Puritan society in The Scarlet Letter

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Name:- Parmar Milankumar

Semester-: Third

Batch Year:- 2014-16

Enrolment no.-: 14101026

Paper no.-: 10- American Literature

Email id-:  parmarmilan1994@gmail.com

Submitted to-           Dr. Dilip Barad

                                    Smt. S B Gardi

                                    Department of English

Introduction

‘The Scarlet Letter’ is written by American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on 4^th July 1804. The publication of this work earn him place among the literary writer of great importance. He had a great ability of character drawing, and his powerful way of unfolding a story and his interesting though quaint style have all contributed to his greatness as a novelist. One of the greatest quality of his is depiction of the effect of sin on human psyche.

            Hawthorne has contributed much to the fiction of America he is remembered today as the author of ‘The Scarlet Letter’. This work had great influence on later written literature in America and it had described as the “greatest novel/book ever written in the western Hampshire.”

In 1846 Hawthorne was appointed as “surveyor” for the district of Salem and Beverly and inspector of revenue for the port of Salem. His experience during that time provided him some inspiration and material which he later used in the “Custom House” section of The Scarlet Letter.

Hawthorne’s ancestors were puritan thus he had deep relation as well as influence over the personality and mind of the author. This work has given balanced importance in emphasizing the weakness as well as strength of his ancestors. Puritan’s were marked for their rigid and oppressive attitude. The Scarlet Letter can be read as Hawthorn’s attitude towards puritans of Briton. It is the society which makes characters like Hester, Chillingworth and Dimesdale suffers.

The Scarlet Letter takes us back to the early days of the puritan settlement at Massachusetts. The book derives its title from the custom strictly practiced by puritan settlers that a woman caught in act of adultery was wear to the letter “A” embroidered in scarlet on her dress. So let’s discuss the Puritan society and their way of living, their social systems as represented in “The Scarlet Letter.”

History of Puritans in New England:-

The early puritans who came to America in 1620 founded a precarious colony in Playmouth, and with that they established a society there.  They formed certain rules and regulations to keep society in order and to stop and to control the attacks made by Indian were living there already. And the novel set its place in this society.

A society is constructed through many things in which some institutions like religion plays vital role I the proper functioning of the society.  Puritan society is full of beliefs and misbelieves in their religion. Puritan society was purely based on religion and God remain at the center of their everyday life.

Man God and Salvation

These early puritans were following the writings of a French protestant reformer named John Calvin whose teaching saw the world as a grim conflict between good and evil, God and Satan. Thus puritans believed that there is a strong relation between God and individual. They were very introspective and they constantly search for the evidence of elect of god in their soul, those who have were chosen people by god for salvation. According to them a merciful God had sent his son Jesus Christ to to the earth to die for the sin of man, but only few would be saved.

            Throughout the novel characters like Dimesdale, Mr. Wilson is constantly trying to find that element within their soul. Dimesdale constantly give sermons and speeches to young and middle age people about the god. John Wilson who is a historical character and he was “The eldest Clergyman of Boston” who following Hester’s refusal to name of Pearl’s Father, he delivers a long sermon on the sin of adultery to the crowd that has gathered to witness Hester’s trial.

            Dimesdale with the belief of Element and because of that he could not accept Hester. And for that he tries to justify his decision to keep his guilt secret on the grounds that some men retains  “a zeal for God’s glory and man’s welfare” and that further service to God and his fellow creatures he and men like him must of necessity suffer “unbearable torment”.

Church State Common man

In puritan society only who were male and members of the church could vote. In addition ministers guided the elected officials of the colony; consequently there was close tie between church and state.

In The Scarlet Letter those two branches of government are presented by Mr. Roger Wilson who represents Church and Governor of Bellingham represents State.

The rules governing the puritans came from The Bible a source of spiritual and ethical standards. These rules were definite and the penalties or punishments were public and severe.

These stern and introspective puritans provided a rigid structure that was repressive to individual but that enabled the society/colony to survive those early years when order and faith needed.

Crime sin and punishment

            The puritan society strongly believed in the Bible and its way of living life, they had formed the legal system based on that, with that they made clear rules for certain crimes and these rules and crimes and sin to be avoided are preached in public sermons. As it was just after the Hester’s punishment sermon summoned by John Wilson.        

There was different punishment for different crimes. It was made clear to the society that what sin is. Every member of the society has to follow the commandments which were written in the Bible and those who disregarded to the laws of the society were banished, persecuted, and in some cases executed.

At very first chapter of the novel we see the protagonist Hester Prynne standing on the scaffold and facing the huge crowd. It signifies she had committed some kind of crime, she has violated the law of the society and thus she had been brought there for punishment. She faced public shame and further punishments were decided by states man and religious people.  

            We come to know that she has committed the crime of adultery, as one of the commandments written in Bible is that “thou shalt not commit adultery”. It is god’s seventh commandment. And those who violet it are sinners, so the scarlet letter is a story of sin. And that is why Hester and Dimesdale who commit this sin could not be forgiven.

Thus Hester given punishment to wear letter “A” on her bosom/ bodice of her dress and that is what the title of the novel symbolizes. Similarly if someone commits crime like murder then he or she has to wear the letter “M” one ones bosom.

         

   The practice of black magic believed to be worst kind of the sins in puritan society as in novel these practices were executed by character like Chillingworth. Hawthorne believed that the greatest sin of all is “the violation of another soul, another heart, simply for the purpose of finding out how it would react”.  And that is what Chillingworth was trying to do with Dimesdale, but he is not punished because it remained private till his death.

          

  One more belief about sin is those who know witchcrafts and if puritan found anyone under the influence of that then their name would be written in “Black man’s Diary”. Forest was believed as place for practicing witchcraft. One of the minor character Miss Hibbins sister of Governor found to be written her name in the “Black man’s Diary” and in history she was executed as witch.

Individual vs Puritan society   

Society is constructed to keep individual together many individual makes a society. Society is made from an individual but it is not from an individual’s perspective.  In the process of creating and maintaining the society an individual has to go through acute pain, where one has to continuously sacrifice his or her own desires and wish. 

 Each and every society has its own rules, notion and regulation and ideology to keep society in good order. But when these orders and laws violated- obviously it would be from an individual, thus one has to be ready to pay for it. And it is Puritan society in the novel and thus there is no scope for an individual.

            Hester, Pearl, Dimesdale, and Chillingworth suffers in this Puritan world because of the rigidity of the society, no doubt individual too is responsible for the suffering. But in both the cased society is more responsible.

 Hester and Dimesdale Suffers because puritans have made rule that a religious man could not marry, this is forbidden to them. Thus Dimesdal could not accept Hester publically. He only could accept at the end of his life and even end of the novel too. If this types of rules were not in society then it would have end up differently.

             The problems of Hester come from society she has been living in Boston since two years, whose husband sent her there two years before. It is clear from the beginning of the novel that she has nothing to do with her husband and her marriage with Chillingworth was not less than a disaster in her life.

            In both the cases to keep order in the society individuals were sacrificed. Even in Indian culture still we do believe in marriage as a holy connection, and in must be kept till the death. At present in India many Hesters are suffering the movie by Farhan Akhtar “Dil Dhadakne do“ portrayed the condition of women in Indian society very well.

           

Only some extra ordinary individuals can raise voice and go against chains of the society Hester is one of them, she had faith on herself, her strong individualism, her passion and desires helped her to dismantle the chains. With all these things she is able to tackle every obstacle that society throws at her. At the Scaffold scene when she was asked to speak the name of the fellow sinner thus child would get the father. In an answer of this she replied “my child must seek a heavenly father; she shall never know any earthly one”. This shows her strong individualism that she doesn’t need anybody now.  She will live her life in her way, she can nourish and cherish her child without help from anyone. And because of her strong individualism the sign of “A” frequently changes its meaning.

Conclusion:-

However the well framed a society is but still it has some problems in its own. Here the puritan society doing well in laws and social order but it had its own lacks like it failed to keep each and every individual happy, even in the matter of laws everybody/sinners didn’t punished. Some criminals were remained private like Dimesdale and Chillingworth both had committed sin and crime but puritan laws failed to do that as they both died before their crimes come to public. And individual like Hester will suffer in that society.  

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Works Cited
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on The Scarlet Letter.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.

Dibble, Terry J.The Scarlet Letter. New Delhi: Kalyani, 199.

Critical Analysis on" Imaginary Homelands"- Salman Rushdie

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Name:-ParmarMilankumar L.

Roll. No.:- 16

Enrollment no:- 14101026

Subject:- Post-colonial Literature

Topic:- Critical Analysis on 'Imaginary Homelands' by Salman Rushdie

Submitted to:- Dr. Dilip Barad

                        Department of English,

                        M.K.B.U. Bhavnagar.

INTRODUCTION-:

Salman Rushdie is the most controversial writer among Indian writing in English. His book published under the title “Imaginary Homeland” is the collection of the essay written between 1981 and 1992. All the essays are based on Salman Rushdie’s experience of the contemporary time scenario. This book is the collection of the controversial issues of the decade. In those days Indira Gandhi was the prime minister of India.

            “This book is an incomplete, personal view of the interregnum of 1980s, not all of whose symptoms it has to be said, were morbid.” (introduction-1) It clearly says that all are his personal views that may be are may not be completely right, according to him it was a decade, what Gramsci has said “the old was dying and yet new could not be born.” (Rushdie, 1992)

            His first glorious work was ‘Midnight’s Children’, it was for the first-time people liked his book, before that he had published ‘Grimus’. Then in the year 1988 he published his most controversial work ‘Satanic Verses’.

            The seed of the imaginary homelands were sawn in the Indo-Anglian seminar at London, where mighty pens of Indian English writing were present. Rushdie was excited to listen to them but soon he realized that some of the participants’ “the desire to describe Indian culture-which I had always thought of rich mixture of tradition-in exclusive, and excluding, Hindu terms” (2.pg)

In this session one of the novelist whose name Rushdie did not revealed, begun his contribution by reciting a Sanskrit Shloka, and then, instead of translating the verse he declared.

“Every educated Indian will understand what I have just said”. It is stupid way in the room were Indian writers and scholar coming from conceivable backgrounds, like Christian, Parasi, Muslim, Sikh. None of them rose in Sanskrit tradition and they were reasonably educated. The question surrounded his minds were

-what were we being told?

-we aren’t Indian’?

The second day, an eminent Indian academic delivered a paper on Indian culture that utterly ignored all minority communities, and he presented “then characterization of Muslim culture as imperialist and inauthentic, this made him write a book, in order to search for his ‘existence. For him the conference was a bitter experience which was pricking him like a thorn.’(2.pg).

The book ‘Imaginary Homelands’ divided into six sections. They are.

1) Midnight’s children.

2) Politics of India and Pakistan.

3) Indo-Anglian literature.

4) Movie and Television.

5) Experience of migrants, -Indian migrants to Britain.

6) Thatcher/ flout election –question of Palestine

“IMAGINARY HOMELANDS”

This essay was written after the publication of the Midnight’s Children. This never was well responded in western countries but, in Indian it was rejected by Indians, and it was a request from a diasporic writer to the country of his origin to accept him.

It is written out of anguish to go to the roots of one’s origin. The desire of belonging to somewhere, it is the desire of an individual to claim a country as his/her homeland.  So, let’s analyze the essay in detail.

Problems with ‘Midnight’s Children’

Rushdie starts his essay with a photograph which was taken in 1946 before his birth in India. This photo was an inspiration for the novel ‘Midnight’s Children’. When he was writing ‘Midnight’s Children’ very far from India, it is India from macrocosm view. He says. “it may be that writers in position exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss. The physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will in short create fiction, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homeland, India in mind.” (10.pg) Further he declares that

“What he was actually doing was a novel of memory and about the memory.” Thus, it is India of his memory and of his perspective. There he presented his version of India. Presentation of the dark picture and political matter in ‘Midnight’s Children’ drags the work in political controversy. And as an answer to that he gives explanation.

“I wasn’t trying to write about the emergency in the same way as I wrote about event halt a century earliest. I felt it would be dishonest to pretend, when writing about the day before yesterday, that it was possible to see the whole picture. I showed certain blobs and slabs of the scene.”

            Further he takes support of playwright for the justification of his act, he writes, the description itself is a political act, and for him “politician and writers are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own image; they fight for the same territory and the novel is one way of denying the official, politicians’ version of truth.”  (14.pg)

Another point which increases the complexity of the controversy is that the description of India that Midnight’s Children attempts, is very pessimistic. Thus, it is critical in India for its despairing tone. But he denied that the book is not despairing or nihilistic, rather he would say “he tried to set up a tension in the text, a paradoxical opposition between form and content of the narrative. The story of Saleem does indeed lead him to despair. But the story is told in a manner designed to echo, as closely my abilities allowed, the nonstop regeneration. The form of the story is optimistic.

In response to the argument that he had portrayed India in bad light. He gives excellent answer to the riddle. He said ‘It is rater a postcolonial (rejecting the British notion of writing) voice he tried to claim by this work but in country like India these things remain unnoticed. They only like “Shining India”. The form and the manner of telling story is itself rejecting the traditional way of writing novel. It is the Indian talent rejecting the colonial way and norms of writing, as he makes use of memory which itself is not reliable, the use of magic realism which give a new spark to story, the use of telepathy it takes us back to the ancient India.

In concluding his view on the ‘Midnight’s Children’, he gives answer to the last question which I like the most. The question is for whom he is writing? he says, “I never had reader in mind. I have ideas, people, events, shapes, and I write for those things, and hope completed work will be interest of others. (20.pg) he clearly says about ‘Midnight’s Children’ for whom it was written. He felt that if its sub-continental rejected the work, he should have thought it as a failure, no matter what the reaction in the west. So, it becomes clear that he is writing for the people who feel the part of the things he had write about, but also for everyone else up to whom his work can reach.

Diaspora -:

‘Imaginary Homelands’ is all about the feeling of belonging nowhere.  The Feeling of insecurity always remains there in his mind which got reflected in his work. His life experience as always, a member of marginalized group, member of Indian Muslim family in Bombay, then as Pakistani, and as present time as British Asian. Thus, there is not a fix identity/root which he can claim. Even in Britan he is not accepted as a member of that country. His experience is no better as he wrote in his essay titled ‘New Empire Within New Britan.’

In creating a story like ‘Midnight’s Children’ he is in a way trying to establishing relationship or making a proof that even he has a land somewhere he belongs to. As he writes “I too had a city and a history to reclaim”. For writers like him, who are exiled, emigrants, or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutilated pillars of salt.” He rightly points out that he knows that the feeling of belonging is just momentary for writers like him and soon it will wash out, but still they take risk at list temporary they felt they exist.

Diasporic writers held up in such situation that they wish but they could not claim their belonging to the country once they leaved or forced to leave. And they even could not completely mingle with the new one, as the memory of the past doesn’t allow them to accept it. They held up between two cultures, two languages, two nations, and lost identity. He declared that to live in British society is to face everyday problems of definition

What does it mean to be an Indian outside India?

How can culture be preserved without become ossified?

How to change without seeming to play into the hands of our racial enemies?

How to turn away our self which one goes to another country?

How are we to live in the world?

Conclusion: -

A work of literature is an expression of feeling, experience, but it doesn’t mean to force him to leave the country, we Indian really need to understand it that the freedom of thinking can bring better life in society by the writer and free thinkers like Salman Rushdie. In the conclusion of the essay, as a radical thinker he compared a writer within himself with a dog from the novel “The Dean’s December”, as barking of the dog protagonist Dean imagine dogs’ barking as protest against his limit of experience.  “for god’s sake the dog is saying open the universe a little more”. It is the limitation of the diasporic writers that they were protesting, what they really want is to be accepted as a human being, they need little more freedom of expression, and we have to accept them as they belong to somewhere

Works Cited

Rushdie, S. (1992). Imaginary Homelands. In S. Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands (pp. 1-25). London.

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Reflection of twentieth century in To The Light House

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Name:-ParmarMilankumar L.

Roll. No.:- 16

Enrollment no:- 14101026

Subject:- Modernist Literature

Topic:- Reflection of twentieth century in To The Light House

Submitted to:- Dr. DilipBarad

Department of English,

                   M.K.B.U. Bhavnagar.

Introduction:-

To the Lighthouse is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. The novel centers on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle ofSkye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920.

Following and extending the tradition of modernist novelists like Marcel Proust and James Joyce, the plot of To the Lighthouse is secondary to its philosophical introspection. Cited as a key example of the stream-of-consciousness literary technique, the novel includes little dialogue and almost no action; most of it is written as thoughts and observations. The novel recalls childhood emotions and highlights adult relationships. Among the book's many tropes and themes are those of loss, subjectivity, and the problem of perception.

In 1998, the Modern Library named To the Lighthouse No. 15 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. In 2005, the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the one hundred best English-language novels from 1923 to present. (wikipedia)

Historical Background of the twentieth century:-

Each and every age in the history of English literature has some different traits that distinguish it from all other, Modernist or Twentieth century also had some marked features that differentiate it from previous ages. The transition from Victorian age to Modern age was faster forward and backward. Modernism best described as literary and artistic period from the first half of the twentieth century.

In the first half of that fifty years of the 20^th century human race moved faster forward and backward than during perhaps fifty generations of in the past. Human race moved faster in industrialization and inventions of technology, with the help of that society lead to progress, and because of material growth and scientific development there was spiritual regress, human race degraded in the matter of religion and spirituality.(setting)

Invention of motor car and motor cycle provided universal mobility and as consequence of that young were able to travel far from home and elude the natural parental guidance and control.Among several revolutions within scientific revolution the revolt of the youth was notable.

The truths and values of certainties of Victorians were appears as superstitions and baseless convention in the eyes of twentieth century generation. Young men and women during the 20^th century looked back upon the Victorians as hypocritical. To them Victorian ideas appeared as mean and superficial and stupid. This mood was part because effected literature of the twentieth century from 1901 to 1925 English literature was directed by mental attitudes, moral ideas and spiritual values at almost the opposite extreme to the attitudes, ideas and values at governing Victorian literature.

It was the time when the standards of the artistic craftsmanship and appreciations of the art are begun to change. What Victorians had considered beautiful their children and grandchildren thought hideous, thus we see the literature of this time difficult to understand, it is fragmented, highly serious, artistically of high quality, and only some intellect people- average reader can only understand.

Post Victorian generation dislike the furnishing of Victorian house holds they were even more contemptuous of the furnishing of Victorian mind. They did not accept the Victorian ideas of voice of authority, which was accepted in the religions, in politics, in literature and in family lie.(setting)

The world war one and two, the literature that was produced during this time was an attempt to negotiate over the trauma of such extensive suffering and the theme of power and cruelty. The war also revealed the fragile nature of human existence. The entire literature of the 20^th century can, infect be read as an attempt to deal with the discovery of hopelessness of the courage and fallibility of mankind in the face of war. It is also possible to argue that literary techniques like “stream of consciousness” in James Joyce and Virginia Woolf were response to the brutal nature of realities of war. Poets and artists sought to escape the harsh realities of suffering, destruction and cruelty by retaining in to the mind. Rather than exploring real world, they preferred to explore the mind. (NAYAR)

General characteristics of the 20th century literature

Ë Anxiety and Interrogation

Ë Anxiety and Interrogation

Ë Art for life sake/ art for art sake

Ë Growing interest in the poor and the working classes

Ë Development In psychology and other science

Ë Impact of two World Wars Ë Influence of Radio, Cinema and Television

Ë High degree of complexity in structure of literature

Ë A great deal of experimentation with the language

Ë An interest in subjectivity and the working of the human consciousness

Effects of the time and the time/20th century as reflected in “To the Light House”

Ë Generation gap- Victorian vs Modern

Ë Family relationships

Ë Eluding natural parental guidance

Ë Artistic rebellion against patriarchal society

Ë Voice of  Authority vs Individualism/ Existentialism

Ë Impact of the war

Ë Stream of consciousness

Generation Gap, family relationship and eluding parental guidance:-

In the very few opening chapters you will realize this. There is continuous confrontation between old and new, whether it is Mrs. Ramsay’s traditional perception of life or it is Lily’s strong individualism there we can see a gap between old generation and the new generation. Virginia Woolf’s use of the stream of consciousness technique allow us to read what they think about each other, what old think about a new and new about old, for instance in the below passage is about what Lily thinks about the daily life of Mrs. Ramsay.

“She was not inventing; she was only trying to smooth out something she had been given years ago folded up; something she had seen. For in the rough and tumble of daily life, with all those children about, all those visitors, one had constantly a sense of repetition—of one thing falling where another had fallen” (Woolf 299)

The time novel covers up is of the beginning of the transition from Victorianism towards modernism. Thus we have characters represents both the age, for example we have Mrs. Ramsay, Mr. Ramsay, and Carmichael who represents Victorian values, ideas, way of thinking perception of life and generation who thinks “woman can’t paint and woman can’t write”. We have characters like Lily Briscoe, James, and Nancy who represents modern/ contemporary time.

In To The Light house we have Ramsay family, the progression of the novel is the destruction of the family, though from the very first chapter we know that there is no healthy relation among family members, whether is it of husband wife or of parents and children, there is lack of understanding, lack of sympathy towards each other, and thus could not understand the problems and needs of the members, there is no emotional bondage between family members except for Mrs Ramsay, but her too remain only for Mr Ramsay and little James for other we don’t know. In the first chapter of the window we have example of father and child’s relation, here is the passage in it clarifies the feeling of a boy towards his father is not something accepted.

“Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father’s breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it.” (pg.2)

Husband wife relation, it is cold and dead relations they have, they just pretend to have good relations, his husband is very authoritative to herwe don’t given a chance to peep in their personal life, but the given is also enough to understand their relations. That could be explained by the example that when Mr Ramsay told her that the weather would not be good tomorrow at that time Mrs. Ramsay asked him.

“How did he know? she asked. The wind often changed.

The extraordinary irrationality of her remark, the folly of women’s minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now, she flew in the face of facts, made his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies. He stamped his foot on the stone step. “Damn you,” he said.”(pg.47)

If he can be angry on this kind of trivial matter then we can think how his relations with her. The emotional security which is the soul of any relationships but here it lacks.  Death of Mrs Ramsay shattered family, she was the connecting link, she was the center of the family around her everybody was moving, but lost of her bring the disaster in the family, it doesn’t remain the same as it was in her presence, just after her death her daughter Prue Dies in the illness related to child birth, Andrew the oldest son of her died in war, and the remaining members scattered in so called house. The below passage exactly represents the condition of the summer house after the death of Mrs Ramsay the same way the family relations also decayed with the flow of the time.

The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long night seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had rusted and the mat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly, the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself between the tiles in the larder. (pg.208).

First World War and its impact on ‘To the Light House’:-

The time which is recorded in the novel is from 1910 to 1920, during these years the firstWorld War took place in Europe. There is no direct reference to the First World War or proper descriptions. But it had some effect over the characters life and their perception. Throughout the novel we see the people are talking about the light house which symbolizes the desires and their ambitions in the life, their ideologies, and perception towards life but in first two parts of the novel these remain unfulfilled. In a way it can be said that it is because of the effect of the world war (1914-1918). (Tabbasum)

The second part of the novel gives us the glimpse of the World War1, in this part there are many deaths in the family, as war breaks out in the Europe, Mrs Ramsay dies, suddenly, one night. Andrew Ramsay the oldest son of her killed in the battle and his sister Prue died from illness related to childbirth.

“[A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men were blown up in France, among them Andrew Ramsay, whose death, mercifully, was instantaneous.](pg 202).”

Virginia Woolf does not given any further description about the war, but war had brought unhappiness in the family.

“[Mr Carmichael brought out a volume of poems that spring, which had an unexpected success. The war, people said, had revived their interest in poetry.] (pg 203).”

This passage in the bracket also related with the war, which is rather ironical that thousands of people lost their lives in war, and one achieves success because of that.

“But, dear, many things had changed since then (she shut the drawer); many families had lost their dearest. So she was dead; and Mr Andrew killed; and Miss Prue dead too, they said, with her first baby; but everyone had lost someone these years.”(pg 206).

 These lines are of Lily Briscoe’s monologue. It can be read in context of the World War 1 as it had caused many deaths, and mass destruction, there are many deaths in the novel, the last line “but everyone had lost someone these years”it is more or less becomes universal.

The third part of the novel ‘To The Light’ we can read as the time after the World War1. After war as there is peace settled down, happiness revives.It is the part in which everything settle down, as wish of James as a boy to Visit to The Light House fulfill after ten years, the painting which Lily Briscoe has started before ten years finishes in this part, she find her vision of life, Mrs Ramsay immortalized by the painting, she is living in the memory of the people around her.

Growth of Science and Technology:-

The 20^th century was marked by bold scientific developments. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution undermined an unquestioned faith in God that was, until that point, nearly universal while the rise of psycho analysis, a monument led by Sigmund Freud, introduced the idea of unconscious mind. Such innovation in ways of thinking had great influence on the styles and concerns of contemporary artist and writer like those of Bloomsbury Group. Bloomsbury name derived from a district of London in which its members lived, this group of writers, artists and philosophers emphasized on the nonconformity, aesthetic pleasure and intellectual freedom.   

The Stream of Consciousness:- 

This phrase was used by William James in his Principles of Psychology (1890) to describe the unbroken flow of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings in the waking mind. It has since been adopted to describe a narrative method in modern fiction. Long passages of introspection, in which the narrator records in detail what passes through a character's awareness, are found in novelists from Samuel Richardson, through William James’ brother Henry James, to many novelists of the present era. Stream of the consciousness is the name applied specifically to amode of narration that undertakes to reproduce, without a narrator's intervention, the full spectrum and continuous flow of a character's mental process, in which sense perceptions mingle with conscious and half-conscious thoughts, memories, expectations, feelings, and random associations.

Woolf’s experimentation has much to do with the time in which she lived: the turn of the century was marked by bold scientific developments. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution undermined an unquestioned faith in God that was, until that point, nearly universal, while the rise of psychoanalysis, a movement led by Sigmund Freud, introduced the idea of an unconscious mind. Such innovation in ways of scientific thinking had great influence on the styles and concerns of contemporary artists and writers like those in the Bloomsbury Group. (sparknotes)

Virginia Woolf was interested in giving voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory and conceived the human personality as a continuous shift of impressions and emotions.  So the events that traditionally made up a story were no longer important for her; what mattered was the impression they made on the characters who experienced them. In her novels the omniscient narrator disappeared and the point of view shifted inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas, momentarily impressions presented as a continuous flux.  Indirect Interior Monologue in To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf, among the stream-of-consciousness writers, relies most on the indirect interior monologue and she uses it with great skill. In To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf succeeds in producing a much subtle effect through the use of this technique.  This novel contains a great deal of straight, conventional narration and description, but the interior monologue is used often enough to give the novel its special character of seeming to be always within the consciousness of the chief characters.

Indirect interior monologue:-

Virginia Woolf, among the stream-of-consciousness writers, relies most on the indirect interior monologue and she uses it with great skill. In To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf succeeds in producing a much subtle effect through the use of this technique. This novel contains a great deal of straight, conventional narration and description, but the interior monologue is used often enough to give the novel its special character of seeming to be always within the consciousness of the chief characters.

Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr Ramsay excited in his children’s breasts by his mere presence; standing, as now, lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one, grinning sarcastically, not only with the pleasure of disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife, who was ten thousand times better in every way than he was (James thought), but also with some secret conceit at his own accuracy of judgement. What he said was true. It was always true. (Pg. 1)

In this quote use of bracket is quite significant as it proves that the ongoing description of the character Mr. Ramsay is not narrated by narrator but it’s thought process of little James. The above passage illustrates the occasionally baffling similarity between a narrator’s utterance and omniscient-narrator commentary. Narrator steps aside but soon comes to give the comment: ‘What he said was true . . .”

An artistic rebel against patriarchal society

In some contemporary novelist in 1920- R.Brimley Johnson discuss on emerging trend among female novelists. “She has abandoned the old realism, she is seeking, with passionate determination for that reality which is behind the material the things that matter, spiritual things, ultimate truth and here she finds a man outsider”. Thus we have character of Lily Briscoe indifferent to male characters, living and enjoying her way of living life, opposite to the male characters and their belief that women can’t paint and Women can’t write. But she had passionately decided to find her vision, deep truth of life, and tries to uncover it throughout the novel and at last she has achieved her vision.

Modernist writer start the new style of writing and reject the old style of writing and also we can say that the writer of the novel ‘To The Lighthouse’ by Virginia Woolf’s start the new way of writing. Mrs. Woolf’s Concern in writing novels was not merely to narrate a story as the older novelists did, but to discover and record life as the people feel who live it. Hence it is she rejected the conventional technique of narration and adopted a new technique more suited to her purposes. It is for this reason that in ‘To The Lighthouse’ she not told a story, in the sense of a Series of events, and has Concentrated on a small number of Characters, whose nature and feelings are represented to us largely through their interior monologues. In order to capture the inner reality, the truth about life, she has tried to represent the moving current of life and the individual’s Consciousness of the fleeting movement, and secondly, also to select from this current and organize it so that the novel may penetrate beneath the surface reality and may give to the reader a sense of understanding and completeness. The interior monologues of the different characters are, no doubt, given, but the novelist, the central intelligence, is also constantly busy, organizing the material and illuminating it by frequent Comments.

Conclusion :-

Virginia Woolf one of the best writer of the twentieth century/Modernist literature left a legacy behind her, a new style of writing novel(stream of consciousness). It is inevitable for any writer that the time in which he or she lives does not get reflected in the work of literature. The novel to the light house reflects its contemporary society very well. It is transformation from Victorian to Modernism, the impact of first world war or contemporary scientific revolution. Each give a different effect to the novel.

Works Cited

NAYAR, PRAMOD K. "THE MODERN AGE." NAYAR, PRAMOD K. A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. New Delhi: cambridge University Press Pvt. Ltd., 2009. 297-300.

Tabbasum, Afsana. "Impact of WW| in Virginia Woolf's To The Light House And Mrs. Dollaway." ENH community Journal issue 2 (2014): 1-6.

Woolf, Virginia. To The Light house. Ed. eBooks@Adelaide. 1994.

Wikipedia contributors. "Lighthouse." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 29 Oct. 2015. Web. 30 Oct. 2015.

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on To the Lighthouse.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2003. Web. 29 Oct. 2015.

Ward, A. C. "THE SETTING." Twentieth Century English Literature. 1. London: The English Language book society and Mathuen, 1965. 1-24.

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