penetration into the stream of consciousness. And gradually she established herself to be one of those famous English novelists who gave a new direction, a new form and a new spiritual awareness to the English novel. Presenting of Inner Reality She had discarded the current form of the novel. But then she was driven to invent her own technique which would express her own vision of life. And Mrs. Woolf had already expressed very potently that if the novelist could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love-interest or catastrophe in the accepted style’. So in most of her novels there is not much element of story. Mrs. Woolf’s formula for the novel was not humanity in action but in a state of infinite perception. The novel in her hands is not just an entertainment, or propaganda, or the vehicle of some fixed ideas or theories, or a social document, but a voyage of exploration to find out how life is lived, and how it can be rendered as it is actually lived without distortion. Hence she focuses her attention on the rendering of inner reality and gives CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

9 6 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II minute and penetrating inlets into the consciousness of her characters. She cares very little for narrating dramatic events. Outer Reality is Kept Intact Her main purpose as a novelist is to depict inner life of human beings. But she has not ignored the world of outer reality, the warm and palpable life of nature. Indeed, in her novels we find that the metaphysical interest is imbued in purely human and personal terms, that the bounding line of art remains unbroken. The concrete images which are the very stuff of art are never sacrificed to abstraction, but are indeed more in view than in the work of such writers as Bennett and Wells. The essential subject matter of her novels is no doubt the consciousness of one or more characters, but the outer life of tree and stream, of bird and fish, of meadow and seashore crowds in upon her. It lends her image after image, a great, sparkling and many-coloured world of sight and fragrance and sound and touch. Thereby she weaves the magic and miracle of her work. Art Form In Virginia Woolf’s novels there is a rare artistic integrity which display a well-developed sense of form. To communicate her experience she had to create conventions as rigid or more rigid than the old ones that she discarded. And this she does in her best novels of the middle and the final period—”Mrs. Dalloway”, “To The Lighthouse”, “The Waves” and ”Between the Acts”. In each novel a small group of people is selected, and through their closely interrelated experience, the reader gets his total impression. We also come across that in each case certain images, phrases and symbols that bind the whole together. So there are certain resemblances between them in structure or style. Apart from these general resemblances each of these novels is a fresh endeavour to solve the problems raised by the departure from traditional conventions. So it is seen that each of her novels grows out of the preceding one and we see the germ of her later works in their predecessors. Another important point is that in Mrs. Woolf’s novels from ”Jacob’s Rooms” to ”The Waves” there is far less scene-setting and novel of it is obvious. There is a deliberate stage managing disappears, in fact concealed. So the method is poetic, the unity is a poetic unity. But the unity is there and it is deliberately achieved. Lyricism in Novels It is one of the most outstanding achievements of Virginia Woolf that she represents the poetisation and musicalisation of English novel. Among the English novelists she is foremost in lyrical aspect. She sets out on a quest for a mediating form through which she could convey simultaneously picture of life and manners and a corresponding image of minds. She focused at conveying inner life and this could be best done in a lyrical manner. So it is found that in order to enrich her language, she used metaphors and symbols which are specific to poetry. Her language is the language of poetry, her prose style has the assonances, the refrains, the rhythms and the accents of poetry itself. Virginia Woolf’s lyrical narrative is based on a design on which numerous contents of consciousness are juxtaposed. The balance between the lyrical and narrative art shows how Virginia Woolf achieves the telescoping of the poet’s lyrical self and the novelist’s omniscient point of view. It is a case of unified sensibility, that is, a blending of the objective and the subjective. It is considered to be the best CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

97 form of poetry particularly in modern poetry. Virginia Woolf’s ”To The Lighthouse” shows her lyricism in a superb manner and Time Passes’, the second part of this novel, has been described by the novelist herself as particularly representative of her lyric vein. Stream of Consciousness Technique To the novelists of the new school human consciousness is a chaotic welter of sensations and impressions. It is fleeting, trivial and evanescent. And according to Virginia Woolf, the major task of the novelist should be ‘to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit’. His main business is just to express the sensations and impressions to bring us near to the quick of the mind. He should be more concerned with inner reality rather than outer. This is what is known as ‘the stream of consciousness technique’. We are introduced into interior life of a character by means of interior monologue. There is very little intervention in the way of explanation or commentary on the part of the novelist. And this has been done by Virginia Woolf by a very fine use of ‘the interior monologue’ or ‘the stream of consciousness’ technique. She has very skillfully revealed the very spring of action, the hidden motives which force men and women to act in a particular way. She has been able to take us directly into the minds of her characters and show the flow of ideas, sensations and impressions there. And thus Mrs. Woolf has been able to create a number of memorable, many- sided and rounded figures, such as Mrs. Ramsay or Mrs. Dalloway, which are among the immortals in the annals of literature. Reality Mrs. Woolf’s in her novels deals with that the reality which has a distinctness about it. Jean Guiguet’s comments on this are worth noting “Her reality is not a factor to be specified in some question of the universe: it is the Sussex towns, the London streets, the waves breaking on the shore, the woman sitting opposite her in the train, memories flashing into the mind from nowhere, a beloved being’s return into nothingness; it is all that is not ourselves and yet is so closely mingled with ourselves that the two enigmas—reality and self—make only one. But the important thing is the nature or quality of this enigma. It does not merely puzzle the mind; it torments the whole being, even while defining it. To exist, for Virginia Woolf, meant experiencing that dizziness on the ridge between two abysses of the unknown, the self and the non- self.” Artistic Sincerity Virginia Woolf had her own original vision of life and she has ever remained since to her vision. And this clarity and artistic integrity is due to her total detachment from all personal prejudices and preconceived notions or from any personal end. Literary traditions and conventions, or social and political problems of the day—nothing could deter her from writing according to her vision, according to the ideal which exists in her mind with uncommon artistic sincerity and integrity. Mrs. Woolf was a ‘naturalist’ and a contemplative’. In the words of Bernard Blackstone, “She observes new facts, and old facts in a new way; but she also combines them, through the contemplative act, into new and strange patterns. The outer is not only related to, it is absorbed into the inner life. Mrs. Woolf believed in the power of the mind and so she makes her reader think.” The significant thing about her is that there is nothing languid or academic about her aestheticism. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

9 8 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II She could find beauty ‘as much in a scrap of orange peel lying in the gutter as in the Venus de Milo’ she was an intense lover of beauty and this love of beauty guides her in her selection and ordering of reality. Feminisation in Her Novels Virginia Woolf was a woman and naturally in her novels she gives us the woman’s point of view. Thus we find her relying more on intuition than on reason. We also find in her a woman’s dislike for the world of societies, churches, banks and schools and the political, social and economic movements of the day have hardly any attraction for her. As a sheltered female of her age she had no scope to have any knowledge of the sordid and brutal aspects of life. So we find that her picture of life does not include vice, sordidness or the utter brutality of our age. So it may be inferred that Mrs. Woolf thus represents the feminisation of the English novel. Limitations of Her Range The limited range of Mrs. Woolf’s characterisation is evident in her works. Her characters are definitely convincing in their own way, but they are drawn from a very limited range. They mainly belong to the upper middle class life and to a certain temperament too. She could paint only certain types of characters. They tend to think and feel alike to be the aesthetes of one set of sensations. Being a woman of her times she avoids the theme of passionate love. She could not write of sex freely and frankly and so has avoided it altogether in her novels. But still she achieved greatness and artistic perfection by a clear recognition of these limitations, and by working within them. Virginia Woolf’s greatest achievement is that in her novels the stream of consciousness technique finds a balance. She knew that art required a selection and ordering of material. Hence her work has a rare artistic integrity. In fact she wonderfully succeeded in imposing form and order on the chaos inherent in the novel of subjectivity or ‘the stream of consciousness’ novel. And it was Mrs. Woolf who was also one of the most forceful and original theorists of ‘the stream of consciousness’ novel, and be her exposition of aesthetics of this kind of novel, she did much to throw light on its technique, and to bring out its superiority to the conventional novel. T.S. Eliot says: T.S. Eliot describes in his obituary for Virginia. “Without Virginia Woolf at the center of it, it would have remained formless or marginal…With the death of Virginia Woolf, a whole pattern of culture is broken.” Virginia Adeline Stephen was the third child of Leslie Stephen, a Victorian man of letters, and Julia Duckworth. The Stephen family lived at Hyde Park Gate in Kensington, a respectable English middle class neighborhood. While her brothers Thoby and Adrian were sent to Cambridge, Virginia was educated by private tutors and copiously read from her father’s vast library of literary classics. She later resented the degradation of women in a patriarchal society, rebuking her own father for automatically sending her brothers to schools and university, while she was never offered a formal education. Woolf’s Victorian upbringing would later influence her decision to participate in the Bloomsbury circle, noted for their original ideas and unorthodox relationships.As biographer Hermione Lee argues “Woolf was a ‘modern’. But she was also a late Victorian. The Victorian family past filled her fiction, shaped her political analyses of society and underlay the behaviour of her social group.” CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

99 6.3 MENTAL ILLNESS OF VIRGINIAWOOLF In May 1895, Virginia’s mother died from rheumatic fever. Her unexpected and tragic death caused Virginia to have a mental breakdown at age 13. A second severe breakdown followed the death of her father, Leslie Stephen, in 1904. During this time, Virginia first attempted suicide and was institutionalized. According to nephew and biographer Quentin Bell, “All that summer she was mad.” The death of her close brother Thoby Stephen, from typhoid fever in November 1906 had a similar effect on Woolf, to such a degree that he would later be re-imagined as Jacob in her first experimental novel Jacob’s Room and later as Percival in The Waves. These were the first of her many mental collapses that would sporadically occur throughout her life, until her suicide in March 1941. Though Woolf’s mental illness was periodic and recurrent, as Lee explains, she “was a sane woman who had an illness.” Her “madness” was fuelled by life-altering events, notably family deaths, her marriage, or the publication of a novel. According to Lee, Woolf’s symptoms conform to the profile of a manic-depressive illness, or bipolar disorder. Leonard, her devoted lifelong companion, documented her illness with scrupulousness. He categorized her breakdowns into two distinct stages. Conclusion Virginia Woolf rejected the conventional conception of the novel and presented the realistic portraiture of life. She also wrote pioneering essays on artistic theory, literary history, women’s writing and the politics of power. She experimented with several forms of biographical writing, composed short fictions, and sent to her friends and family a lifetime of brilliant letters. Her essay “Modern Novels” (1919) and revised as “Modern Fiction” in 1925 attacked the “materialists” who wrote about superficial rather than spiritual experiences. She thus is recognised as one of the most innovative writers of the twentieth century. Her work explored her fascination with the marginal and overlook of “an ordinary mind on an ordinary day” as she put in her “Modern Fiction”. She refused patriarchal honours like the ‘Companion of Honour’ (1935) and honorary degrees. Besides her writing, she had a considerable impact on the cultural life around her. She also taught English literature and history at an adult education college in London in addition to writing articles and reviews for publications including “The Guardian”, “The Times Literary Supplement” and “The National Review”. She continued her journalistic endeavours throughout her life. She also wrote extensively on the problems of women’s access to the learned professions such as academia, the church, the law, and medicine. She concerned herself with the question of women’s equality with men in marriage. 6.4 STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS TECHNIQUE Introduction: ‘Stream of Consciousness Novel’ is a modern development and reflects recent interest in the analytical school of Jung, Freud and Adler and the ‘Free association’, used by psychiatry. Melvin Friedman remarks, “Indeed we should not look for a clear justification for the modern novel CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

100 British Poetry of 19th and 20th Century - II than in Jung’s writing.” The psycho-analysis had developed by the first decade of the 20th century, the idea of a subconscious mind as a repository for the suppressed elements. Freud has postulated two areas of the mind, the waking state subject to order and below it the layer of the subconscious which is a dimly lit corridor full of lumber, dirt, noxious vapours - fixations, repressions, obsessions and complexes. Freud’s ‘Ego’ more or less presents the rational waking part and his ‘Id’, the irrational sub-conscious, the jungle full of strange beasts lurking within. Karl Gustav Jung postulated that in every individual, conscious is present a place low down which contains the taboos, developed the tribal ancestors. It is here the myth is created. But suppressed or repressed elements alone need not be imbedded to different time-channels. Myriads of ordinary impressions, belonging to different time-channels, may coexist in the consciousness, because time separation into past, present and future is possible only in the waking life, not in the ‘dream state’. In the mind may be embedded echoes of the experience of primitive days. In fact, consciousness is the realm where memories, associations are mixed up in a specific order. In this mixing of memories, there is no restriction of Time. The novelist resorts to evocative symbols which stand for values and significance derived from experience. The novelist tries to discover a pattern in this apparently confused collection of impressions, memories and obsessive images. It is just an example of controlled disorder, the control being brought on the change of the mind either by means of fixing instants of time, or by fixing certain obsessive images to repeat themselves as in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, particularly the Benjy Sequence therein. In ‘Stream of Consciousness Novel’ everything is depicted through an apparently unorganised successions of images and ideas connected by association rather than by logical argument or narrative sequence. The ‘action’ takes place and the plot develops through the mind of the main character, and his ‘Stream of Consciousness’ reflects all the forces of which he is aware as they are playing upon him at any one moment, an outside event and the associations being presented more or less simultaneously. The Stream of Consciousness method is useful in breaking down the distinction between subject and object and suggesting rather than describing states of mind as Robert Humphrey says, “Stream of Consciousness is based on realization of the drama that takes place in the minds of human beings.” The emergence of the Stream of Consciousness novel provoked considerable controversy and many conflicting theories have been put forward to the clear and unambiguous understanding of its scope and technique. The technique has been analysed by a few critics in terms of impressionistic paintings and referred to as ‘The Post impressionistic Novel’. “The problem of the twentieth century novelist”, says J. Isaacs, “was the same as that of the twentieth century painter”. But we can say that the new technique is not much indebted to the impressionistic school of painting, because the new technique was itself a manifestation of the new awareness of reality as ‘Time and Free Will’. Symbolistic Mode of Expression Another school of criticism related the new technique to the symbolistic modes of expression. Speaking of the characters in Ulysses Edmund Wilson says, “When we are admitted to the mind of any one of them, we are in a world as complex and special, a world sometimes as fantastic or obscure, as that of the symbolist poet - and a world rendered by similar devices of language.” The new technique shows the impression of symbolistic modes of expression but Dr. S.K. Kumar says, CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)