Dickens

Amita C. Jani
Roll no. : 11
SEM – II
Paper no : E-C-204
Year – 2011
Topic: Dickens

Submitted to Ms. Ruchira Dhudhrejiya
Department of English,
Bhavnagar University.

The life of Charles Dickens : 

One of the greatest British writers of all time, Charles Dickens was a Victorian novelist who chose the Bildungsroman form for at least two of his most famous works : David Copperfield (1849-1850) and Great Expectations (1860 – 1861). Born in Portsmouth, England, on February 7, 1812, Dickens grew up in London. His father was a navy clerk who went to debtors’ prison when Dickens was 12^th. Forced to go to work in a shoe dye factory, Dickens lived alone in fear and shame. These feeling led to the creation of his many orphan characters and his sympathy for the plight of the working class that made him the first great urban novelist. Although he was able to return to school and eventually clerked in a law firm, Dickens found his first success as a journalist and comic writer of the picalick papers (1836 – 1837). However, his deep social concerns found expression in a rich intensity and variety in his later works. By the time of his death from a paralytic stroke at age 58 on June 9, 1879, Dickens had written many novels, including a Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities.  

Charles Dickens as an observer of the 19^th century English Society : 

Throughout his life Dickens was in interested in public affairs and although his popular reputation may have the progressive or racial quality of his thinking. His many works are against a number of official abuses and by the large was regarded as friend of the poor and a deny enemy to certain type of public servant. His novel belongs to the humanization movement of the Victorian era. He was from the first to last a novelist with a purpose in nearly all his novel, he set out to attack same specific abuse in the existence system of themes and throughout he constituted himself the weak, the outcast and the oprest. In his works there is an attack upon some legal of social evils of the Victorian society which Shakespeare had already hinted in his Hamlet.

He satires boding schools in Nicholas Nickelby, the court of chancery in Black house, the new manufacturing system and evils of industrialism in Hard times, the poor laws and work houses in Oliver Twist and he show money madness in great expectation system of teaching in David Copperfield.

In the 19^th century England, people were generally snobbish about their social condition. They felt that the country was working through fees of great prosperity. But the fact remains that the English society suffers from great economic inequality with only ten percent of total population leading comfortable of skilled, laboring servants, unskilled labors and migrating poor.  At a given time only 1/3 was fully employed, another 1/3 was only partially employed. In spite of such a grooving poverty, social consciousness gains a very slow response to the need of any change for the better. It is one of the great paradoxes of Victorian England. People could feel so unconcern about their poor and enjoy over their so called prosperity. Poor lost, free schools, work houses and public authorities came into existence. They were a inocary of social justice and the bumbles the manes could reduced any social system, however considered it might be to a force. Dickens attempts to show order the need of changing the social order and winding its concerns to include in it. The well for those whose were really poor and deprived. Oliver Twist the novel opens with bitter poor laws of 19^th century. These laws were a destroyed manifestation of the Victorian middle classes emphasis on the hard work. England in 1830 was rapidly undergoing a transformation in all the works of life. The growing middle class had achieved an economic influence equal to if not greater than that of the British aristocracy. 

Dickens as an observer : 

Oliver Twist was Dickens’ second novel however in Dickens the reformatory instinct was very strong and in the very next novel his readers were surprised to see him ruthlessly attacking the social evils, in particular the wretched conditions in the work house. In his later novels he carried on a crusade against other evils like the miserable conditions in the debtors’ prisons in the factories and shops, the corruption prevalent in the election system and certain other evils caused by the rapid industrialization of the country. In order to understand these novels including Oliver Twist it is important to have a fair idea of the historical background in which they written. 

Poor laws : 

The first few chapters of Oliver Twist are a very strong protest against the work house life that virtually dehumanized human beings. Certain systems that had been initiated to being relief to the poor people had gradually been so corrupted that instead of giving them any solace, they had actually made their life miserable. It was under Queen Elizabeth-I that laws were made to provide relief to those poor people who could not support themselves. There was a two-fold arrangement. The old, the sick, the lame and the blind were reviled at home; orphans were boarded out and then apprenticed to a trade. The vagabonds were sent to the houses of correction. The theory behind this arrangement was to provide work to the able bodied poor and to offer relief to the disabled… special buildings were set up to provide work to the poor people under supervision. These building were known as work houses. By an act passed in 1722, the poor could be compelled to live and work on these buildings in order to be eligible to get relief. In other words, either a poor man was to live in the work house or he was to be denied any relief. This was known as the workhouse test. At first there was separate institution for the different needs of children, old people or those who were mentally or physically sick. But gradually the workhouse condition deteriorated; workhouse came to contain a mixture of able and disabled like end by the end of 19^th century, they became symbols of utter degradation. In most workhouse husband were separated from wives, children lacked proper care, diseases were rife and food was inadequate. 

In the late 18^th century laws passed to allow “out-door relief” to the able-bodied so that that workhouse could only the old or disabled. The original plan was to offer minimum wage for he labors, but later a system known as “Speenhamland System” was devised. Accordingly to it relief based on the current prices of bread was given in addition to wages. Once again the intention was to make the life of the poor people worth living, but in practice it lead to general weakening of the independence and self respect of labors and an increase of pauperism in the long run. In the early 19^th century therefore the need was felt to effect reforms in the poor laws. It was felt that a more suitable alternative solution was needed which had become both wasteful and corrupt. Besides, the system of administering relief also needed to be over-hauled. 

The administration of relief :

At this stage, it would be useful to make a note of the system of administering relief to the poor. Basically it was the responsibility of parish which was the main unit of local government in ruling it. Apart from other officials, the parish had the “Justice of Peace” whose duty was to impose the compulsory rates “the poor rate” and to appoint local overseers to administer actual relief. Another petty official was the beadle. Originally it is main function was to proclaim meeting. But he was also expected to keep order in church and to punish petty offenders. Gradually the beadle came to yield considerable power on a small scale. In Oliver Twist there is one such beadle, Mr. Bumble.

Most of the parish officials were unfit for their jobs because of their own lack of education, experience or responsibility. Their positions were both unpaid and compulsory. Therefore it was rarely that really good people ever got elected to them. 

Poor law reforms : 

In 1832 a commission was appointed to study the entire issue of the poor law reform. On the basis of the proposals put forward by this commission, the new poor law of 1834 came into being. Accordingly to it a central authority was created, the poor law commissions, who were given full powers to control local administration. One of the most important changes made by the new poor laws was the replacement of parish officers by elected local bodies known as Board of Guardians. These boards were required to supervise petty officials such as the matron of the workhouse. We find one such Board in Oliver Twist in chapter-II. 

The inefficiency of the reforms : 

There is no doubt that the 1834 measure were excellent in intention, nevertheless even they faild to prove effective. The poor people continued to suffer. However human might be the laws, in which can ultimately bring any benefits. A corrupt administration will make a mockery of the best possible laws. Therefore Dickens has directed his criticism as much against the individuals. If he is critical of the system that degraded human beings, he is equally critical of the people who were responsible for evolving or running such a system. 

In Oliver Twist we find that the workhouse in charge, Mrs. Mann, appropriate the greater part of the stipend given for the food of the children and the children are mostly starved. Here it is Mrs. Mann who is at fault. 

It should be noted that Dickens’ main concern was the individual as an integral part of the system. A system without human beings would be lifeless and even meaningless. Human being without a system would be tending to be confused. So Dickens felt the need of basically good human beings working under a system that was designed to serve the society of these two also, her gave greater importance to human beings. It is Mr. Brownlow as an individual who ultimately rescues Oliver from his system. Laws were bad, in fact Mr. Bumble’s judgment, “Law is a ass – a idiot”, is quite justified. The underworld where people like Fagin ruled was also a dark world but noble people like Mr. Brownlow and the Mayflies could rise these systems and do some good to the society. 

Therefore Dickens makes a very selective criticism in Oliver Twist. He attacks the harsh regime of the workhouse with special regard to diet and utter neglect of the needs of the pauper children but more than that inefficiency and in humanity of such officials as Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Corney. These officials not only physically starved the children but often made them emotional wrecks. 

There has been a good deal of discussion among scholars as to whether Dickens ways attacking the old poor laws of the new. Nut this discussions is almost irrelevant. We should remember that the novel is more an attack on the way the laws are administrated rather than on the intention of the lows on paper most of the lows are just spoken. This only in practice that they prove to be injurious as K.J. Fielding points out, the novel was never intended as an attack on mere institutions, but on the spirit behind them, which remains largely unchanged. 

It is hard to say if any reforms were really carried out as a result of Dicken’s attack on these laws. In fact the protests made by writers are never so quickly effective. But one thing is certain: this novel as well as others to follow definitely prepared a climate in which a genuine need was felt to have a second look at the entire administrative set up and to change it. 

The police system : 

There seems to be an indirect satire on the incompetence and ineffectiveness of the police system, for there are Fagin and Sikes operating right under the shadow of the police and they seem to enjoy perfect immunity. 

Conclusion : 

While writing Oliver Twist, Dickens had the awareness of the entire 19^th century in his mind and some of he scenes mentioned above carry and unmistakable stamp of that time. But the sole purpose of writing the novel Oliver Twist is to create social awareness of the evils present in the contemporary society.

Criticism

Amita C. Jani
Roll no. : 11
SEM – II
Paper no : E-C-203
Year – 2011
Topic: Criticism

Submitted to Dr. Dilip Barad
Department of English,
Bhavnagar University.

What is new criticism?

The new criticism is a type of formalist literary criticism that reached its height during the 1940s and 1950 and that received its name from John Crowe Rans Son’s 1941 book The New Criticism. New critics treat a work of literature as if it were a self-contained, self-referential object. Rather than basing their interpretations of a text on the reader’s response, the author’s stated intensions or parallels between the text and historical contexts (such as author’s life). New critics perform a close reading concentrating on the relationship within the text that gives it its own distinctive character or form. New critics emphasize that the structure of a work should not be divorced from meaning viewing the two as constituting a quasi-organic unity. Special attention is paid to repetition, particularly of image or symbols but also of sound affects and rhythms in poetry. New critics especially appreciated the use of literary devices, such a irony to achieve a balance or reconciliation between dissimilar, even confliction elements in a text.

Because it stressed close textual analysis and viewing the text as a carefully crafted, orderly object containing formal observable patterns, the new criticism has sometimes been called an “objective” approach to literature. New critics are more likely than certain other critics to believe and say that the meaning of a text can be known objectively. For instance, reader response either of each reader’s experience or of the norms of that governs or particular interpretive community and deconstructors argue that texts mean opposite things at the same time.    

The foundation of the new criticism were laid in books and essays written during the 1920s and 1930s by I.A. Richards (practical criticism, 1929), William Empson (seven types of ambiguity, 1930) and I.S. Eliot (The function of criticism, 1933). The  approach was significantly developed later, however, by a group of American poets and critics, including R.P. Blackmar, Cleanth Brooks, John Penn Warren and William K. Winsatt. Although we associate the new criticism with the certain principles and terms such as affective fallacy (The notion that the reader’s response is relevant to the meaning of a work) and intentional fallacy (The notion that the author’s intension determines the work’s meaning) – the new critics were trying to make a cultural statement rather than to establish a critical doymer. Generally southern religious and culturally conservative they advocated the inherent value of literary works (particularly of literary works regarded as beautiful art objects) because they were sick of the growing ugliness of modern life and contemporary events. Some recent theorists even link the rising popularity after world war-II of the new criticism (and other types of formalist literary criticism such as the Chicago School) to American isolationism. These critics tend to view the formalist tendency to isolate literature from biography and history as symptomatic of American fatigue with wider involvements. Whatever the source of the new criticism’s popularity, its practitioners and the textbooks they wrote were so infrequent in American academia that the approach became standard in college and even high school.

New criticism : Application on another paradise lost : The Hindu way

-         Meena Kandasamy

Modern times have given rise to new literary forms or we should say modification are seen in this forms. We have writers like Sujata Bhatt, Rachana Joshi, Pravin Gadhavi, Meena Kandasamy who have certainly enriched our literary heritage through their creations but they have absaitained from following the tradition like sheep. Meena Kandasamy “a flowering talent” admits that her poetry is her vehicle for cross fertilizing her views on “Indian culture and so called socio-cultured values”. It is of course statement that most of these writers write poetry for propagating their attitudes towards the happening in the society.

Another Paradise Lost : The Hindu way has a remarkable beginning before the reader come across the first and the only name in the first line, we come across one determine and two adjectives “One sleepy summer afternoon”.

Sleepy – she is half-awaken. It shows abrupt beginning of the poem and then “boring afternoon” is transferred epithet. The narrator instead of saying that she is sleeping, she placed that adjective sleepy before the word afternoon by this means she establishes that she was sleepy because it was summer – (adjective) afternoon. The determiner plays a crucial role by making it very clear that for the narrator the incident that took place is more important than the time. The reader should be notice the Olever used of the world sleepy which can not the half awake state of the narrator’s mind.

“One Sleepy Summer Afternoon”

Sleepy summer – transferred epithet

Sleepy – adjective

A Summer – adjective

The second line brings in the pronoun “I” for the narrator. The verb after the pronoun “I”, prepare us to read or view the whole poem (incident) from her angle. Her angle is that of a witness.  The reason behind the adopting this angle is that the narrator simply narrates the incidents without getting verbose. Sharing the characteristics with the modern writers, she does not waste time in setting the points.

If we use a word from film criticism and say that the poem starts with her bang. The place were the snake is lying is an unusual place and it raises our interest level in the poem. Simultaneously the reader senses that the snake is a personified metaphor. Here the Frankners and her habit of providing minute details establish her as witness. The poem is unusually long but it is sweep in action and quicking in place like the narrators temperaments and attitude which is quick to react against social evils or cultural practices. The first stanza is the cause and the second stanza is the effect of the cause.

The  second stanza of the poem continues the narration in the set direction or this direction is the set in the first stanza. It looks outcome of the first stanza – the law of cause and effect. The natural mode of narration, sweetness of action and quickness in pace are conspicuously sustain here. Both the stanzas are the examples of Meena’s technical perfection. The placement of the punctuation marks exhibits existent in narrating this story to her readers cum listeners. It is her technical perfection that the reader communicates with her by raising questions nonverbally.

The third stanza begins with an imperative without “please, would you or could you” because the snake knows the narrator is going to attack with acid. The use of the word “hissed” illustrates or exemplifies fun. A snake hisses but it must be borne in mind that there the snake is a personified metaphor so where it hissed, it expresses disapproval, the reader can imagine is paused, since the snake starts interacting in pure Tamil! Tamil is the language in which narrator prays and writes. It is on of the defending factors of her identity. Again her reader is hunted with the same question – does the snake have its own physical existence or it is the narrator’s inner voice??  The view that the snake is her inner voice, the snake says that it is exile. This is reminds the reader banished, marginalized, importantly outcaste. The term, the reader will notice connects him with the term exile, with this a little bit of fog is cleared and the picture that we have before use is that of a person having diasporic feeling in his own country.

Fourth stanza moves the discussion further. The snake twists and we come to know that it is losing its “hair balding”. What really surprises us is bolding has been linked with none other than Salman Rusdie’s blindly fallow, because Rusdie and controversy are twists. And now we realize that the narrator has taken up controversy in homeland.

In the fifth stanza, the very same snake found to be discoursing exhorting and preaching to the narrator about living in detachment. No wonder our Holy Scriptures are target and the philosophy if “Nishkam”, “Aliptbhav” is ridiculed. In short the philosophy of self-abnegation is mocked of at the next sentence that fellows are extremely sardonic.

“The perfection of life is when you do not know the difference between yielding and resisting”

But the journey does not halt here the same snake who us the voice of the marginalized people produces an explanation of Holy Scriptures. “Rebirth” and “Reincarnation” has been our old tool with which we have created the web set stories and explanation in which the marginalized have been struck for centuries. When the marginalized snake is speaking the narrator feels tempted to take notes. It simply means controversies have been calls which have always pushed forward the writer’s locomotive of creativity still as a twist is an expected factor in her poems, she declares, “I began arguing” this exhibits that she knows the difference between yielding and resistance.

In this poem, in short, two paradise are compared and we find that in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan is against God but in this Paradise Lost men is against men. If we applied new criticism in this poem, main one question arise in our mind that why she choose snake? Because snake is a “Shudra Creature” and according to our myth snake or animal also divider. In this poem we find commonness between snake and narrator because both are from “Shudra” or from lower class community. Here snake challenged the authorities. In this poem she shows that “the snake ruled twelve thousand years, it is impossible” so she is making on our scriptures or myth or our belief system. Even criticism exists in haven also or she said why Karma decide everything... and she said that nobody looks at our world, what is more important here Karma or legality or honesty? Or Karma is just a bunkum means a foolish thing that the poet asked question like what is the criteria of our work? And she said about snake that snake is well known but this God plotted against him and they are get together and decided that snake may creates problems so decided to thrown him outside and he raised a question so her turn into snake. So here we find power struggle mean who ever are in the power they govern the others. Same way Shudra also kept outside, the main point is cast politics here, this snake is dissatisfied because his questions are not heard or answered so he was banished from paradise. In this poem “I” refers the whole Dalit community and this was the different phrase of Paradise Lost and it is very significant that Milton’s Paradise Lost. So it signifies that she did not violate any social rules and this case no forbidden food or this is natural law and she is not talking about women but just doing for society. This poem is fusion of Myth and Social satire and she got a story from snake or now she respects the snake or Dalit or we can say that it was means a whole poem was just her inner conflict because she was going to take same topic or decided to write about the same topic or in this way as a Dalit woman she has going to free the problems by other caste and in this way the conflict about where is rationality? No where we found it…

Conclusion :

After applying the new criticism in Meena Kandasamy’s Another Paradise Lost : The Hindu Way… we find that the new criticism stresses close attention to the internal characteristics of the text itself. Or the interpretation of a text shows that there aspects serve to support the structure of meaning within the text. New critics privileged poetry over other forms of literary expression because it shows the poem as the purest exemplification of the literary values which they upheld so new criticism aims at finding one “correct” reading, it also ignores the ambiguity of language and the active nature of the perception of meaning. New criticism, new critics treat a work of literature as if it were self-contained. They do not consider reader’s response, author’s intensions or historical and cultural contexts. New criticism performs a close reading of the text and believes that meaning of the text should not be examined separately.

An Introdution - A Confessional Poem

Amita C. Jani
Roll no. : 11
SEM – II
Paper no : E-C-202
Year – 2011
Topic: An Introdution - A Confessional Poem

Submitted to Mr. Devershi Mehta
Department of English,
Bhavnagar University.

Kamla Das : Life and Career

Kamla Das is one of the most significant Indian poets writing in English today, her poetry is all about herself, about he intensely felt desire for love, for emotional involvement and her failure to achieve such a relationship. Hence knowledge of her life and personality is essential for an understanding of her poetry.

Mrs. Kamla Das – her maiden name was Mudavikutty – was born ar Punmyurjukan in Malabar in Kerala in 1934. Both her parents were poets and so poetry was in blood so to say. She was educated mainly at home. It seems that her grandmother showered a lot of love and affection on the growing child, and she is often remembered in her poetry as in “A hot noon in Malabar” and “My Grandmother’s House”. She looks back to her happy days in her company with hostalyia and yearning. Her parents are seldom remembered with such love and affection. She was married at the early age of fifteen but her marriage has not been a happy one; in it she has failed to find that fulfillment which a woman craves.

The result has been frustration and disillusionment and this bitter personal experience colors all her poetry. It has been a hallaw – relationship, she can neither endure not can she untie the marriage knot. Her husband is not unkind to her, indeed, he has been a good friend to her and has allowed every freedom, but as she herself tells us, it is love which she craves for and not freedom. The poignant story of her life, if the psychological traumas she suffered is narrated in her autobiography my story serialized in the current weekly from January to December, 1974 and it makes poignant reading.

Happy or unhappy, Kamla Das continues to live with her husband and continues to write both prose and poetry, both in English and Malayalam. Her poetic output in English is rather thin. It consists merely of three slender volumes published in the earlier volumes. Still she has made her mark, is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest Indian poets writing in English, says Eunice De Souza.

“In her best poems, it is impossible no to be moved by and involved in the passionate curve of rhythm, the haunting and telling image images of sterling the ultimate resilience in the face of any relationship that threatens to devastate her vital and potential self”.

She has published eleven books in Malayalam. Her prose, whether in English or Malayalam, is all auto-biographical. Her short stories such as Friyidity and Sepia – tainted photograph clearly deal with the theme of love and the emotional discontent such seems to be inseparably bound up with such experience. She has been contributing a number of journals and literary magazines including opinion, the illustrated weekly of India : Poetry east and west; Debonair; Eve’s weekly; Famina; Imprint; Weekly Round table and Love and Friendship.

Her many literary merits have been recognized and her poems find an honorable place in all anthologies of Indo – English poetry. With a frankness and openness unusually in the Indian context, Kamla Das expresses her need for love. What is overpowering about her poem is their sense of urgency. She has secured prominent place among the immortals of literature. This is so because Devendra Khli point out “Courage and honesty are the strength if Kamla Das” character and her poetry and the courage lies not only being able to admit that one has aged when one has, but in also being able to assert in the face of it that in the final analysis one has no regrets and that one has lived beautifully in this word”.

The major themes an concerns of Kamla Das :

Kamla das is one of the members of the poetic trinity of Indo-Anglian poets. Her poetry is characterized, frustrations and disillusionments with a disarming frankness she tried to assert her individuality, to maintaining her feminine identity and from this revolt arose her trouble, psychological traumas and frustrations.

1)  Summer in Calcutta, 1965 : 

This 1^st published anthology of Kamla’s poetry, sets the tone for her entire poetic output. It contains only fifty poems and with few exceptions the theme of all of them is love or failure or failure in love.

2)  The Descendants, 1967 :

The volume contains only twenty nine poems and with few exceptions they are about love. The exceptions are the two poems about her own sons Jaisunfer and the white flowers.

3) The old playhouse and other poems, 1973 :

The anthology contains thirty three poems in all of which twenty have been taken from the two previous volumes. Thus there are only thirteen new poems which revel new facts and further artistic maturity. The love theme is still there, but an entirely new dimension and new intensity are added to its treatment. The poems of the volume reveal the poet’s pre-occupation within with death and decay not noticeable in the earlier volumes.

Love theme in Kamla’s poetry :

Most of her poems deal with the theme of unfulfilled love and yearning for love. The dance of the Eunuch is good example of a poem dealing with the theme. The dance of the Eunuch is a dance of the sterile and therefore the unfulfilled and unquenchable love of the woman in the poet.

Quest for love, or rather the failure to find emotional fulfillment through love is the central theme of Kamla’s poetry and her greatness as a love-poet arises from the fact that her love-poetry is rated in her own personal experience. It is an outpouring of her own loneliness, disillusionment and sense of frustration. Married at the early age of sixteen and finding herself tied to hollow relationship which she could not untie, Kamla Das story deposit its sensationalism, which seems to be partly a pose, makes a poignant reading but for Kamla Das,  as she tells us repeatedly, they have proved to be so. When she speaks of love outside marriage she is not actually propagating adultery and infidelity, but merely searching for the relationship which gives both love and security. Her love poetry merely voices her life long yearning for fulfillment through love.

Her love – poetry is unconventional and shocking to the orthodox, for the treatment of sexual love and human body, is free frank and uninhibited. She was unconventional in life and is equally unconventional in poetry. She refused to confirm to the traditional in life and is equally unconventional in poetry. She refused to confirm to the traditional role which a woman and a wife is expected to play. In one of the her lyrics “An Introduction”, she tells us how she was asked “to belong”, “to confirm”, and how she rebelled and tried to be even with male world on its own terms :

Then… I wore a shirt and my brother’s trouser, cut my hair short and ignored

My womanliness dress is sarees, be girl, be wife, they said be embroiderer, be cook,

Be a quarreler with servant, fit in, oh,

Belong.. cried the categorizers.

A rebel : her disillusionment :

The conflict between passivity and rebellion against the male oriented universe emerges as a major theme in her poetry. Her poem like “An Introduction”, we find the final analysis on acknowledgement and a celebration of the beauty and courage of being a woman. She was a social rebero and like all rebels against the accepted social norms, frustration and disillusionment were her lot in life and herself expression in her poetry is therapeutic. Her life itself violated the chiseled, systematic and traditional norms and values and she affirms to a form of life which is characterized by the unconventional and extremely modern point of view. Even in her poen “An Introduction” we find that she is in disillusionment in her love and marriage life.

Tension between love and lust :

Kamla Das’s ultimate vision of love forms the central core of her poetry. Her persona no doubt is given to carnal hungers and suffers like tragic protagonists the catastrophe inflicted upon them by their own doings. Kamla’s own disgust and failures led her to a frantic search for the mythic Krishna the ideal lover, in whom she could establish internal bond. This search made her aware of the need to study all the men: “All at once the plot thickened with a researcher’s hunger for knowledge, I studied all men”. Since, the quest has, by and large failed in her case sex is no more man than a “mindless surrender” or a heartless participation not a “humming fiesta” without emotional involvement. Sex is barren and sterile for her. The charge of lustfulness and obscenity can, therefore, not be maintained. Her quest is spiritual gratification, in which however she fails.

The confession mode :

Kamla Das has been called a poet in the confessional mode. The confessional poet deals in their poetry with personal emotional experiences which generally taboo. There is ruthless self-analysis and tone of utter sincerity. The facts are not always true, but there is no deviation at all from emotional truth. What a confessional peot gives is us is the “psychological equivalent” that we always get in the poetry of Kamla Das, confessional poetry is struggle to relate the private experience with the other world as it is. Such a struggle is in evidence in the poems of Kamla Das from a very early stage. In “An Introduction” she struggles to keep her identity against “The Categorizers”  who ask to “fit in”. Having refused to choose a name and a role she feels it necessary to define her identity.

I am saint I am beloved and the Betrayed.

I have no joys which are not yours,

Aches which are not yours I too call myself I…

The painful assertion, “I too call myself I”, comes from the predicament of the confessional poet. Her experience are common and ordinary, infect too common to give her any, special identity. But the “I” which experiences them, she insists, is separates and unique. This, to her,  is the only way to retain her sense of personal worth in the world of categorizers. She sees the outer world as hostile to the world of self.

An Introdution :

- Kamla Das

An introduction is a subjective poem of Kamla Das. She follows the “school of feminism” while writing this poem. The poetess is aware of her gender and status in the society in which she born and brought up. As a woman writer, she expresses her feeling in reference to the conditioned Indian Society. She poses herself as a rebel against the traditional Indian family. She wants to be a free woman. She defies the set rules and regulations of the society. At the same time she is proud of being Indian. The poet says that she speaks three languages and writes in two but dreams in one that is her mother tongue. Her acquaintances comment upon her writing in English. The poet wants to be a human being read sense. The poet tells about her childhood days, about her plight. She tries to ignore her gender by wearing her brother’s trouser. The elders of her family reprimand her and try to snub her. They all tell her to behave like a decent woman. The poet then tells about her miserable life and she is not satisfied with her present condition. She experiences an unbearable loneliness. She wanders from place to place. She feels that she is guilty. However, she feels that her painful experiences are her own. She favors individuality.

First, there is the freedom to choose her own language and confidence in her creative talent. Then comes the puzzling adolescence an the pain of growing up. This is followed by a desire to be even with male world on its terms, despite the family and social pressure to conform to the traditional feminine role and finally comes the realization that her experiences are the experience of every woman. There is passivity as rebellion against a man-dominated world. The poem may not be her poetic manifesto, but it certainly tells us much about her views regarding the medium of poetic expression. The medium does not matter much; it is the thought thought-content which is of her utmost importance. An introduction offers neither an excuse for writing nor a poetic manifesto: it is vitally related to her urges and aspiration and registers the graph of her growth and consciousness, love and despair, and all that she can do with the English language. Kamla das presents a new aesthetic in poetic terms. But the full import of the line “I speak three language, write in two, dream in one” – is not quite clear to us.

This long poem is roughly divided into two sections. The lines of the poem are unrhymed and irregular. The poet has used very long sentences divided by commas and dots. They are suggestive to the mental confused and disturbed and so she hesitates in her say. The poet is the narrator and the character of the poem. The poet has used rathotarical questions beginning with the “Wh” questions word “why” in the beginning of the poem. They are the examples of the structural repetition. The poem has used the pronoun first person singular “I” that refers to the poet herself. The poet slips into the memories of her bitter past. The phrase “hungry haste” is the example of the alliteration and also the personified metaphor. The line beginning with “of river, in me… the oceans tireless waiting… ” is also example of the metaphor. The poet compares her indifferent lover with the reference refers to the smile and alliteration. The phrase “drink lonely drink” is the example of the transparences. The poem progresses from the simple to the complex. The poet has used diverse of the contrast by identifying herself as the sinner and the saint, as the beloved and the betrayed. And these references also refer to the alliteration. The entire poem tells about the condition of woman in modern Indian society which is still male dominated society. The poem is backed by extensions.

The phrase “a rattle in my throat” is the example of the metaphor. The poet has used many “ing” verbs in the poem. They are “cowing”, “roaring”, “muttering”, “blazing”, “knowing”, “dying” etc. These words forms out a lexical category at grammar level. The poet has used the present tense while writing the poem.

“Suresh Kohli” observes “An Introduction is vitally communicative in as much as it is an indication of Mrs. Das’s use of language which is not her mother tongue”.

Cultural Studies and Its Four Goals

Amita C. Jani
Roll no. – 11
SEM – II
Paper no – X
Year – 2011
Topic: Cultural Studies and Its Four Goals

Submitted to Dr. Dilip Barad
Department of English,
Bhavnagar University.

What is cultural studies ? 

Cultural studies are not any kind of method that shows a difference between western and Indian! Because our views are different from the each and every thing and these different views to see a particular thing or study it, itself become a part of cultural studies. Cultural study is not something that we can say that this is culture, we can’t bind if by the culture or any words so that we have to forgot that this is good or bad. 

For example,

Language or food also a very much important in culture so that all are culture.

We can give the definition of cultural study that studying things as it is that is culture study. It is not like my study is better than you or this is not the limited view of looking things because culture study goes beyond all the traditional or it does not denied the popular cultural, but it is study. Cultural dimension is how different thing so if two things are shown to us than why there are different look at that things? So it is about likeness. The phenomenon of the culture is that happens every day not at sometime. Revival of interest is also a part of the cultural study so the difference of the two cultures has to be understood by everyone. 

The word “culture” itself is a so difficult to pin down, “Cultural Studies” is not so much discrete approach at all, but rather a set of practices. As Patrik Brantlinger has pointed out, cultural studies are not “a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda” but “loosely coherent group of tendencies issue and questions”. Arising from the social turmoil of the 1960s, cultural studies is composed of elements of Marxism, Post structuralism and Post Modernism, Feminism, Gender studies, film theory, urban studies, public policy, popular culture studies and post colonial studies : those field that concentrate on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation. 

For example,

Drawing from Roland Bartner on the nature of literary language and  claude Levi-Strauss on anthropology, cultural studies was influenced by structuralism and post structuralism. Jacques Derrida’s “deconstruction” of the world distinct, like all his deconstructions or enabled cultural critics “to erase culture, classic and popular literals texts and literature and other cultural discourses that following Derrida may same textually”. 

The discipline of psychology has also entered the field of cultural studies. For example, Jacques Lacan’s psycho analytic language prompted emphasis upon language and power as symbolic systems. From Michel Foucault came the notion that power is a whole complex of forces, it is that which produces what happens. A tyrannical aristocrat does not just independently wield power but it is empowered by “Discourses” – accepted ways of thinking, writing and speaking – and practices that embody, exercise and amount to power. From punishment to sexual mares, Faucaults’ “genealogy”  of topics included many things excluded by traditional historians, from architectural blue prints for prisons to memories of “deviants” . Cultural studies also connected with Marxism, the new historicism, multiculturalism, post modernism, popular culture and post colonial studies.

 Cultural studies approaches generally share four goals : 

1.   Cultural studies transcend the confines of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history :

Practiced in such journals as critical inquiry, representation and foundry, cultural studies involvs scrutinizing the cultural phenomenon of a text.

For example,

        Italian opera, a Latino telenivela, the architectural style of prisons, body piercing and drawing conclusion about the changes in textual phenomenon over time. Cultural studies is not necessarily about literature in the traditional sense or even about “art”.

        In their introduction to cultural studies, editors Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler emphasize  that the intellectual promise of cultural studies lies in its attempts “to cut across diverse social and political interests and address many of the struggles within the current scene”.

        Intellectual works are not limited by their own “borders as a single texts, historical problems or discipline and the critic’s own personal connections to what is being analyzed may also be describe their Delhousie Review manifesto that cultural studies practitioners are “resisting intellectuals” who what they do as “an emancipator project” because it erodes the traditional disciplinary divisions in most institutions of higher educationa. For students, this sometimes means that a professor might make his or her own political views part of the instruction, which of course can lead to problems. But this kind of criticism, like feminism, is an engaged rather than a detached activity. 

2.   Cultural studies are politically engadged :

Cultural critics see themselves as “oppositional” not only within their own disciplines but to many of the power structures of society at large. They question inequalities within power structures and seek to discover models for restructuring relationships among dominant and “mirority” or “subaltern” discourses. Because meaning and individual subjectivity are culturally constructed they can thus be reconstructed. Such a notion, taken to a philosophical extreme, denies the autonomy of the individual whether an actual person or a character in literature, a rebuttal of the traditional humanistic “Great Man” or “Great Book” theory and a relocation of Gestnetics and culture from the ideal realism of taste and sensibility, into the arena of a whole society’s everyday life as it is constructed.

3.   Cultural studies denies the separation of “high” and “law” or elite and popular culture :

You might hear someone remarks at the symphony or at art museum “I came here to get a little culture”. Being a “cultured” person used to mean being acquainted with “highbrow” art and intellectual pursuits. But is not culture also be found with a pair of tickets to a rock concert? Cultural critics today work to transfer the term popular, folk or urban. Following theorists Tean Baudrillard and Andreas Huyssen, cultural critics argue that after world war-II the distinction among high, low and mass culture collapsed and they cite other theory such as Pierre Bourdires and Dick Hebdige on how “Good taste” often only reflects prevailing social, economic and political power bases.

For example,

The images of India that were circulated during the calonial rule of the British Raj by writers like Rudyrd Kiplling seem innocent but reveal an entrenched imperialist argument for white superiority and worldwide domination of other races, especially Asians. But race alone was not the issue for the British Raj, money was also a deciding factor. Thus, drawing also upon the ideas of French historian Michel de Certeaul, cultural critics examined “The practice of everyday life”. Studying literature as an anthropologist would, as a phenomenon of culture, including a culture’s economy. Rather than determining which are the “best” works produced, cultural critics describe what is produced and how various production relate to one another. They aim to reveal the political economic reasons why certain cultural product is more valued at certain times.

Transgressing of boundries among discipline high and law can make cultural studies just plain fun.

For example,

A possible cultural studies research paper with the following title : The Birth of Caption Jack Sparrow : An Analysis”. For sources of Johnney Depp’s funky performance in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, the curse of the Black Pearl (2003). You could research cultural topics ranging from the trade economies of the sea two hundred years ago, to real pirates of the Caribbean such as Blackbeard and Henry Morgan, then on the Robert Louis Stevenson’s Long John Silver in Treasure  Island (1881).

4.  Cultural Studies analyses not only the cultural work, but also the means of production :

Marxist critics have long recognized the importance of such par literary questions as these : Who published his or her books and how are these books distributed? Who buys books? For that matter, who is literate and who is not? A well known analysis of literary production is Janice Radway’s study of the American romance novel and its readers, reading the romance women, patriarchy and popular literature, which demonstrates the textual effects of the publishing industry’s decisions about books that will minimize its financial risks. Another contribution is the collection reading in America, edited by Catny N. Davidson, which includes essays on literature and gender in colonical new England, urban magazine audiences in 18^th century New York city. The impact upon reading of such technical innovations as cheaper eye glasses, electric lights and trains, the book-of-the-month club and how writers and texts go through fluctuation of popularity and canonicity. These studies help us recognize that literature does not occur in a space separated from other concerns of over lives.

Cultural studies thus joins subjectively – that is, cultural in relation to individual lives – with engagement a direct approach to attacking social ills. Though cultural studies practitioners deny “humanism” or “the humanities” as universal categories, they strive reason”, which often resembles the goals and values of humanistic and democratic ideals. What difference does a cultural studies approach make for student? First of all, it is increasingly clear that by the year 2050 the United States will be demographers call a “Majority – Minority” population, that is the present numerical majority of “white”, “education” and  “Anglo-Americans” will be the minority, particularly with the dramatically increasing number of Latin / residents, mostly Mexican Americans. As Gerald Graff and James Phelan observe “It is a common prediction that the culture of the next century will put a premium on people’s ability to deal productively with conflict and cultural difference. To the question “Why teach the controversy?” they note that today a student can go from one class in which the values of western culture are prorated as hopelessly compromised by racism, sexism and homophobia. Professors can acknowledge these differences and encourage student to construct a conversation for themselves as “the most exciting part of their education”.

       All the culture taken as a equal culture in cultural studies like western culture, minority culture so we have to drive the tendency of mix culture and the acception of every culture is become an important thing in a cultural studies.

Themetic Concerns in Wuthering Heights

Amita C. Jani
Roll no. – 11
SEM – II
Paper no – VI
Year – 2011
Topic: Themetic Concerns in Wuthering Heights

Submitted to Mr. Jay Mehta
Department of English,
Bhavnagar University.