英国文学史及作品选读习题集(6)

6 English Literature in the 19th Century

Ⅰ. Essay questions.

1. Discuss John Ruskin’s works on art.

2. What is the theme of Charles Dickens’s novel A Tale of Two Cities?

3. Talk about Charles Dickens’s character portrayal, especially child character portrayal.

4. Please retell the story of Jane Eyre and make a comment on it.

5. Please talk briefly about Charles Dickens’s literary career, and the main features of his works.

6. Please make a comment on Thomas Hardy’s contributions to English literature.

7. Make a comment on critical realism.

8. Please retell the story of Tess of the D’Urbervilles and make a brief comment on it.

Ⅱ. Define the following terms.

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1. English critical realism

2. Victorian period

3. Autobiography

4 .Regional novel

5. Dramatic monologue

6. Dramatization

7. Disinterestedness

8. Idyll

9. Psychological novel

10. The Pre-Raphaelites

11. Künstlerroman

12. Aestheticism

13. Naturalism

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Ⅲ. Fill in the blanks.

1. The comic element is strong in Charles Dickens’s first novel, which appeared in monthly sections between April 1836 and November 1837. It records the adventures of Mr. and his companions as they journey about the country.

2. is one of Charles Dickens’s best works. It is written in the first person and is the most autobiographical of all his books. In writing the novel, Dickens threw into it deep feelings and much of his own experience in his younger days.

3. In the Victorian period, and moral propriety, which were ignored by the Romanticists, became the predominant preoccupation in literary works.

4. William Makepeace Thackeray’s first literary success came with a series of satirical sketches entitled , published in1846～1847.

5. Daniel Deronda, written in1876, is ’s last novel. The mastery of the

subtler complexities of psychological analysis is revealed thoroughly.

6. Mrs. Gaskell was one of the first English writers to make the class struggle between the and the the theme of a novel.

7. George Eliot’s is largely autobiographical in its early chapters.

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Against the background of rural life, the author traces the fate and tragedy of

a young girl, Maggie, whose noble aspirations run counter to the philistine narrow-mindedness of those around her.

8. Written in 1837-38, tells the story of an orphan boy, whose adventures provide material for a description of the lower depths of London.

9. In the Victorian period, the became the most widely read and the most vital and challenging expression of progressive thought.

10. Although writing from different points of view and with different techniques, the Victorian novelists shared one thing in common, that is, they were all concerned about the fate of the people.

11. Robert Browning’s poetic experiments transferred the thematic interest of poetry from mere narration of the story to revelation and study of characters’ and brought to the Victorian poetry some element.

12. Wuthering Heights is written by . It is a morbid story of love, but a powerful attack on the bourgeois marriage system. It shows that true love in a class society is impossible of attainment.

13. George Meredith is a master of ; he tries to load his books with wit and wisdom; many of his characters are people with ideas who are determined to

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voice them.

14. In his works, Dickens sets out a full map and a large-scale criticism of the 19th century England, particularly .

15. “Culture and Anarchy” is Matthew Arnold’s representative work in social criticism. It deals with the whole structure of and . 16. Matthew Arnold regarded the quality of “ ”as the principal virtue of poet. He paid great attention to the moral values of poetry, giving a secondary place to poetry in which “the form is studied and exquisite”.

17. “ ” is Thomas Macaulay’s masterpiece. Macaulay did not intend to be an objective historian. His purpose of writing it is to eulogize the “Glorious Revolution”, and he interprets men and events with a partisan prejudice.

18. Between1859and1885AlfredTennysonworkedathisnarrativepoems based on the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Those poems were gathered together as .

19. , novelist and poet, is one of the representatives of English critical realism at the turn of the 19th century.

20. Dickens made his first attempt at a historical novel in , seemingly

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anxious to do for London what Scott had done for Edinburgh in The Heart of Midlothian.

21. , one of the century’s finest novels, traces the rise and fall of Michael Henchard, a tough, egotistical fellow who, having committed the folly of drunkenly selling his wife and baby at a fair, turns teetotal and by sheer perseverance rises to wealth as a corn-factor and to respectability as Mayor of Casterbridge.

22. Oliver Twist presents Oliver Twist as Dickens’s first hero and Fagin the first figure. 23. John Ruskin’s was written to defend J. M. W. Turner, the English landscape painter, against the attacks on his paintings made by the conventional critics of the day.

24. The purpose of both The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice is to glorify , a style distinguished by its high and sharply-pointed

arches, which had prevailed in Western Europe from the 12th to the 16th centuries.

25. The most intensely engaging themes in the Palliser novels are the stories of the . 26. Jane Eyre represents those working women, who are struggling for the recognition of their basic rights and equality as a human being.

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27. The Happy Prince and Other Tales and The House of Pomegranates are two collections of written by Oscar Wilde. 28. In her novels, George Eliot seeks to present the of a soul and to reveal the motives, impulses and hereditary influences which govern human action.

29. Middlemarch provides a panoramic view of life in a small English town and its surrounding countryside in the century.

30. The book News from Nowhere is a , telling the story of a man who falls asleep after an evening at a Socialist League meeting. He wakes in the future to find England transformed into a communist paradise where men and women are free, healthy, and equal.

31. is considered as Samuel Butler’s masterpiece. In it, he succeeded in giving a devastating picture of the bourgeois family and the hypocrisy of the British middle class. This novel is a strong challenge of the moral claims of the ruling classes of England.

32. The poem “A Shropshire Lad” recalls the pessimism of , the poet’s favorite novelist. The lines are so simple and beautiful that musicians look to them for songs to set.

33. The two most predominating poets of the Victorian period are

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and .

34. In many of Hardy’s later novels, the conflict between the and the is brought to the center of the stage.

35. As a woman of exceptional intelligence and life experience, George Eliot shows a particular concern for the of women.

Ⅳ. Choose the best answer.

1. Which is NOT a character in Dombey and Son?

A. Carker B. Dombey

C. Edith D. Martin

2. , the pioneering woman, according to D. H. Lawrence, was the first novelist that “started putting all the actions inside”.

A. George Eliot B. Jane Austen

C. Charlotte Bronte D. Emily Bronte

3. The Victorian poetry was mainly characterized by experiments with new styles and new ways of expression. Among these famous experimental poets was who created the verse novel by adopting the novelistic presentation of characters.

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A. Charles Dickens B. Alfred Tennyson

C. Robert Browning D. Thomas Hardy

4. Which one is NOT William Makepeace Thackeray’s works?

A. Sylvia’s Lover B. The Newcomes

C. The Virginians D. The History of Pendennis

5. These works are written by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell EXCEPT .

A. Mary Barton B. Ruth

C. LittleDorrit D. North and South

6. Which one is William Makepeace Thackeray’s historical novel?

A. Vanity Fair B. The History of Henry Esmond C. Denis Duval

D. Round about Papers

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7. ’s works are characterized by a mingling of humor and pathos.

A. Thomas Hardy B. Charles Dickens

C. Charlotte Bronte D. George Eliot

8. The following are the common characters shared by the three Bronte sisters EXCEPT .

A. unmarried B. literary

C. talented D. dying young

9. Which one is NOT Charlotte Bronte’s novel?

A. Professor B. Villette

C. Shirley D. Agnes Grey

10. Mrs. Gaskell, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte and Emily Bronte are NOT all .

A. women novelists B. regional novelists

C. Victorian novelists D. pseudonymous novelists

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11. Which one is NOT written by George Meredith?

A. Middlemarch B. Evan Harrington

C. Emiliain England D. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

12. “History of the French Revolution” is written by .

A. John Ruskin B. Charles Dickens

C. William Makepeace Thackeray D. Thomas Carlyle

13. ’s first literary success was the publication of his “Essay on

Milton” in the Edinburgh Review in1825.

A. Thomas Macaulay B. Thomas Carlyle

C. Matthew Arnold D. John Ruskin

14. Which one is NOT John Ruskin’s major works in the sphere of art criticism?

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A. Modern Painters B. The Seven Lamps of Architecture

C. Sesame and Lilies

D. The Stones of Venice 15. ’s works are all about the struggle of an individual consciousness towards self-realization, about some lonely and neglected young women with a fierce longing for love, understanding and a full happy life.

A. George Eliot B. Charlotte Bronte

C. Thomas Hardy D. Jane Austen

16. is one that introduces to the English novel the first governess heroine.

A. Jane Eyre B. Wuthering Heights

C. Middlemarch D. Agnes Grey

17. is an elaborate and powerful expression of Alfred Tennyson’s philosophical and religious thoughts.

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A. Idylls of the King B. Ulysses

C. Poems, Chiefly Lyrical D. In Memoriam

18. Hardy’s principal works are the Wessex novels, i.e., novels describing the characters and environment of his native countryside. is NOT included.

A. A Pair of Blue Eyes

B. Jude the Obscure

C. Under the Greenwood Tree

D. The Return of the Native 19. Which one is Thomas Hardy’s first collection of poems?

A. Time’s Laughing stocks

B. Satires of Circumstance C. Poems of the Past and the Present

D. Wessex Poems

20. is based on the Celtic legends of King Arthur and his Knights of

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the Round Table.

A. In Memoriam B. Ulysses

C. Idylls of the King D. The Princess

21. The short novel The Warden was written by . A. Anthony Trollope B. George Meredith

C. Thomas Macaulay D. Matthew Arnold

22. Which one is NOT included in the Barsetshire novels?

A. The Warden B. Barchester Towers

C. The Last Chronicle of Barset D. Autobiography 23. Which one is NOT included in the Palliser novels?

A. The Eustace Diamonds B. Doctor Thorne

C. As He Knew He Was Right D. The Way We Live Now

24. Which one does NOT belong to Robert Louis Stevenson’manipulating the genres associated with children?

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s writings

A. A Child’s Garden of Verses B. Prince Otto

C. The Black Arrow D. Kidnapped

25. Oscar Wilde’s first play, opened in February12.

A. A Woman of No Importance

B. The Importance of Being Earnest

C. An Ideal Husband D. Lady Windermere’s Fan 26. initiates a new type of realism and sets into motion a variety of developments, leading in the direction of both the naturalistic and psychological novel.

A. Charles Dickens B. George Eliot

C. Charlotte Bronte D. Thomas Hardy

27. Henry James considered his most “perfect” work of art.

A. Daisy Miller B. The Portrait of a Lady

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C. The Ambassadors D. The Wings of the Dove 28. is a remarkably penetrating study of a young girl’s awakening.

A. Roderick Hudson B. The Turn of the Screw C. The Golden Bowl D. What Maisie Knew

29. Which one is NOT written by Dante Gabriel Rossetti?

A. Jenny B. Prophyria’s Lover C. The Last Confession D. The Woodspurge

30. ’s works are known as “novels of characters environment”.

A. Charles Dickens B. Thomas Hardy

C. Jane Austen D. George Eliot

31. ’s book, Chartist Songs, was published in August1846.

A. George Julian Harney B. Thomas Hood

C. A. E. Housman D. Ernest Jones

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and

32. While in prison Ernest Jones produced his epic poem, .

A. The Battle day B. The Emperor’s Vigil

C. The Revolt of Hindostan D. The Beldag on Church 33. The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems is written by . A. William Morris B. John Ruskin

C. Edward Burne-Jones D. Dante Gabriel Rossetti

34. Morris devoted a lot of his time to political writing. Which of the following is NOT included in the political writings?

A. Chants for Socialists B. The Pilgrims of Hope

C. Dream of John Ball D. The Life and Death of Jason

35. The satire Erewhon is written by . A. Henry Jones B. Samuel Butler

C. Georage Meredith D. R. A. Streatfeild

36. opposed Darwin’s explanation of evolution, finding it too

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mechanistic, and he expounded his own theories in Evolution Old and New, Unconscious Memory, and Luck or Cunning.

A. Samuel Butler B. Henry Jones

C. Oscar Wilde D. A. E. Housman

37. could be classified to be both a naturalistic and a critical realistic writer.

A. Charles Dickens B. George Eliot

C. Thomas Hardy D. T. S. Eliot

38. believes that man’s fate is predeterminedly tragic, driven by a combined force of “nature”, both inside and outside.

A. Charles Dickens B. Thomas Hardy

C. George Bernard Shaw D. T. S. Eliot

39. The major concern of ’s fiction lies in the tracing of the psychological development of his characters and in his energetic criticism of the dehumanizing effect of the capitalist industrialization on human nature.

A. Charles Dickens B. D. H. Lawrence

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C. Thomas Hardy D. John Galsworthy

40. The statement “It reveals the dehumanizing workhouse system and the dark, criminal underworld life” may well sum up the main theme of Dickens’s . A. David Copperfield B. Bleak House

C. Great Expectations D. Oliver Twist

41. “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?...And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it a shard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.”

The above quoted passage is most probably taken from . A. Pride and Prejudice B. Jane Eyre

C. Wuthering Heights D. Great Expectations

42. “My Last Duchess” is a poem that best exemplifies Robert Browning’s .

A. sensitive ear for the sounds of the English language

B. excellent choice of words

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C. mastering of the metrical devices

D. use of the dramatic monologue

43. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, one of Thomas Hardy’s best-known novels, portrays man as .

A. being hereditarily either good or bad

B. being self-sufficient

C. having no control over his own fate

D. still retaining his own faith in a world of confusion

44. Which of the following best describes the speaker of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”?

A. He is a man of an action. B. He is a man of a pathy.

C. He is a man of passion. D. He is a man of inactivity.

45. “For a week after the commission of the impious and profane offence of asking for more, Oliver remained a close prisoner in the dark and solitary room...” (Dickens, OliverTwist)

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What did Oliver ask for?

A. More time to play. B. More food to eat.

C. More books to read. D. More money to spend.

46. “Come to me—come to me entirely now, ”said he; and added, in his deepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, “Make my happiness—I will make yours.”

The above passage presents a scene in .

A. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights

B. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

C. John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga

D. Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles

47. Which of the following best describes the nature of Thomas Hardy’s later works?

A. Sentimentalism. B. Tragic sense.

C. Surrealism. D. Comic sense.

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48. In what region of England was Emily Bronte raised?

A. Sussex B. Gloucestershire

C. Yorkshire D. Warwickshire

Ⅴ. Short-answer questions.

1. Emily Bronte used a very complicated narrative technique in writing her novel Wuthering Heights. Try to tell Bronte’s way of narration briefly.

2. Vanity Fair is Thackeray’s masterpiece. Please talk briefly about the origin of the title and the writer’s intention about the title.

3. What is Robert Browning’s principal achievement in English poetry?

4. Please make a brief comment on David Copperfield.

5. Charlotte Bronte is a writer of Realism combined with Romanticism. Why is Jane Eyre by her a successful novel?

6. Please make a brief comment on George Meredith’s The Egoist and its character origin.

7. Please talk briefly about Thomas Carlyle’s classification of heroes in his work “Heroes and Hero-Worship”.

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8. How is naturalism reflected in Thomas Hardy’s novels?

9. Based on Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, discuss the theme of her works and the image of women protagonists.

10. What is the theme of Hardy’s Wessex novels?

11. What is the main characteristic of Thomas Macaulay’s prose style?

12. Talk briefly about the themes of Henry James’s novels and his style.

13. Analyze the character of Dorothea Brooke in George Eliot’s work

Middlemarch.

14. Talk briefly about the symbols and images in Great Expectations.

15. Please make a comment on George Eliot’s character portrayal.

16. Tess of the D’Urbervilles is one of the greatest works of Thomas Hardy. Try to comment briefly on the fate of Tess in this work.

Ⅵ. Answer the questions according to the following passages.

Passage1

“What now?” said Catherine, leaning back, and returning his look with a

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suddenly clouded brow—her humour was a mere vane for constantly varying caprices. “You and Edgar have broken my heart, Heathcliff! And you both come to bewail the deed tome, as if you were the people to be pitied! I shall not pity you, not I. You have killed me—thriven on it, I think. How strong you are! How many years do you mean to live after I am gone?”

Heathcliff had knelt on one knee to embrace her; he attempted to rise, but she seized his hair, and kept him down.

“I wish I could hold you,” she continued, bitterly, “till we were both dead! I shouldn’t care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn’t you suffer? I do! Will you forget me—will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, ‘That’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw. I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I’ve loved many others since—my children are dearer to me than she was, and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going to her, I shall be sorry that I must leave them!’ Will you say so, Heathcliff?”

“Don’t torture me till I’m as mad as yourself,” cried he, wrenching his head free, and grinding his teeth.

Questions:

1.Where is it taken from?

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2. Analyze the character of Heathcliff briefly.

3. What is the theme of the story?

Passage2

Break, Break, Break,

Break, break, break,

On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman’s boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships goon

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To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back tome.

Questions:

4. Who is the author of the poem?

5. Why did the author write this poem?

6. Please analyze the stress of each line and that of the stanza.

7. What effect has been achieved by the variation of the stress?

Passage3

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So runs my dream; but what am I?

An infant crying in the night;

An infant crying for the light,

And with no language but a cry?

I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares

Upon the great world’s altar-stairs

That slope through darkness up to God.

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

And gather dust and chaff, and call

To what I feel is Lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope.

(the larger hope: the hope of an after-life)

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Questions:

8. It is taken from In Memoriam, Alfred Tennyson’s long elegiac poem. What’s

the theme of it?

9. What’s the rhythm of the poem?

10. What’s your understanding of “I” in the poem?

11. What message does the poet convey about his religious belief?

12. Please make a brief comment on In Memoriam.

Keys

Ⅰ. Essay questions.

1. Ruskin’s works on art expound his aesthetic thoughts and principles which may be summed up briefly as follows:

(1) The object of art is to find and express the truth in nature; and art, in order to express the truth, must copy nature and so often break away from old and set rules and conventions.

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(2) Art is allied with morality, and there exists a close relation between goodness and beauty, and between wickedness and ugliness. A careful study of the art of any nation reveals them oral strength or weakness of the people that produce it.

(3) The main purpose of art is not to delight a few cultured people but to serve the practical ends of people’s daily life: “The joy which is indeed a joy forever must be a joy for all.”

(4) Ruskin had a strong dislike for modem capitalist civilization which was to him “ugliness itself”. He condemned the modern “monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money”. He aimed at reviving by art the kind of society in which a worker could express himself freely and enjoy “work-pleasure”. Ruskin was himself fan artist, skilled in drawing and painting. When he wrote on art, he knew what he was talking about. Moreover, he wrote in a rhythmical style and his sentences are full of picturesque detail and color. All this makes him “the apostle of beauty” who helps the reader to see and appreciate the beauty of the world around him.

2. The theme underlying A Tale of Two Cities is the idea “Where there is oppression, there is revolution”. Had there been no Bastille, and no privileged and lawless aristocrats, there would have been no French Revolution, and likewise no story of Dr. Manette. The revolutionaries are represented in the novel by Defarge, Dr. Manette’s servant, who is one of the suffering poor and has taken the Doctor’s wrongs more to heart than the Doctor himself, and Madame Defarge

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the younger sister of the wronged and murdered sister and brother, victims of the evil house of Evremond. The Defarges have been working with never-ceasing diligence to prepare the Day of Wrath and are in the fore front of the assault on the Bastille. They are relentless revolutionaries, seeking the people’s vengeance on the criminal noble lords.

The novel ranks as villains the feudal aristocrats and their lackeys, and exalts as heroes the oppressed and suffering peasants, the industrious professional men, and the faithful and honest people everywhere, including the “failures” such as Sidney Carton. Dickens has taken care to show that the people’s lust for vengeance is but the direct result of the ruling classes’ monstrous atrocities. It is their iniquitous rule that has converted simple, honest people into avenging furies like the Defarges. By Carton, Dickens shows how a very good-natured and generous youth may sink, through lack of regard and of self-regard, into a drifter, and finally a waster, in an evil society.

A Tale of Two Cities takes, as dearly as Dickens’s earlier works, the side of the

common people against that of the privileged classes. But it adds, more plainly than any of his other novels, a warning of an Avenging Fate, from fear of which all the privileged, and all oppressors of the people, would do well to reconsider their ways.

3. Dickens is a comprehensive novelist. His character-portrayal is the most distinguishing feature of his creation. His world seems to be fuller and richer than many other novelists. Among his vast range of various characters, there are both

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types and individuals. They are impressive not because they are true to life, but because they are mostly larger than life, seldom to be found in real life. Often they are humorous exaggerations of some well- marked human traits—sometimes one’s personal manner of speech, sometimes his habitual gesture or behavior and sometimes just some physical peculiarity. In many cases, universal experience becomes individualized in types.

Dickens is best at child character portrayal. Almost all his child heroes and heroines are innocent, virtuous, persecuted or helpless. They are spotless in their thoughts, intentions and wishes. In the very heart and soul, they are pure, refined and gentle-hearted. Some of the most unforgettable characters like Oliver Twist, Little Nell, Paul Dombey, David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, and Little Pip, have become famous type characters.

His success with children lies in his writing from a child’s point of view. Children are instinctive, and they have strong imaginations, vivid sensations; they see life as black and white, and bigger than reality; their enemies seem demons, and their friends angels; and their joys or sorrows absolute and eternal. They do not look at life with the eyes of the wise, the intellectual or the instructed observer; they are not ashamed of sentiment. In fact, they see life very much like Dickens and he certainly does have an extraordinary understanding of them. The first halves of

David Copperfield and Great Expectations are among the most profound pictures

of childhood in English literature. Here Dickens seems not only living, but life-like, for though the world is more exaggerated, lit by brighter lights, darkened by sharper shadows than those of grown-up’s, it is exactly the world as it is seen

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through the eyes of a child.

Dickens is also famous for the characterization of horrible and grotesque figures and he is able to portray a character with just a few words or by highlighting or exaggerating some peculiar features of his characters.

4. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte’s masterpiece, tells the story of an orphan girl, Jane Eyre, the daughter of a poor parson. She loses her parents shortly after birth. Her aunt, Mrs. Reed, a harsh, unsympathetic woman, is rude and unjust to the poor orphan. Mrs. Reed’s own children also find pleasure in teasing and mocking Jane. One day, unable to bear the ill-treatment any longer, Jane tells straight to her aunt’s face what she thinks of her. Mrs. Reed is furious and gets rid of Jane by sending her to a charity school for poor girls in Lowood. Maltreated by the authorities and leading a half-starved existence, Jane stays here for eight long years, six in studies, and two in the capacity of a teacher. Then Jane gets the position of governess in the family of Mr. Rochester, a rich squire. Rochester falls in love with Jane, and she with him. They are about to be married when Jane breaks the engagement on the wedding day, learning that Mr. Rochester has a wife, a raving lunatic who is secretly kept under lock and key in the house. Shocked by the news, Jane flees from the house. She goes through many hardships. Nearly perishing on the moors, she is taken in and cared for by a parson, Rev. Rivers. He helps her get the job of a teacher in a village school. Meanwhile, a great misfortune be falls Mr. Rochester: he loses his sight during a fire which destroys the house, set by his mad wife who dies a tragic death by jumping off the roof in spite of his attempt to save her. Hearing that Mr. Rochester is penniless and

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disabled, Jane Eyre hurries back to him and becomes his wife.

Jane Eyre is Charlotte Bronte’s best literary production. The novel throbs with

the heart-beats of its author. In the writing of it, Charlotte Bronte drew a great deal from her own life experience. One of the central themes of the book is the criticism of the bourgeois system of education. Bronte’s description of the horrors of Lowood charity school is not inferior to Dickens’s strongest passages portraying bourgeois educational institutions. In Lowood is depicted the charity school where Charlotte spent some years of her unhappy childhood and where her two elder sisters died of ill-treatment and her younger sisters contracted consumption, of which they died afterwards. The Lowood School is the embodiment of the bourgeois principles of education, the aim of which is to bring up obedient slaves for the rich. Not less severe is her description of the English country squires. She compares them to the uncultivated and narrow-minded Philistines. Rochester is, however, a mere exception. Another problem raised in the novel is the position of woman in society. Jane Eyre, the heroine of the novel, maintains that women should have equal rights with men. In her novel, Charlotte Bronte attacked the greed, petty tyranny and lack of culture among the bourgeoisie and sympathized with the sufferings of the poor people. Her realism was coloured by petty-bourgeois philanthropy. Like Dickens, she believed that education was the key to all social problems, and that by the improvement of the school system and teaching, most of the evils of capitalism could be removed.

5. Altogether, Charles Dickens wrote 17 novels. Their creation covers a range of over twenty years. For the convenience of study, his literary career can be divided

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into three periods. The first period of youthful optimism leads to the second period of excitement and irritation, from which emerges in turn the third period of steadily intensifying pessimism. This sequence of Dickens’s works shows his ideological development in relation to the history of his time. His early period coincides with the period of the rise and culmination of the Chartist Movement. His middle period covers the period of the temporary revival of Chartism and the tempestuous years of 1848-49. It ends with the triumph of European reactionin1850. That is why the last period is one of profound pessimism. His three periods reflect exactly the moods of the English petty-bourgeois progressive movements in those years.

Charles Dickens is one of the greatest critical realist writers of the Victorian Age. It is his serious intention to expose and criticize in his works all the poverty, injustice, hypocrisy and corruptness he saw all around him. In his works, Dickens sets a full map and a large-scale criticism of the 19th century England, particularly London. A combination of optimism about people and realism about the society is obvious in these works. His representative works in the early period include Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and so on.

His later works show a highly conscious modern artist. The settings are more complicated, and the stories are better structured. Most novels of this period present a sharper criticism of social evils and morals of the Victorian England, for example, Bleak House, Hard Times, Great Expectations and so on. The early optimism could no more be found.

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Charles Dickens is a master story-teller. His language could, in a way, be compared with Shakespeare’s. His humor and wit seem inexhaustible. Character-portrayal is the most outstanding feature of his works. His characterizations of child (Oliver Twist, etc.), some grotesque people (Fagin, etc.) and some comical people (Mr. Micawber, etc.) are superb. Dickens also employs exaggeration in his works. Dickens’s works are also characterized by a mixture of humor and pathos. He seems to believe that life is itself a mixture of joy and grief; life is delightful just because it is at once comic and tragic.

6. Thomas Hardy is a great poet as well as a great novelist. His novels are all Victorian in date. Most of them are set in Wessex, the fictional primitive and crude rural region which is really the home place he both loves and hates. They are known for the vivid description of the vicissitudes of people who live in an agricultural setting threatened by the forces of invading capitalism. His best local-colored works are his later ones, such as The Return of the Native, The May or of Casterbridge, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. These works,

known as “novels of characters and environment,” are the most representative of him as both a naturalistic and a critical realist writer. Hardy experienced a change from being cheerful and optimistic to despairing and pessimistic in his writing career. Living at the turn of the century, Hardy is often regarded as a transitional writer. His writing shows the influence from both the past and the modern. As some people put it, he is intellectually advanced and emotionally traditional. Influenced by Darwinism, Hardy believes that man’s fate is predeterminedly tragic, driven by a combined force of “nature”, both inside and outside. This pessimistic view of life predominates most of Hardy’s later works and earns him a

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reputation as a naturalistic writer. Though Naturalism seems to have played an important part in Hardy’s works, there is also bitter and sharp criticism and even open challenge of the irrational, hypocritical and unfair Victorian institutions, conventions and morals which strangle the individual will and destroy natural human emotions and relationships.

Hardy is not an analyst of human life or nature, but a meditative story-teller or romancer. He tells very good stories about very interesting people but seldom stops to ask why. He is a great painter of nature. His heroes and heroine, those unfortunate young men and women in their desperate struggle for personal fulfillment and happiness, are all vividly and realistically depicted. They are not only individual cases but also of universal truth. And

finally, all the works of Hardy are noted for the rustic dialect and a poetic flavor which fits well into their perfectly designed architectural structures. They are the products of a conscientious artist.

7. Critical realism was the main current in English novel in the middle of the 19th century, an age which witnessed a great development in capitalist industry and commerce in England. Replacing the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie had assumed ruling power. The working people lived in poverty and misery, and the conflict between labor and capital became the fundamental class contradiction in society. The working class movement made rapid progress in the forties of the century, finding expression in the mass movement of Chartism. Under the impetus of a cute class conflicts, progressive intellectuals voiced their dissatisfaction with

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capitalism in their essays and pamphlets. All this, together with the rich tradition of the realistic novel of the 18th century, helped to produce the English novel of critical realism in the 19th century.

The English realist novelists of the 19th century supplied a panoramic picture of the bourgeois society. They gave a biting exposure of the greed, hypocrisy and sordidness of the bourgeoisie. They also described the sufferings of the common people under capitalism. Their depth of interpretation and description pushed the art of novel-writing to new heights, hitherto not attained by the19th-century novelists.

Gorky once asserted the historical role of “the most out standing creators of critical realism”, saying: “All these are apostates, who have wandered from the fold of their class, noble men ruined by the bourgeoisie, or children of the petty bourgeoisie, who have escaped from the stifling atmosphere of their class. Books by members of this group of European writers have a double and indisputable value for us, first, as technically model works of literature, and second, as documents that explain the rise and decline of the bourgeoisie, documents created by apostates to this class, who depict its way of life, traditions and acts from a critical angle.” (“On Literature”) The classist and of the critical realists has been pointed out by Gorky to be that of “the petty bourgeoisie, on the basis of liberal and humanitarian ideas”. Owing to this class limitation, the critical realists failed to find a correct answer to the solution of the social problems of their time. They usually tried to explain the social conflicts in terms of morality and ethics, and put forward peaceful reform and reconciliation as the way to solve acute class

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contradictions. Their great contribution to world literature lies chiefly in their exposure and criticism of the bourgeoisie and in their sympathetic description of the small, common people of the lower classes.

8. Tess of the D’Urbervilles is Hardy’s most famous novel, telling the tragic life story of a beautiful county girl, Tess Durbeyfield. Tess is the daughter of a poor villager. In her youth she is seduced by Alec D’Urbervilles, the son of an aristocrat. Tess gives birth to an illegitimate child who died soon after birth, thus scandalizing the narrow-minded people around her. So she leaves home and works at a distant farm as a dairymaid. There she meets Angel Clare, a clergyman’s son, who has broken with the traditions of his family to seek the ideal in a quiet rural life. The young people fall in love and are engaged to each other. On their wedding night, Tess confesses to Angel her previous misfortune. Angel, himself a sinner who has had some affair with a bad woman, will not take Tess for a victim, and abandons her. Soon he leaves for Brazil. Misfortune and hardship come upon poor Tess and her family. Her father dies and the whole family are threatened with starvation. Now Alec D’Urbervilles has become a preacher. Tess has made some pathetic appeals to Angel abroad but in vain, and Alec presses his attentions upon her. Angel, returning from Brazil and repentant of his harshness to Tess, finds her living with Alec. Maddened by this second wrong that has been done her by Alec, she murders him in a fit of despair. After hiding with Angel in a forest for a short time, Tess falls into the claws of law. She is arrested, tried and hanged. At the end of the story, the author writes sarcastically: “Justice was done, and the President of the Immortals had ended his sport with Tess.”

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The whole story is filled with a feeling of dismal foreboding and doom. Fateful circumstances and tragic coincidences abound in the book. These do not, however, eclipse the chief message of the truthful portrayal of the tragic lot of a poor country girl mined by the bourgeois society, which alone is responsible for the miseries and sufferings of the small people whom Hardy described in his books.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles, together with Jude the Obscure, could be regarded

as the summit of Hardy’s realism. Both novels were at first given a

hostile reception by the bourgeois public. The malicious criticism which they incurred discouraged the author to such an extent that Hardy ceased writing novels altogether. At the end of the nineties, almost at the age of sixty, Hardy turned entirely to poetry.

Ⅱ. Define the following terms.

1. English critical realism: English critical realism o f the 19th century flourished in the forties and in the early fifties. The critical realists described with much vividness and artistic skill the chief traits of the English society and criticized the capitalist system from a democratic view point. The greatest English realist of the time was Charles Dickens. With striking force and truthfulness, he pictures bourgeois civilization, showing the misery and sufferings of the common people. Another critical realist, William Makepeace Thackeray, was a no less severe exposer of contemporary society. Thackeray’s novels are mainly a satirical portrayal of the upper strata of society. Other adherents to the method of critical realism were

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Charlotte and Emily Bronte, and Elizabeth Gaskell. In the fifties and sixties the realistic novel as represented by Dickens and Thackeray entered a stage of decline. It found its reflection in the works of George Eliot. Though she described the life of the laboring people and criticized the privileged classes, the power of exposure became weaker in her works. She seemed to be more morally than socially minded. The English critical realists of the 19th century not only gave a satirical portrayal of the bourgeoisie and all the ruling classes, but also showed profound sympathy for the common people.

2. Victorian period: The era of Queen Victoria’s reign (1837~1901). The period is sometimes dated from 1832 (the passage of the first Reform Bill), a period of intense and prolific activity in literature, especially by novelists and poets, philosophers and essayists. Dramatists of any note are few. Much of the writing was concerned with contemporary social problems: for instance, the effects of the industrial revolution, the influence of the theory of evolution, and movements of political and social reform. The following are among the most not able British writers of the period: Thomas Carlyle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, Charles Darwin, W. M. Thackeray, Robert Browning, Edward Lear, Charles Dickens, Anthory Trollope, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte, George Eliot, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, George Meredith, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, William Morris, Samuel Butler, Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry Arthur Jones, Oscar Wilde.

3. Autobiography: An account of a person’s life by him or herself. The term appears to have been first used by Southey in 1809. In Dr. Johnson’s opinion no

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man was better qualified to write his life than himself, but this is debatable. Memory may be unreliable. Few can recall clear details of their early life and most are therefore dependent on other people’s impressions, of necessity equally unreliable. Moreover, everyone tends to remember what he or she wants to remember. Disagreeable facts are sometimes glossed over or repressed, truth may be distorted for the sake of convenience or harmony and the occlusions of time may obscure as much as they reveal.

4. Regional novel: A regional writer is one who concentrates much attention on a particular area and uses it and the people who inhabit it as the basis for his or her stories. Such a locale is likely to be rural and or provincial. Once established, the regional novel began to interest a number of writers, and soon the regions described became smaller and more specifically defined. For example, the novels of Mrs. Gaskell (1810~1865) and George Eliot (1819~1880) centered on the Midlands, and those of the Bronte sisters were set in Yorkshire. There were also “urban” or “industrial” novels, set in a particular town or city, some of which had considerable fame in the 19th century. Notable instances are Mrs. Gaskell’s

Mary Barton (1848),

Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (1854) and George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871~1872).

5. Dramatic monologue: Dramatic monologue is a kind of poem in which a single fictional or historical character other than the poet speaks to a silent “audience” of one or more persons. Such poems reveal not the poet’s own

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thoughts but the mind of the impersonated character, whose personality is revealed unwittingly; this distinguishes a dramatic monologue from a lyric, while the implied presence of an auditor distinguishes it from a soliloquy. Major examples of this form in English are Tennyson’s “Ulysses” (1842), Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi” (1855), and T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1917). Some plays in which only one character speaks, in the form of a monologue or soliloquy, have also been called dramatic monologues; but to avoid confusion it is preferable to refer to these simply as monologues or as monodramas.

6. Dramatization: The act of making a play out of a story in another genre, from a chronicle, novel, short story and so forth. In medieval drama the Bible was dramatized into the Mystery Plays. In the Tudor period dramatists “lifted” plots, stories, and ideas from historians like Plutarch and Holinshed, and novelists like Lodge and Nashe. But it was not until the 18th century that dramatization really began to flourish. Then novels provided the material. For example, Richardson’s

Pamela, dramatized by James Dance, was extremely popular. There followed

dramatization of novels by Mrs. Radcliffe, Alpole, Godwin, “Monk” Lewisand Clara Reeve. In the 19thcentury.DickensandScottweretheauthorsmostused; so were Lord Lytton, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Reade, Wilkie Collins, and many more. The arrival of a group of original dramatists towards the end of the century saved the theatre from this deadening activity. But it is a practice by no means extinct, as television and recent theatrical history amply demonstrate.

7. Disinterestedness: (In criticism) “Disinterestedness” is an important term in Matthew Arnold’s essay The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, first

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delivered as a lecture in18 and later published in Essays in Criticism

(1865). Arnold spoke of the need, in the study of all branches of knowledge, to see the object “as in itself it really is”. This depended on the attitude of the critic, which, in his view, ought to be objective and open-minded, a kind of involved detachment.

8. Idyll: Idyll is a short poem describing an incident of country life in terms of idealized innocence and contentment, or any such episode in a poem or prose work. The term is virtually synonymous with pastoral poem. The title of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1842~1885), a sequence of Arthurian romances, bears little relation to the usual meaning. Browning in Dramatic Idylls (1879~1880) uses the term in another sense, as a short self-contained poem.

9. Psychological novel: A vague term to describe that kind of fiction which is for the most part concerned with the spiritual, emotional and mental lives of the characters and with the analysis of characters rather than with the plot and the action. Many novelists during the last two hundred years have written psychological novels.

10. The Pre-Raphaelites: Pre-Raphaelites is a group of English artists and writers of the Victorian period, associated directly or indirectly with the self-styled Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of young artists founded in 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt.

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The PRB (as it is usually abbreviated) rebelled against the conventional academic styles of painting modeled upon Raphael (1483～1520), seeking a freshness and simplicity found in earlier artists, along with a closer fidelity to Nature. The organized Brotherhood itself lasted only a few years, but Pre-Raphaelitism as a broader current survived in the paintings of Edward Burne-Jones, the designs of William Morris, and the art criticism of John Ruskin, as well as in the poetry of Christina Rossetti, D. G. Rossetti, Morris, and A. C. Swinburne—the last three being dubbed “The Fleshly School of Poetry” in a hostile review by Robert Buchanan (Contemporary Review, 1871). Pre-Raphaelite poetry is often characterized by dreamy medievalism, mixing religiosity and sensuousness, notably in D. G. Rossetti’s “The Blessed Damozel” (1850), Morris’s The Defence of Guenevere (1858), and Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads (1866).

11. Künstlerroman: A novel which has an artist (in any creative art) as the central character and which shows the development of the artist from childhood to maturity and later. In English literature the most famous example of a Künstlerroman is James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

12. Aestheticism: The term aesthetic has come to signify something which pertains to the criticism of the beautiful or to the theory of taste. An aesthete is one who pursues and is devoted to the “beautiful” in art, music and literature. And aestheticism is the term given to a movement, a cult, a mode of sensibility (a way of looking at and feeling about things) in the 19th century. Fundamentally, it entailed the point of view that art is self-sufficient and need serve no other

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purpose than its own ends. In other words, art is an end in itself and need not be (or should not be) didactic, politically committed, propagandist, moral or anything else but itself; and it should not be judged by any non-aesthetic criteria (e.g. whether or not

it is useful).

13. Naturalism: Naturalism is a post-Darwinian movement of the late 19th century that tried to apply the” laws” of scientific determinism to fiction. The naturalist went beyond the realist’s insistence on the objective presentation of the details of everyday life to insist that the materials of literature should be arranged to reflect a deterministic universe in which a person is a biological creature controlled by environment and heredity. Major writers include Crane, Dreiser, Norris, and O’Neill in America; Zola in France; and Hardy and Gissing in England. Crane’s “The Blue Hotel” (18) is perhaps the best example in this text of a naturalistic short story.

Ⅲ. Fill in the blanks.

1. The Pickwick Papers, Pickwick 2. David Copperfield

3. Common sense 4. The Snobs of England

5. George Eliot 6. workers; capitalists

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7. The Millon the Floss 8. Oliver Twist

9. novel 10.common

11. Inner world, psycho-analytical 12. Emily Bronte

13.irony 15. English civilization, culture 17. History of England 19. Thomas Hardy 21. The May or of Casterbridge 23. Modern Painters 25. women 27. Children’s stories 29. mid-19th 31. The Way of All Flesh 14. London

16. High seriousness

18. Idylls of the King

20. Barnaby Rudge

22. child, grotesque

24. Gothic architecture

26. middle-class

28. inner struggle

30. Utopian fantasy

32. Thomas Hardy

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33. Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning

34. traditional, modern 35. destiny

Ⅳ. Choose the best answer.

1. D 2. A 6. B 7. B 11. A 12. D 16. A 17. D 21. A 22. D 26. B 27. C 31. D 32. C 36. A 37. C 41. B 42. D 46. B 47.B 3. C 8. A 13. A 18. A 23. B 28. D 33. A 38. B 43. C 48.C

4. A 9. D 14. C 19. D 24. B 29. B 34. D 44. D 47

5. C

10. D

15. B

20. C

25. D

30. B

35. B

40. D

45. B

39. B

Ⅴ. Short-answer questions.

1. There are complicated narrative levels in Wuthering Heights. The main narrative is

told by Nelly, Catherine’s old nurse, to Mr. Lockwood, a temporary tenant at Grange. The latter too gives an account of what he sees at Wuthering Heights. In the main narrative by Nelly inserts the sub-narrative told through Isabella’s letters to Nelly. While the central interest is maintained, the sequence of its development is constantly disordered by flashbacks. This makes the story all the more enticing and genuine.

2. Vanity Fair was published in 1847~1848 in monthly installments, showing a picture of the life of the ruling classes of England. The title was taken from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The following quotation from Bunyan’s allegory may show Thackeray’s opinion of the English bourgeois and aristocratic society, when he called his work “Vanity Fair”: The pilgrims in Bunyan’s work arrive at the city of Vanity, where they find Vanity Fair, that is, “ a fair, wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity .... Therefore at this fair are all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferment, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts, as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not” . The sub-title of the book, A Novel Without a Hero, suggests the fact that the writer’s intention was not to portray individuals, but the bourgeois and aristocratic society as a whole.

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3. Browning’s principal achievement lies in his introducing to English poetry the dramatic monologue. He defined the feature of his poems as “though for the most part Lyric in expression, always Dramatic in principle, and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine”. “My stress”, he wrote, “lay on incidents in the development of a human soul.”

4. David Copperfield is one of Dickens’s best works. It was his own favorite. It is written in the first person and is the most autobiographical of all his books. In writing the novel, Dickens threw into it deep feelings and much of his own experience in his younger days. In the story of David’s miserable boyhood Dickens depicts his own sufferings as a child-laborer in a blacking factory. The novel was written at a time when his creative powers had reached their height. All this gives the book a combination of verisimilitude, familiarity and artistic maturity seldom met with in his other novels. That is why David Copperfield has been loved by so many, and especially by young readers.

5. (1) The story opens with the titular heroine, Jane Eyre, a plain little orphan.

(2) This novel sharply criticizes the existing society, e.g. the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions such as Lowood School where poor girls are trained.

(3) The success of the novel is also due to its introduction to the English novel the first governess heroine Jane Eyre.

6. The Egoist is generally accounted Meredith’s supreme masterpiece, and

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indeed in shapeliness of plot, in density of texture, in virtuosity of psychological analysis, and in the scintillation of the wit, the novel is an astonishing achievement. It traces the humbling of the arch-egotist, the insufferably conceited and yam gentleman, Sir Willoughby Patterne, whose search for the woman truly worthy to be his wife eventually lights upon Clara Middleton, the daughter of Dr. Middleton, a character modeled on Meredith’s father-in-law, Thomas Love Peacock. A notable study is that of the scholar Vernon Whitford, modeled on Leslie Stephen (1832~1904) in his younger days, which the reader will wish to compare with Mr. Ramsay, modeled on the older Leslie Stephen by his daughter Virginia Woolf in To the Lighthouse (1927). The central theme, the dissection and unmasking of

arrogance, involves a good deal of acerbity, but Clara Middleton is an attractive character who thinks for herself, is conscious of women’s rights, and fiercely resistant to acceptance of Victorian feminine submissiveness.

7. “Heroes and Hero-Worship” was written by Carlyle to prove, with the help of portraits of heroes, his favorite view of history: “The History of the World is the Biography of Great Men.” According to him, history is merely the record of the thoughts and actions of heroes, and the quality of heroism can show itself in any sphere of human activity. Carlyle sums up history in six divisions: (1) The hero as Divinity, in which Odin, the supreme god in Northern mythology, is taken for example; (2) The Hero as Prophet, in which Mohammed is taken as the type; (3) The Hero as Poet, in which Dante and Shakespeare are taken as types; (4) The Hero as Priest or Religious Leader, in which Luther appears as the hero of the Reformation; (5) The Hero as Man of Letters, in which Burns is one of the examples; (6) The Hero as King, in which Cromwell and Napoleon appear as the heroes of

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reform by revolution.

8. In his works, man is shown inevitably bound by his own inherent nature and hereditary traits which prompt him to go and search for some specific happiness or success and set him in conflict with the environment. The outside nature—the natural environment or Nature herself—is shown as some mysterious supernatural force.

9. (1) Charlotte’s works are all about the struggle of an individual consciousness towards self-realization, about some lonely and neglected young women with a fierce longing for love, understanding and a full, happy life.

(2) All her heroines’ highest joy arises from some sacrifice of self or some human weakness over come.

(3) The images of women protagonists in her works mostly reflect the life of the middle-class working women, particularly governesses.

(4) Her works present a vivid realistic picture of the English society by exposing the cruelty, hypocrisy and other evils of the upper classes, and by showing the misery and suffering of the poor. Especially in Jane Eyre, she sharply criticizes the existing society, e.g. religious hypocrisy of charity institutions.

10. These novels have for their setting the agricultural region of the southern counties of England. He truthfully depicts the impoverishment and decay of small

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farmers who become hired field-hands and roam the country in search of seasonal jobs. These laborers are mercilessly exploited by the rich landowners. The author is pained to see the decline of the patriarchal mode of life in rural England. This is one of the reasons for the growing pessimistic vein which runs throughout his novels. His pessimistic philosophy seems to show that mankind is subjected to the rule of some hostile and mysterious fate, which brings misfortune to human life.

11. Macaulay is remembered as a prose stylist in the history of English literature. His prose is marked by a logical and rhetorical excellence based upon a judicious combination of clearness in thought and balance in structure.

12. Characteristics for Henry James’ novels are understanding and sensitively drawn lady portraits. His main theme is the innocence of the New World in conflict with the corruption and wisdom of the Old. Among his masterpieces is Daisy Miller, where the young and innocent American Daisy finds her values in conflict with European sophistication. In The Portrait of a Lady again a young American woman is fooled during her travels in Europe.

Henry James is deeply concerned with the collision between the American and the European mentalities. James’s acute sensitivity to the diversity of psychological and emotional motivation and to the effect of varied social nuances in confusing the flow of communication by word, by gesture, by tone and by behavior made this a fruitful theme for fictional exploration. Moreover, he has a bubbling sense of humor which enables him to register the subtler collisions of ethos with ethos, temperament with temperament, and culture with culture, in

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dialogue and commentary that are underscored with wry irony.

13. Dorothea Brooke is a beautiful, intelligent young lady of an “ardent and theoretic nature”. She is not satisfied with the common fate of gentle- women. She is full of manly and lofty ideas and wants to do some thing great for Middlemarch. First she devotes herself to the improvement of the cottages of the farmers and then, when she sees the elderly pedant Casaubon, she decides to marry the man so as to be able to realize her ideal by helping him in his lofty pursuit of the fundamental truth about Christianity. Soon after her marriage, however, she finds herself totally disillusioned as to both the character of Casaubon and to that ambitious work of his. In the end she is able to retrieve her error and find a new way of life by marrying Will Ladislaw, the man she loves, and is content with giving him her “wifely help” and exercising a “diffusive influence” upon those around.

Dorothea Brooke fails in achieving her goals owing to the social environment as well as her own vulnerability.

14. Great Expectations is heavily symbolic. The notable images are the graveyard which symbolizes the underworld with its violence and threat and danger, the huge rotten wedding cake of Miss Havisham’s, which is the very symbol of the corrupted and corrupting society, and the journeys Pip makes from the country to Miss Havisham’s and then London, and his return to the country and the ruined site of Satis House, and finally his meeting Estella there. The journeys indicate his way of growth and his inability to stay in the country gives

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the final touch to the realistic depiction of the author: innocence once lost is forever lost; paradise lost is never to be regained. Besides, the characters’ names also carry symbolic significance. The name of Estella suggests an ideal as well as something beautiful and always visible but never to be gotten, and that of Miss Hawisham gives an impression that what she wishes for or what she has is sham, false and illusory, and the name of the criminal Magwitch indicates a mysterious magician capable of witchcraft. Even the name of the hero Pip carries the implication of trivialness and humbleness of his origin and foretells his final disappointment in his great expectations.

15. George Eliot is a critical realist. She draws faithful pictures of the life of the common people, especially those of Warwickshire where she spent the earlier part of her life. She writes very faithfully about the rural artisans, farmers, the country clergy, and other native people, and she fully realizes that a carpenter like A dam Bede and a weaver like Silas Marner are infinitely better men than the sons of the landed aristocracy like Arthur Donnithorneor Dunstan Cass. Furthermore, her novels are marked by a greater depth of character study and development, achieved through a skilful psychological approach in character delineation. The reader gains a more comprehensive and sympathetic understanding of the men and women that figure in her novels.

16. Tess is actually a victim of her society. Hardy created the heroine Tess in

Tess of the D’Urbervilles just to criticize the society in his time. Tess is a tragic

person simply because she is not accepted by the society in which agriculture is menaced by the forces of invading capitalism. So in a way, Tess’s fate is decided

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by her society.

Ⅵ. Answer the questions according to the following passages.

Passage1

1. It is taken from Emily Bronte’s masterpiece, Wuthering Heights.

2. (1) Heathcliff is a sympathetic figure. Readers sympathize with this unfortunate, lonely waif when he is maltreated by Hindley, jeered at by the Lintons, betrayed by Catherine, and tormented by the unobtainable love.

(2) He is entirely wicked, even, at times, a criminal. Readers are abhorred by his mad, heartless and almost inhuman revenge on all those around, whether responsible or not for his suffering. In him, there is a most terrible picture of love scorned turning into desperate hatred and revenge that is destructive to both the avenger and the revenged.

3. (1) One way of reading is to treat it as a romantic story, as a tale of love and revenge. As such, it is superb. Every character in the novel is in one way or another connected with the triangular love between Heathcliff and Catherine and Edgar. Such love affair will usually end in tragedy. And yet, it is a most terrible yet wonderful tale of love with the mutual possession and torment, with the mutual belonging in life and in death.

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(2) From the social point of view, the story is a tragedy of social inequality. Heathcliff, a waif, of the lowest order in society, is eager for love and friendship, but is forever looked down upon and rejected by the two families. He loves Catherine dearly but he can’t have her just because of the disparity between their social status.

(3) At some deeper level, however, the story is more than a mere copy of real life. To many people it is an illustration of the workings of the universe, a book about the cosmic harmony of the universe and the destruction and re-establishment of this harmony. Finally the harmony is reestablished when Heathcliff unites with Catherine in death and the ghosts of both stay to occupy Wuthering Heights, leaving young Cathy and Hareton to start their young, hopeful life at Thrushcross Grange.

Passage2

4.The poem is written by Alfred Tennyson.

5. It was written in memory of A. H. Hallam, Tennyson’s closest friend and the fiancé of his sister. Hallam died suddenly of a stroke in Vienna at the age of twenty-two. The sudden death of his friend plunged Tennyson into great sorrow, which found the expression in this exquisite little poem.

6. The first line seems to be the given, the starting point for the creation of the form. Three bleak repeated words, three stresses. In classical metrics there is such a

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foot. It is called a molossus. The second line seems to have four stresses, although it can be read as a three-stress line (“On thy cold gray stones, O Sea”). The form of the first stanza is a three-stress-per-line stanza of four lines, a quatrain in which the second and fourth lines rhyme. And this is certainly the form of the second stanza, which comes across as a much more regular piece of versification than the first. In the third stanza, the third line, a fourth stress is added to the pattern. And the variation is repeated in the last stanza, putting an extra stress into the third line.

7. Tennyson’s love for Hallam and his grief at his death were expressed passionately. In this poem, the line that introduces the variation, “But O for the touch of a vanished hand”, is also the line that tells for the first time what the unutterable grief is about. The line varies and it expands, because it suddenly has an extra freight of emotion.

Passage3

8. This song cycle comprises one hundred and thirty lyrics, less than half of which are directly connected with the death of Hallam, Tennyson’s closest friend and the fiancé of his sister. As a whole this “poetic diary” is rather a representation of the poet’s thoughts on problems of life, death and immortality.

9. This poem is written in octosyllabic quatrains, in iambic tetrameter, rhyming abba.

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10. “I” is not always the author speaking of himself, but the voice of the human race speaking through him.

11. At Tennyson’s time, the discoveries of natural science were leading thoughtful people to question and abandon the old religious belief in the immortality of the human soul and the heavenly bliss after death. This part gives expression to the religious doubts.

12. Some of Tennyson’s best lyrics are scattered here and there in the collection, and In Memoriam, for its exquisite form and melody, is regarded by many critics as the summit of Tennyson’s poetic achievement.

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