JANE EYRE - An Overview

Jane Eyre is a young orphan being raised by Mrs. Reed, her cruel, wealthy aunt. A servant named Bessie provides Jane with some of the few kindnesses she receives, telling her stories and singing songs to her. One day, as punishment for fighting with her bullying cousin John Reed, Jane’s aunt imprisons Jane in the red-room, the room in which Jane’s Uncle Reed died. While locked in, Jane, believing that she sees her uncle’s ghost, screams and faints. She wakes to find herself in the care of Bessie and the kindly apothecary Mr. Lloyd, who suggests to Mrs. Reed that Jane be sent away to school. To Jane’s delight, Mrs. Reed concurs.Once at the Lowood School, Jane finds that her life is far from idyllic. The school’s headmaster is Mr. Brocklehurst, a cruel, hypocritical, and abusive man. Brocklehurst preaches a doctrine of poverty and privation to his students while using the school’s funds to provide a wealthy and opulent lifestyle for his own family. At Lowood, Jane befriends a young girl named Helen Burns, whose strong, martyr like attitude toward the school’s miseries is both helpful and displeasing to Jane.A massive typhus epidemic sweeps Lowood, and Helen dies of consumption. The epidemic also results in the departure of Mr. Brocklehurst by attracting attention to the insalubrious conditions at Lowood. After a group of more sympathetic gentlemen takes Brocklehurst’s place, Jane’s life improves dramatically. She spends eight more years at Lowood, six as a student and two as a teacher.After teaching for two years, Jane yearns for new experiences. She accepts a governess position at a manor called Thornfield, where she teaches a lively French girl named Adèle. The distinguished housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax presides over the estate. Jane’s employer at Thornfield is a dark, impassioned man named Rochester, with whom Jane finds herself falling secretly in love. She saves Rochester from a fire one night, which he claims was started by a drunken servant named Grace Poole. But because Grace Poole continues to work at Thornfield, Jane concludes that she has not been told the entire story. Jane sinks into despondency when Rochester brings home a beautiful but vicious woman named Blanche Ingram. Jane expects Rochester to propose to Blanche. But Rochester instead proposes to Jane, who accepts almost disbelievingly.The wedding day arrives, and as Jane and Mr. Rochester prepare to exchange their vows, the voice of Mr. Mason cries out that Rochester already has a wife. Mason introduces himself as the brother of that wife—a woman named Bertha. Mr. Mason testifies that Bertha, whom Rochester married when he was a young man in Jamaica, is still alive. Rochester does not deny Mason’s claims, but he explains that Bertha has gone mad. He takes the wedding party back to Thornfield, where they witness the insane Bertha Mason scurrying around on all fours and growling like an animal. Rochester keeps Bertha hidden on the third story of Thornfield and pays Grace Poole to keep his wife under control. Bertha was the real cause of the mysterious fire earlier in the story. Knowing that it is impossible for her to be with Rochester, Jane flees Thornfield. Penniless and hungry, Jane is forced to sleep outdoors and beg for food. At last, three siblings who live in a manor alternatively called Marsh End and Moor House take her in. Their names are Mary, Diana, and St. John (pronounced “Sinjin”) Rivers, and Jane quickly becomes friends with them. St. John is a clergyman, and he finds Jane a job teaching at a charity school in Morton. He surprises her one day by declaring that her uncle, John Eyre, has died and left her a large fortune: 20,000 pounds. When Jane asks how he received this news, he shocks her further by declaring that her uncle was also his uncle: Jane and the Riverses are cousins. Jane immediately decides to share her inheritance equally with her three new found relatives.St. John decides to travel to India as a missionary, and he urges Jane to accompany him—as his wife.Jane agrees to go to India but refuses to marry her cousin because she does not love him. St. John pressures her to reconsider, and she nearly gives in. However, she realizes that she cannot abandon forever the man she truly loves when one night she hears Rochester’s voice calling her name over the moors. Jane immediately hurries back to Thornfield and finds that it has been burned to the ground by Bertha Mason, who lost her life in the fire.Rochester saved the servants but lost his eyesight and one of his hands. Jane travels on to Rochester’s new residence, Ferndean, where he lives with two servants named John and Mary.At Ferndean, Rochester and Jane rebuild their relationship and soon marry. At the end of her story, Jane writes that she has been married for ten blissful years and that she and Rochester enjoy perfect equality in their life together. She says that after two years of blindness, Rochester regained sight in one eye and was able to behold their first son at his birth.

Tughlaq

Ø About the Playwright:  Girish Karnad has emerged as an ambassador of Indian culture to the world. A multifaceted personality, Karnad has been described in many ways. His multidimensional roles in the Indian theatre and screen world have endeared him among the Indian audiences and abroad. But his recognition to the world outside India has been as a thought-provoking dramatist whose innovative experiments with the indigenous cultural treasure (history, myths and folklore) and native and the western performance modes have given a new direction to Indian drama. He is one of such authors whose works have been classified as the world’s best works and translated not only in English but also in other languages (modern Indian languages and of other world languages). His extra-dramatic writings (prefaces, articles, notes to his plays and interviews) have helped define and evolve Indian national theatre.

Ø Inception of the play : Karnad’s play Tughlaq is the first ‘New Drama’ in India in many ways. It was the first significant history play. It was during a conversation with Kirthinath Kurtkoti, the writer of the History of Kannada Literature, where Karnad made up his mind to write a historical play. Kurtkoti complained that no Indian playwright could do with our history what Shakespeare did with the British history and Brecht did with the history of the West. The innovative treatment of history and striking contemporaneity of the play shot Karnad into fame. Critics found the play to be a commentary on the decay of politics from the days of Nehru to the present times. The purpose of this article is to probe the existentialism as reflected in the play.

Ø Tughlaq has an interesting story, an intricate plot, scope for spectacle and uses dramatic conventions like the comic pair, Aziz and Aazam. It became an instant success because it was a play of the sixties, and reflects as no other play perhaps does the political mood of disillusionment which followed the Nehruvian era of idealism in the country.

Ø Tughlaq was the most idealistic, most intelligent king ever to come on the throne of Delhi and one of the greatest failures also. Within the span of twenty years this tremendously capable man had gone to pieces. This seemed to be both due to his idealism as well as the shortcomings within him, such as his impatience, his cruelty, his feeling that he had the only correct answer. The play is more than a political allegory. It step by step exposes the various shades of Tughlaq’s character and personality in front of us.

Ø ‘Tughlaq’ as an Existentialist play: It is existentialism in Tughlaq which makes it modern. Existentialism is identified as a hallmark of  modern literature. The major concern of Karnad in exploring the history of Muhammad bin Tughlaq is a probe into his transformation from an idealist emperor, ‘who is not afraid to be human’ and invites people ‘to confide their worries in him’, into a ‘mad Muhammad’, and ‘the Lord of the skins’. An analysis of his transformation brings out an illustration of an existentialist in him. Tughlaq shares this element with Camus’ Caligula, and Osborne’s ‘Look Back in Anger’, and Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’. The tension emerging from Tughlaq’s determination to discover purpose and order in a world that steadfastly refuses to evidence makes him absurd. He lives in an entopic world in which communication is impossible and illusion is preferred to reality. He is left with no scope for action. His recourse to cruelty is the result of the divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints his nostalgia for unity that fragmented his universe and the contradiction that binds them together. It reminds Hamlet’s metaphysical futility in action. The unbridgeable gulf between aspiration and fulfillment or the impossibility of communication of the futility of human relationship is a feature of the theater of the absurd. Tughlaq’s suffering emanates from an unbridgeable gap between his aspirations and the utter failure he meets, from the impossibility of communication, from the realization of futility of human relations and actions.Repeatedly Tughlaq is made to realize the vast gulf between aspiration and fulfillment, ideal and reality. As Cruiskshank puts, “Intellectual awareness of the absurd is the experience of a person who has expected a rationally ordered cosmos, but finds instead a chaos impervious to reason”. The failures of his dreams of building new future for India, his plan of shifting his capital, the introduction of the copper currency and the results of the impossibility of his desires push him to cruelty. The Sultan’s journey is from idealism to madness via alienation, frustration and cruelty. His readings of ideals reflected in his policies and behavior present him as an alien threat to the time honored and acceptable conventions of kingship of his time. His exercise of impartial justice and equal human treatment to the Hindus alienate him from the mainstream Muslim subjects and priesthood. He is called ‘an insult to Islam’. His exercise of tyrannical power can be seen as his release of his metaphysical anguish. His cruelty arises from his anguish, which he wants to impose over the scapegoat. His cruelty and tyranny are almost seen as vehicles to help him to overcome existential alienation and sense of the absurdity of human existence. He begins to console himself that his actions are justified. The realization that killings have not solved the problem and his knowledge of people’s anxiety about his death bring him remorse and frustration. His inability to admit that he has gone wrong pushes him to the verge of madness.In fact, the play depicts a conflict between Muhammad within and the world without. His turning to violence can be seen as his self-consolation and an escape from the feeling of guilt. It is, in Freudian terms, a misplaced wrath upon the people whom he considers responsible for the failures of his highly noble ideals, which were ahead of his times.

K. S. Ramamurti comments “The nature of experience in Tughlaq with its emphasis on despair, on the awareness of isolation from others and oneself and on a loss of meaning and value in one’s world certainly warrants a comparison with the Existential and Absurd drama”

Stylistics

Stylistics: an Introduction

Ø Stylistics is the study and interpretation of texts from a linguistic perspective. As a discipline it links literary criticism and linguistics, but has no autonomous domain of its own. The preferred object of stylistic studies is literature, but not exclusively "high literature" but also other forms of written texts such as text from the domains of advertising, pop culture, politics or religion. Stylistics also attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as socialization, the production and reception of meaning, critical discourse analysis and literary criticism.

Ø Other features of stylistics include the use of dialogue, including regional accents and people’s dialects, descriptive language, the use of grammar, such as the active voice or passive voice, the distribution of sentence lengths, the use of particular language registers, etc. In addition, stylistics is a distinctive term that may be used to determine the connections between the form and effects within a particular variety of language. Therefore, stylistics looks at what is ‘going on’ within the language; what the linguistic associations are that the style of language reveals.

Ø In its broadest sense stylistics is the study of style: of how language use varies according to varying circumstances. For e.g. circumstances of period, discourse situation or authorship.

Ø Two types of Stylistics:

1. Literary Stylistics – Study of style in literary texts.

2. General Stylistics – Study of style in texts of all kinds.

Ø Variation: Variation can be descriptive, where the purpose is just to describe the style, or explanatory, where the purpose is to explain something.

Ø General principles – 

Ø  The study of style is essentially the study of variation in the use of language.

Ø Language use has certain parameters for classifying domains. For e.g. parameter of formality (slang, informal, formal literary use etc), parameter of medium spoken or written, parameter of communicative function (advertising, scientific, legal, conversational), in the most general sense varieties of a language so defined constitute styles.

Ø Deviation: The concept of deviation is used in literary stylistics. To be stylistically distinctive, a feature of language must deviate from some norm of comparison.

Ø Two types of Deviation:

 1) Statistical deviation

            2) Determinate deviation

Ø Statistical deviation: Stastical deviation is a quantitative measure of linguistic differences between the domain and the norm.

Ø Determinate Deviation: Determinate deviation is non quantitative. It is observed as discrepancy between what is allowed by the language system and what occurs in the text.

Ø It is especially seen in poetry.

Ø Stylisticians claim that a close examination of the language of the poem leads to a greater understanding of its meaning and value.

Ø Stylistics can be helpful in accounting for artistic notions such as unity, suspense and climax.

Of Hidden Taxes

The poem ‘Of Hidden Taxes’ can be considered as a critique of American Globalization from the perspective of an insider. Marge Piercy highlights the adverse effects of urbanization, industrialization and privatization. Secondly it also highlights the hegemonic military control exercised by America over developing countries.
The poet focuses on the helplessness of the people and in the process also highlights the indifference of the government towards the suffering of the people. The whole poem is said in a satiric tone.
I Stanza:Marge Piercy in the first stanza emphasizes the manner in which the corporate world representing the sociological institutions of the government functions. The lines ‘Suppose those corporation spooks had to speak frankly:’ highlights the world of hypocrisy. The corporate executive claim that they pay a handsome to the labourers and also claim that they give them incentives, they boast that they provide them with better amenities. Little do they pay attention to the occupational hazards which could cripple them for life. The executives seem to be insensitive to the sufferings of common folk. She also brings out how the people are going to be rendered jobless in future by a process of further automation, which would further perpetuate unemployment, poverty and also widen the gap between the rich and the poor, concentration of wealth in a few hands and the exploitation of the common people.
II Stanza:This stanza focuses on the adverse effects of urbanization and also industrialization, which is explicit in the line ‘we’ll dump arsenic in your water’. She says that the industries are being established in towns and thereby leading to industrialization and urbanization. The industries would channel their waste into streams and rivers indicating ecological degradation. Secondly, she enunciates that agricultural land will become fallow rendering the farmers jobless. The farmlands are converted into tract houses as the farmers would be forced to take up jobs in the industries and nobody would be left for farming. Thirdly, she also talks about the burden meted out to the common folks in the form of tax, in order to fulfill the demands of the executives and their expensive life style. Finally it also highlights the manner in which the global market functions. The goods that would be produced in America would be shipped out to (rather dumped into) Taiwan and other countries.
III Stanza:The third stanza highlights the destructive nature of industries and industrialization. She talks about the unfavorable situation caused by industries -perpetuating unemployment and environmental degradation. It seems that the ‘corporation spooks’ are insensitive towards the harm caused by them as a result of over exploitation. Although these people are aware of the damage (spills) caused to the nature they are least bothered. The pollution caused as a result of oil drilling does not affect just the aquatic life; it goes beyond that, it also affects vegetation and human life.
IV Stanza:The poet satirizes the functioning of the Government, the President(the head of the state) and also militarization. She says that the head of the state claims that in order to strengthen the military force, they conduct trial wars over various frontiers which results in expenditure. In the process of strengthening the military force the President claims that they are creating employment opportunities. But where does the government get this money from? It’s quite obvious that the common man would be taxed, he’s burdened with it to which the government seems to be quite insensitive. The stanza end’s with a rhetorical question ‘Who do you think was buying all those bombers?’ which hints towards common man buys all those arms and ammunition. Ironically the common man has ‘no say’ in the proceedings of the government and also not aware of he being taxed to pay off the debt resultant of war. Secondly it also highlights about illegal means of hoarding money (‘cocaine to the economy’)
V Stanza:Here the poet talks about inhuman militarization. The lines ‘we grow you to fit uniform’ and ‘get no depreciation value’ highlight the inhuman nature of the statesmen. The statesmen force all the youngsters into military. Any harm caused to these youngsters due to war which would cripple them for life is not considered. Instead of sympathizing with such individuals who sacrifice their life and dedicate their life for the state, the statesmen feel that they incur loss for they feel that they would have invested a lot of money in the training of these individuals and in the course of war if these individuals loose their limbs or any vital part of their body they would no longer be fit to perform. This clearly indicates inhuman commodification of human beings in the name of strengthening the military force.

It also highlights the hegemonic control of America over other countries. The state, inorder to prove its hegemony and power would wage war on other countries and in the name of war demolishes them. She also talks about indiscriminate killing of people which they camouflage by saying ‘population control’.
Towards the end of the poem the poet says ‘back home baby farming’ sums up the whole poem. In the previous stanzas she highlights overexploitation of nature and human beings, which affects and has affected the whole generation and the consequence of it is borne by the contemporaries and it does not stop with them, it further affects the forthcoming generations for several centuries. The forthcoming generations would have to strive hard to thrive with nothing left to survive upon.

Bosom Friend

The poem “Bosom Friend” is a critical and a sarcastic remark against the hypocritical caste-ridden society. The poet here articulates the pain she has suffered at the hands of the upper class. The experience of constant subjugation, separation and marginalization are expressed in a tone which is both vehement and sarcastic.
The title of the poem has an ironic under tone since her guests do not in anyway live up to her expectations. The narrator in the poem plays the role of hostess to some upper-caste guests. Her treatment of the guests is unconditional and unpretentious. She appreciates her guests for their gesture of magnanimity since they have shed their feeling of cast superiority. She finds it surprising as the gap between low class and upper class was too large to be bridged. But the age old problem has been effortlessly remedied by her guests with the mind as large as the sky.
The devotion showed by the hostess has been compared to that of Shabari of the Ramayana. But unfortunately her devotion was short lived, when she started to serve. The feeling of caste- superiority suddenly found expression in her guests’ insolent remarks on the table etiquette of the hostess. One of them even says, “You folk will newer improve”.
The hostess is terribly offended and breaks in to a sense of nostalgia. She recalls her days of poverty and painfully expresses her impoverished circumstances when she had no access to milk or yoghurt. The expectations of the guests can not be fulfilled since the hostess has been brought up in utter poverty. Her only source of luxury was chutney on coarse bread. The hostess also says that shrikhand was not part of their language. The hostess who was so happy at the arrival of the guests now sounds like a liberated women and defends her ignorance of table etiquette since it was the society which made her.

Tree

This poem is dedicated to Mrs. Henry Mill Alden, the poet’s mother-in-law, and a poet in her own rig. In the poem, the poet expresses his concern over the diminishing forest canopy and the disappearance of trees in our immediate neighborhood. He compares the ‘lively’ tree to a poem which is apparently a human creation. He feels that a tree is a better creation than a poem, more so because it has ‘life’. He personifies the tree, comparing it to a human being, endowing human qualities to it. Ex: ‘Hungry mouth is prest’, ’her leafy arms to pray’. Since it is easy for human beings to understand nature when compared to themselves, he uses this metaphor. Just as human beings decorate themselves with things like flowers, the tree seeks to decorate itself with a nest of robins. The tree lives intimately with other elements of nature like rain, snow, earth, etc. This speaks about the co-existence and co-operation existing in nature.
He calls himself a fool, due to the fact that though he happens to pen a few verses as a poet, he cannot compete with the creative ability of God who has created fantastic objects like trees and nature. When compared to God’s creation, his vain attempt at writing a poem seems to be foolish.
He also uses the figure of speech ‘enjambment’ to enhance the effect of his poem, in which an idea continues from one stanza to the other without a break or pause, thus bringing the poem to complete coherence
He expresses his fear of complete obliteration of trees on earth and indirectly provides us with the message of conservation of trees.

For You

‘For you’ speaks about a child’s feelings with regard to the happenings at home, the whole story with a child’s perspective. Vasu remembers his step sister, Leela who gifted him with a toy owl that he beheld with pride among his classmates and felt himself becoming important.
The narrator (Vasu himself) tells about his parents who wanted to have a girl child after having three sons. They were disappointed on the birth of another son instead. This disappointment of the parents was vented out on Vasu in the form of negligence and resentment. This affects the child who is filled with fear about the mother and brothers since they always silenced him and beat him.
He misses having a sister when his friends express experiences with their sisters fondly- wrapping their books, their beautiful handwriting, the brother-in-law to boast of, the wedding, etc.
He always waits to see and longs to be with his father who is away in Ceylon, doing business. Once when he comes home, he brings a little girl with him who happens to be Leela, herself. There is a quarrel about her coming home as Vasu’s mother does not agree to the illicit relationship of her husband bringing forth this girl. Vasu is disturbed by this, as well as by the fact that the girl is closer to his father than himself. But at the same time, Vasu is pleased to have a sister. The toy-owl with Leela attracts him and he gently asks her for it, though he cannot directly communicate it to her as their mother tongues differ. She exhibits her affection and greatness by gifting the owl to Vasu while she leaves his house - A small girl parts with her favorite toy, when she herself could have retained it.
Vasu gets to have only a short association with Leela, and even though it is short, it leaves a treasure of memories with him to linger on although his life. The narration moves back and forth, taking the reader to what happened in the past and that of the present. All that he mentions is totally from a child’s point of view.