• Novels, Society and History

  Chapters

10th Class - Social Science History

  Share

10th Class - Social Science History
  • Text Book Solutions
  • Important Question
  • Question Papers Download

Solutions

Novels, Society and History

Question.1
Explain the following ?
  • Social changes in Britain which led to an increase in women readers
  • What actions of Robinson Crusoe make us see him as a typical colonizer

(a) Social changes in Britain which led to an increase in women readers were as mentioned below:

  • The middle classes became more prosperous in the eighteenth century. Women, therefore, got more leisure to read as well as write novels.
  • The subject-matter of many novels was women, their emotions and identities, their experiences and problems. Many novels were about domestic life- a theme about which women were allowed to speak with authority. The novels of Jane Austen give us a glimpse of the world of women in general rural society in Britain. These subjects increased their interests and led to increase in women readers.
  • Women drew upon their experience, wrote about family life and earned public recognition.
  • However when women began writing novels many people feared that they would neglect their traditional role as wives and mothers and homes would be in disorder.
  • By the nineteenth century, images of women reading silently, in the privacy of the room, became common in European paintings.

(b) The following actions of Robinson Crusoe make us see him as a typical colonizer:

  • He is an adventurer and slave trader.
  • He treats coloured people not as human beings equal to him, but as inferior creatures.
  • He rescues a ‘native’ and makes him his slave.
  • He does not ask for his name (native) but arrogantly gives him the name Friday.
    But at the time, Crusoe’s behaviour was right because colonialism was seen as natural.
    Colonised people were seen as primitive and barbaric. Colonial rule was considered necessary to civilise them as white man’s burden.

(c) In the beginning, novels were so costly that the poor could not buy. For example, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749) was issued in six volumes priced at three shillings each – which was more than the income of a labourer in a week. But after 1740, the readership of novels began to include the poorer people due to the following reasons :

  • Circulating libraries were introduced in 1740.
  • Technological improvements in printing brought down the price of books.
  • Innovations in marketing led to an expansion in sales. For example, in France, publishers found that they could make super profits by hiring out novels by the hour.
  • The novel was one of the first mass-produced items to be sold.

(d) Leading novelists of the nineteenth century wrote for a cause as mentioned below :

  • Colonial rules regarding the contemporary culture of India as inferior. They depicted
    • Indians as weak, divided and dependent on the British.
  • On the other hand, Indian novelists wrote to develop modern literature of the country that could produce a sense of national belonging and cultural equality with their Colonial masters.
  • Many novels produced a sense of Pan-Indian belonging. For example, Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s (1827-94) Anguriya Binimoy (1857) was written about Shivaji’s battles against Aurangzeb and the way he escapes from prison. It depicts him as nationalist fighting for the freedom of Hindus
    • Similarly, Bankim’s, Anandmath (1882) is a novel about a secret Hindu militia that fights Muslims to establish a Hindu kingdom. This novel inspired nany freedom fighters. Thus, the Indian novelists tried to produce a sense of national belonging and cultural equality with their colonial masters who considered the contemporary Tridian culture as inferior. The historical novels imagined the nation to be full of adventure, heroism, romance, and sacrifice.
Question 2.
Outline the changes in technology and society which led to an increase in the readers of the novel in the eighteenth century Europe[CBSE Sept. 2013]?

Answer: The changes in technology and society which led to an increase in readers of the novel in eighteenth-century Europe were as follows

  • Earlier manuscripts were handwritten and circulated among very few people. On the other hand, novels were being printed. Therefore novels were widely read and became popular very quickly.
  • Technological improvements in printing such as power-driven cylindrical press brought down the price of books. The novel was one of the first mass-produced items to be sold in Europe.
  • Big cities like London were growing rapidly and becoming connected to small towns and rural areas through print and improved communications. Novels produced a number of common interests among their scattered and varied readers.
  • New groups of lower-middle-class people, such as shopkeepers and clerks, traditional aristocratic and gentlemanly classes in England, and France formed new readership for novels.
  • In the eighteenth century, the middle-classes became more prosperous. Women got more leisure to read as well as write novels.
Question 3.
Write a note on ?
  • Hie Oriya Novel
  • Jane Austen’s portrayal of women
  • The picture of the new middle class which the novel Pariksha Guru portrays

Answer:The Oriya Novel : In 1877-78, ,Ramashankar Ray, a dramatist, began serialising the first Oriya novel Saudamani. But he could not complete it. Within thirty years, however, Odisha produced a major novelist in Fakir Mohon Senapati (1843- 1918).

  • The title of his novel Chaa Maria Atha Guntha (1902) portrays six acres and thirty- two decimals of land. It announces a new kind of novel that will deal with the question of land and its possession. It is the story of Ramchandra Mangaraj, a landlord’s manager, who cheats his idle and drunken master and then eyes the plot of fertile land owned by Bhagia and Shariya, a childless ” weaver couple. Mangaraj fools this couple and puts them into his debt so that he can take over their land. This pathbreaking work showed that the novel could make rural issues an important part of urban Ans. preoccupations. In writing this, Fakir Mohon anticipated a host of writers .in Bengal and elsewhere.
  • Jane Austen was an English novelist who gives us a glimpse of the world of women in the general rural society in the early 19th century. Her novels make us think about a society which encouraged women to look for ‘good’ marriages and find wealthy or propertied husbands. The first sentence of Jane Austen’s (1775-1817) Pride and Prejudice states: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’ This observation allows us to see the behaviour of the protagonists, who are preoccupied with marriage and money, as typifying Austen’s society.
  • Pariksha Guru reflects the inner and outer world of the newly emerging middle classes. The characters in the novel are caught in the difficulty of adapting to colonised society and at the same time, preserving their own cultural identity. The world of colonial modernity seems to be both frightening and irresistible to the characters. The novel clearly intends to teach the reader the ‘right way’ to live, and expects all ‘sensible men’ to be worldly-wise and practical, to remain rooted in the values of their own traditions and culture, and to live with, dignity and honour.
  • In the novel, we see the characters attempting to bridge two different worlds through their actions: they take to new agricultural technology, modernise trading practices, change the use of Indian language, making them capable to transmitting both Western sciences and Indian wisdom.
  • The young are urged to cultivate the ‘healthy habit’ of reading the newspapers. But the novel emphasises that all this must be achieved without sacrificing the traditional values of the middle-class household. With all its good intentions, Pariksha Guru could not win many readers, as it was perhaps too moralising in its style.
Question 4.
Discuss some of the social changes in nineteenth-century Britain which Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens wrote about?

Answer: Charles Dickens was the foremost English novelist of the Victorian era. He wrote about the terrible effects of industrialization on people’s lives and characters. His novels Hard Times and Oliver Twist became world-famous,

  • Hard Times: His novel Hard Times (1854) describes Coketown, a fictitious industrial town, as a grim place full of machinery, smoking chimneys, rivers polluted purple, and buildings that all looked the same. Here workers are known as ‘hands’, as if they had no identity other than as operators of machines. Dickens criticised not just the greed for profits but also the ideas that reduced human beings into simple instruments of production.
  • Oliver Twist: In other novels too, Dickens focused on the terrible conditions of urban. life under industrial capitalism. His Oliver Twist (1838) is the tale of a poor orphan who lived in a world of petty criminals and beggars. Brought up in a cruel workhouse, Oliver was finally adopted by a wealthy man and lived happily ever after.
Question 5.
Summarise the concern in both nineteenth-century Europe and India about women reading novels. What does this suggest about how women were viewed?

Answer:

  • When women began writing and reading novels, many people feared that they would now neglect the traditional role as wives and mothers, and homes would be in disorder.
  • It is not surprising that many men were suspicious of women writing novels or reading them. This suspicion cut across communities. Hannah Mullens, a Christian missionary and the author of Karuna o Phulmonir Bibaran (1852), reputedly the first novel in Bengali, tells her readers that she wrote in secret.
  • In the twentieth century, Sailabala Ghosh Jaya, a popular novelist, could only write because her husband protected her. As we have seen in the case of the south, women and girls were often discouraged from reading novels.
Question 6.
In what ways was the novel In colonial India useful for both the colonisers as well as the nationalists?

Answer:

  • Source of Information: Colonial administrators found the ‘vernacular’ novels a valuable source of information on native life and customs. Such information was useful for them in governing Indian society, with its large and a variety of communities and castes. As outsiders, the British knew little about life inside Indian households. The novels in Indian languages often had descriptions of domestic life.
  • Novels and colonialism: The novel originated in Europe at a time when it was colonizing the rest of the world. The early novel contributed to colonialism by marking the readers feel they were part of a superior community of fellow colonialists.
  • The novel and nation making: The history written by colonial historians tended to depict Indians as weak, divided, and dependent on the British. These histories could not satisfy the tastes of the new Indian administrators and intellectuals. Nor did the traditional Puranic stories of the past- peopled by gods and demons, filled with the fantastic and the supernatural- seem convincing to those educated and working under the English system. Such minds wanted a new view of the past that would show that Indians could be independent-minded and had been so in history. The novel provided a solution. In it, the nation could be imagined in a past that also featured historical characters, places, events, and dates.
  • Novels and struggle for freedom: The imagined nation of the novel was so powerful that it could inspire actual political movements. Banking’s Anandamath (1882) is a novel about a secret Hindu militia that fights Muslims to establish the Hindu Kingdom. It was a novel that inspired many kinds of freedom fighters.
  • Novels and common sharing novelists included: Various classes in the novel in such a way that they could be seen to belong to a shared world. Premchand’s novels, for instance, are filled with all kinds of powerful characters drawn from all levels of society. In his novels, you meet aristocrats and landlords, middle-level peasants and landless labourers, middle-class professionals, and people from the margins of society. The women characters are strong individuals, especially those who come from the lower classes and are not modernised.
Question 7.
Describe how the issue of caste was included in novels in India. By referring to any two novels, discuss the ways in which they tried to make readers think about the existing social issues?

Answer:

  • Novels like Indirabai and Indulekha were written by members of the upper castes and were primarily about the upper-caste characters. But all novels were not of this kind.
  • Potheri Kunjambu, a ‘lower-caste’ writer from north Kerala, wrote a novel called Saraswativijayam in 1892, mounting a strong blow on caste oppression. This novel shows a young man from an ‘untouchable’ caste, leaving his village to escape the cruelty of his Brahmin landlord. He converted himself to Christianity, obtained modem education, and returned as the judge in the local court. Saraswativijayam stressed the importance of education for the upliftment of the lower castes.
  • From the 1920s, in Bengal too a new kind of novel emerged that depicted the lives of peasants and ‘low’ castes. Advaita Malla Burmaris (1914-51) Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1956) is an epic about the Mallas, a community of fisherfolk who live off fishing in the river, Titash.
  • While novelists before Advaita Malla had featured ‘low castes’ as their main character, Titash is special because the author is himself a ‘low caste’.
  • The central character of Munshi Premchand’s novel Rangboomi, Surdas is. a visually impaired beggar from a so-called ‘untouchable caste.’
Question 8.
Describe the ways in which the novels in India attempted to create a sense of pan- Indian belonging?

Answer:

  • To create a sense of equality: Colonial rulers regarded the contemporary culture of India as inferior, On the other hand, Indian novelist wrote to develop modern literature of the country that could produce a sense of national belonging and cultural equality with their colonial masters.
  • To protect the values of India’s tradition and culture: Many novelists like that of Srinivas Das had expressed their fear and anger about the intermining of Indian and Western culture. The world of colonial modernity seems to be both frightening and irresistible to the characters. The novel tries to teach the reader the ‘right way’ to live and expects all ‘sensible men’ to be worldly-wise and practical, to remain rooted in the values of their own tradition and culture, and to live with dignity and honour.
  • But women did not remain mere readers of stories written by men; soon they also began to write novels. In some languages, the early creations of women were poems, essays or autobiographical pieces. In the early decades of the twentieth century, women in south India also began writing novels and short stories. A reason for the popularity of novels among women was that it allowed for a new conception of womanhood. Stories of love – which was a staple theme of many novels – showed women who could choose or refuse their partners and relationships. It showed women who could to some extent control their lives. Some women authors also wrote about women who changed the world of both men and women
  • From the 1920s, in Bengal too a new kind of novel emerged that depicted the lives of peasants and ‘low’ castes. Advaita Malla Burman’s (1914-51) Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1956) is an epic about the Mallas, a community of fisherfolk who live off fishing in the river Titash. The novel is about three generations of the Mallas, about their recurring tragedies, and the story of Ananta, a child born of parents who were tragically separated after their wedding night. Ananta leaves the community to get educated in the city. The novel describes the community life of the Mallas in great detail, their Holi and Kali Puja festivals, boat races, bhatiali songs, their relationships of friendship and animosity with the peasants, and the oppression of the upper castes
  • Many novelists wrote about Marathas and Rajputs. These novels produced a sense of a pan Indian belonging. The imagined nation of the novel was so powerful that it could inspire actual political movements. Bankim’s Anandamath (1882) is a novel about a secret Hindu militia that fights Muslims to establish a Hindu kingdom. It was a novel that inspired many kinds of freedom fighters

Important Question

Novels, Society and History Class 10 Important Questions with Answers Social Science

Question 1.
Who wrote the first proper modern novel in Hindi?
Year of Question :(2013)

Answer: The first proper modern novel in Hindi was written by Srinivas Das of Delhi

Question 2. .
Which novel in Hindi, published in 1882, gives more emphasis to moral values?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: Pariksha Gum by Srinivas Das, published in 1882 gives more emphasis to moral values

Question 3.
Name the first Hindi novel based on romance with dazzling element of fantasy?
Year of Question :(2015)

Answer: The first Hindi novel based on romance with dazzling element of fantasy was Chandrakanta by Devaki Nandan Khatri

Question 4.
Differentiate between the novels written by Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen?
Year of Question :(2012)

Answer: Following is the differentiation between the novels written by Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen

  • Charlotte Bronte speaks about women who break established norms of the society whereas Austens novels give the glimpse of women in cultured rural society in their domestic role
  • The characters portrayed by Bronte are daring, independent and assertive. Austens characters are already preoccupied with marriage and money
  • Bronte protests the hypocrisy of elders and wants the women of her time to live a dignified life on equal footage. Austen encourages the typical men- oriented society
Question 5.
When and in which languages were the modern form of novels developed in India? Give examples of any two earliest modern Indian Novels?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: The modern form of novels developed in India in the 19th century in the vernacular languages.Yamuna Paryatan (1857) by Baba Padmanji in Marathi and Muktamala (1861)by Lakshman Moreshwar Halbe were the two earliest modern Indian novels

Question 6.
In what ways did novels help to give the people a vision of being ideal characters?
Year of Question :(2011)

Answer: Novels helped people by giving them a vision of being ideal characters in the following ways

  • Srinivas Das through his characters in Pariksha Guru taught the readers to adopt the right way of life and encouraged men to be wise and practical and remain rooted to their values, traditions, culture etc. He also inspired people to live with honour and dignity
  • Munshi Premchand through his novel Rangbhoomi and Godan stressed creating a community based on democratic values and urged people to maintain their dignity under any circumstances.Chandu Menon in Indulekha proves how different lifestyles and customs can be adopted in an ideal combination
Question 7.
Briefly describe the journey of the development of novel in Hindi?
Year of Question :(2016)

Answer: The development of Hindi novel took place in the following ways

  • Bharatendu Harishchandra pioneered modern Hindi literature. Many other poets and writers got encouraged and began to recreate, adapt and translate novels from English and Bengali
  • Srinivas Das through Pariksha Guru in 1882 peeped into the inner world of emerging middle classes
  • People were moved with the way they were taught the right way to live and develop a practical approach as stated in Pariksha Guru
  • Devaki Nandan Khatri through Chandrakanta presented romance with impressive elements of fantasy which created a Hindi novel reading public
  • It was with the in-depth understanding of Munsi Premchand into the daily life of his characters that the Hindi novel achieved excellence. Sevasadan, Godan and many more of his novels presented a real world above fantasy and entertainment to the readers. His art of storytelling, kissa goi attracted readers and critics.
Question 8.
Why did novels become popular among women in India? Explain with examples?
Year of Question :(2010)

Answer: Novels became popular among women in India because of the following reasons

  • The novels allowed women to have a new concept of womanhood
  • Love stories encouraged women that they too could choose or refuse relationships
  • Novels inspired women that they too could live their lives according to their wish
  • Novels like Padmarg by Rokeya Hossein, stressed the need of self reforms by women which caught their imagination
  • Satires like Sultanas Dream mocked the male dominated society by inverting the role of women with that of men
Question 9.
Who translated the novel "Henrietta Temple" written by Disraeli in Malayalam? Why did the author give up the idea of translating English novels? What did he do instead in the literary field?
Year of Question :(2019)

Answer: O Chandu Menon translated the novel Henrietta Temple, written by Disraeli, into Malayalam. The author then gave up the idea of translating English novels because of the following reasons

  • The readers could not relate the characters with their life and ways because they belonged to a foreign culture unknown to the Indian readers
  • He felt that the direct translation of English novel was quite boring.He, therefore, took to writing his own novel in Malayalam. The product was Indulekha published in 1889
Question 10.
Which Hindi novel reflects the inner and the outer world of the newly-emerging middle class?
Year of Question :(2011)

Answer: Pariksha guru reflects the inner and outer world of the newly-emerging middle classes

Question 11.
Which novel depicts a topsy-turvy world in which women take the place of men?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: Sultanas Dream written by Rokeya Hossein in 1905 shows a topsy-turvy world in which women take the place of men

Question 12.
Explain the contribution of Charles Dickens in the field of English literature?
Year of Question :(2015)

Answer: The following points sum up the contribution of Charles Dickens in the field of English literature

  • Charles Dickens wrote about the terrible effects of industrialisation on peoples lives and characters. His novel Hard Times (1854) describes Coketown, a fictitious industrial town, as a grim place full of machinery, smoking chimneys and polluted rivers and buildings that looked the same
  • Dickens criticized not just the greed for profits but also the ideqs that reduced human beings into simple instruments of production
  • In other novels too, Dickens focused on the terrible conditions of urban life under industrial capitalism. His novel Oliver Twist (1838) gives an insight into the life of a poor orphan who lived in a world of petty criminals and beggars
Question 13.
Who was Potheri Kunjambu? Write about him?
Year of Question :(2010)

Answer: Potheri Kunj ambu was a lower-caste writer from north Kerala, who wrote a novel called Saraswativijayam in 1892, mounting a strong attack on caste oppression. This novel shows a young man from an untouchable caste, leaving his village to escape the cruelty of his Brahmin landlord. He converts to Christianity, obtains modern education and returns as the judge in the local court. Meanwhile, the villagers, thinking that the landlords men had killed him, file a case.At the conclusion of the trial, the judge reveals his true identity and the Brahmin landlord repents and reforms his ways. Saraswativijayam stresses the importance of education for the upliftment of the lower castes

Question 14.
Assess the advantages of serialised novels published during nineteenth century Europe?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: The following were the advantages of serialised novels published during the nineteenth century Europe

  • Serialising the novel allowed the readers to enjoy the suspense in the stories
  • It made the reader discuss the characters of a novel and live for weeks with their stories, thus increasing anticipation for the next issue to come
  • It also led to magazines becoming popular as they were illustrated and cheaper than novels
Question 15.
Describe the process of the development of novel in Hindi?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: The following points show the process of the development of novel in Hindi

  • The novel came to the Hindi belt in the nineteenth century. Poets and writers known to Bharatendu Harishchandra were encouraged by him to recreate and translate novels from other languages
  • This led to many translations of English and Bengali novels into Hindi. The first proper modern novel in Hindi was however written by Srinivas Rao in 1882. It was named Pariksha guru
  • It was with the writing of Premchand that the Hindi novel achieved excellence
Question 16.
How did novels in India attempt to create a sense of pan-India belonging?Explain?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: Novels in India attempted to created a sense of pan-India belonging in the following ways

  • When colonial rulers regarded India as inferior, Indian novelists wrote to develop a modern literature that could produce a sense of national belonging and cultural equality with their colonial masters
  • Many novelists tried to teach the readers the right way of life and expected all sensible men to behave wisely, have a practical approach, remain rooted in the values of their traditions and to live with dignity and honour
  • Women were not merely the readers of stories written by men. Soon they also began to write novels. They started with poems, essays and autobiographical pieces. Some women writers wrote about men and women that changed the world of both men and women. Novels began to be written on the low castes
  • Advita Malla Burmans Titash Ekta Nadir Naam depicts the life of the Mallas, a fish folk community, festivals, customs and their relationships of friendship and animosity with the peasants and oppression of the upper caste
  • Some novels wrote about Marathas and Rajputs. The imagined nation of the novels was so powerful that it could inspire actual political movements. Anandmath by Bankim Chandra brought forth a secret Hindu militia that fight Muslims to establish a Hindu kingdom and inspires many freedom fighters
Question 17.
How did the characters like Indulekha and Madhavan inspire the contemporary generations to strike a balance between the Western ideas and Indian traditional culture?
Year of Question :(2012)

Answer:

  • Character like Indulekha and Madhavan showed readers how Indian and foreign lifestyles could be brought together in an ideal combination
  • Indulekha rejects foolish Nambuthiri and marries Madhavan. It shows that education should be valued as an asset. Being educated does not means that one should do away with traditional customs like marriage
  • Both the characters showed a critical alliance based on caste, ignorance and immortality among high caste and virtue and wisdom of being educated
  • It provides a lesson to those living in dilemma of being English educated and losing their traditional values. It shows that two distinct lifestyles could be practised at the same time, without refusing the other
  • Marriage of Indulekha, an English educated beautiful and intelligent lady to a Sanskrit scholar dressed in western attire and keeping a tuft of hair according to his custom is depicted as a best example of a combination of foreign and Indian lifestyle
Question 18.
By whom was the novel Hard Times written?
Year of Question :(2015)

Answer: The novel Hard Times was written by Charles Dickens

Question 19.
What problem of the society was focused in the novel Hard Times, written by Charles Dickens?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: Charles Dickens, in his novel Hard Times, focused on the terrible effects of industrialization on peoples lives and characters

Question 20.
Who wrote the novel Saraswativijayaml Highlight any two messages given to the people through the novel?
Year of Question :(2009)

Answer: Saraswativijayam was written by Potheri Kunjambu. Two messages given to the people through the novel were as follows

  • Education is an effective tool for the upliftment of lower castes. In this novel an untouchable young man obtains education and becomes a judge in the local court
  • Caste-based inequalities are hindrance to the progress of a society
Question 21.
Explain the picture of new middle class, which the novel Pariksha guru portrays?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: Pariksha guru shows the inner and outer world of the newly-emerging middle classes in India. The characters in the novel faced contradiction in adapting to colonized society and the at same time fighting to save their own cultural identity. The world of colonial modernity seems to be both scary and irresistible to the characters of Pariksha guru. The novel sheds light upon the right way to live and hoped all sensible men to be worldly-wise and practical, to remain rooted in the values of their own tradition and culture

Question 22.
How did novels become popular in India? Explain?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: The following points show how novels became popular in India

  • As Indians started reading the western novels, the modem novel form developed in India in the nineteenth century. The advent of vernaculars print and a reading public helped in this process
  • Novels became a popular medium of entertainment among the middle class. Detective and mystery novels had to be reprinted many times to meet the demand of the reading public
  • Indians used the novel as a powerful tool to reflect upon what they considered defects in their society and to suggest remedies
  • Novels helped to build a world of imagination where readers could identify themselves with the characters of particular novels
Question 23.
"Premchands novels are filled with powerful characters from all levels of society." Justify the statement?
Year of Question :(2015)

Answer: Premchand is said to depict characters from real-life situations

  • In his novels, one gets to meet aristocrats and landlords, middle-level peasants and landless labourers, middle-class professionals and people from the margins of society
  • The women characters are strong individuals, especially those who come from the lower classes and are not modernized
  • Drawn from various strata of society, Premchands characters create a community, based on democratic values. The central character of his novel Rangbhoomi (The Arena), Surdas, is a visually-impaired beggar from the so-called untouchable caste. The very act of choosing such a person as the hero of a novel is significant
  • It makes the lives of the most oppressed section of society worthy of literary reflection
  • Godan (The Gift of Cow), published in 1936, remains Premchands best-known work. It is an epic on the life of Indian peasantry
Question 24.
Explain the aspects of Premchands writings that make them special?
Year of Question :(2013)

Answer: The followings aspects of Premchands writings make them special

  • Premchands novels represent all kinds of strong characters drawn from each level of society. In his novels, one gets to know about the stratification within the society. Premchand gave special focus on the people from the margins of society
  • The women characters are strong individuals, especially those belonging to the lower classes
  • Drawn from various strata of society, Premchands characters build a community, based on shared democratic values
  • Premchands novels make the lives and struggles of the most oppressed section worthy of literary reflection
  • Godan (The Gift of Cow), published in 1936, became Premchands best- known novel
Question 25.
Explain how novels assisted in the spread of silent reading?
Year of Question :(2010)

Answer: The novels assisted the spread of silent reading in the following ways

  • In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, written texts were often read aloud for several people to hear
  • Sometimes novels were also read in this fashion, but, in general, novels encouraged reading alone and in silence because readers wanted to understand the nuances of characters
  • Individuals sitting at home or travelling in trains enjoyed reading novels. Even in a crowded room, the novel offered a special world of imagination into which the reader could slip and imagine
Question 26.
Who is the author of novel Titash Ekti Nadir Naaml Why is it considered a special novel? Explain any four reasons?
Year of Question :(2013)

Answer: Titash Ekti Nadir Naam was written by Advita Malla Burman. It is special because of the following reasons

  • It is an epic about the three generations of the Mallas, a community of fish folk in the river Titash
  • It describes their religious traditions, festivals and community relationship
  • The novel highlights the breaking away of the community and the drying of the river, which brought an end to the Malla community
  • The novel is special because the author himself is a low caste from the Malla community, which was earlier featured as the protagonists
Question 27.
How was the problem of being modern addressed by Indian novelists? Explain?
Year of Question :(2012)

Answer: The problem of being modern was addressed by the Indian novelists in the following ways

  • Chandu Menon has been successful in addressing the problem of being modem. Through his novel Indulekha, he showed how Indian and foreign lifestyles could be brought together in an ideal combination
  • Srinivas Das in his novel Pariksha guru cautions the young meq. of the well- to-do families against the dangerous influences of bad company
  • The Indian novels depicted the dilemma of the young to accept the modern ways of life or retain their age-old traditions and cultural identity
  • Fictional characters may easily adopt the western lifestyles, but this was not so in the real life, where the western culture could be accepted only after completely renouncing the earlier habits
  • Stories focused that new western ideas and lifestyle were thought of an ideal way of life and English language was placed higher than the regional language. So, accepting this order would take the young away from their native tongue and traditions
Question 28.
What type of problems were highlighted by the novelist Charles Dickens in his novels? Explain any two such problems?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: Charles Dickens, the foremost English novelist of Victorian era, wrote about the terrible effects of industrialisation on peoples lives and characters. Hard Times and Oliver Twist were two such novels

  • In Hard Times, he potrayed human beings reduced to simple instruments of production along with the geed for profit. He drew a picture of polluted river, smoky environment and sounds of machines everywhere, workers were just hands of production with no identity
  • In Oliver Twist, he depicted a tale of a poor orphan living with petty criminals and beggars. In an urban industrial area, he is brought up in a cruel workhouse and is finally adopted by a wealthy man
Question 29.
How did novels became popular among masses? Explain with examples?
Year of Question :(2011)

Answer: The following were the reasons for the novels becoming popular among masses

  • Print technology reduced the cost of production. Novels became cheap and could be afforded by all
  • The world created by novels was absorbing, believable and real, which attracted a large number of readers
  • Novels were a source of entertainment and provided the pleasure of reading in private and in public, discussion of characters, events and stories
Question 30.
With the help of an example show how the early novels in Europe contributed to colonialism?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: The early novels in Europe contributed to colonialism in the following ways

  • The early European novels made the readers feel that they were part of superior community
  • Most of the time, colonialism was potrayed as a natural phenomenon by writers
  • Novels depicted colonised people as barberic, primitive and uncivilised and that colonialism was required to civilise them
  • Novels like Robinson Crusoe strengthen this colonial attitude where Robinson Crusoe, an adventurer and slave trader, treated coloured people as sub-humans
Question 31.
State the significance of the novels of Premchand?
Year of Question :(2019)

Answer: Munshi Premchand was an iconic literary figure of modern Hindi and Urdu literature. It was with his writings that the Hindi novel matured into greatness

  • Premchand drew on traditional art of Kissa-goi (storytelling)
  • He dealt with the real-life situations of that time and highlighted the plight of landless labourers, professionals, etc. He wrote on realitic issues like communalism, corruption, debt and poverty
  • The women characters in his novels came from lower class and were potrayed significantly. Many of his novels like Sevasadan were women-centered
Question 32.
Explain any three features of the early Bengali novels?
Year of Question :(2014)

Answer: The following were the features of early Bengali novels

  • Bengali novels in the nineteenth century potrayed two worlds. Some depicted past, its events and characters, other highlighted the inner world of domestic life
  • Some novels were based on love stories. At the same time, besides turns and twists of the plot and suspense, language was also relished
  • Domestic novels frequently dealt with social problems and romantic situations
Question 33.
Explain how novels became a popular medium of entertainment among the middle class during the late-nineteenth century in India?
Year of Question :(2013)

Answer: Novels became a popular medium of entertainment among the middle class during the late-nineteenth century in India in the following ways

  • Novels created absorbing, believable and real world for the readers. Picture books, contemporary stories in newspapers and magazines offered a new form of entertainment for the middle class
  • While reading the novel, the reader transported himself to another world and began looking at life as experienced by the character of the novel
  • Novels allowed the individuals the pleasure of reading in private as well as in public. Detective and mystery novels were widely read
Question 34.
"Novels were useful for both the colonial administrators and Indians in colonial India." Support the statement with examples?
Year of Question :(2017)

Answer: Novels were useful to both colonisers and nationalists in the following ways

  • For colonial administrators, novels were a source to understand native life and customs. For nationalists, novels were a powerful medium to criticise defects of colonial masters and suggest remedies
  • Novels helped the colonisers to frame policies and govern Indian society with various communities and castes. Novels helped nationalists to establish a relationship with the past and to propagate their ideas about society and its people
  • Novels made the colonisers familiar with Indian domestic life. Novels glorified accounts of past and helped the nationalists in creating a sense of national pride among the readers
Question 35.
Explain the teachings given by Srinivas Das in his novel Pariksha guru?
Year of Question :(2006)

Answer: Pariksha guru was perhaps too moralising in its style. The following were the teachings given by Srinivas Das in its novel Pariksha guru

  • By reflecting the inner and outer world of the newly-emerging middle class, he cautions young men of well-to-do families to live in a right way and expects them to be worldly and practical
  • He stresses the young to remain rooted with their values tradition and culture - and to live with dignity and honour
  • He urges the young to cultivate healthy habit of reading newspapers
Question 36.
Name the two countries of Western Europe where the novel first took firm root?

Answer: The novel first took firm root in England and France

Question 37.
"Colonial administrators found vernacular novels a valuable source of information on native life and customs." Support the statement with suitable examples?
Year of Question :(2015)

Answer: Vernacular novels were a valuable source of information on native life and customs. They were valuable for colonial administrators in the following ways

  • As colonial administrators were outsiders, they knew very little or nothing about Indian households
  • Information on native life and customs that the novels contained was useful for them in governing Indian society with a variety of communities and castes
  • Novels in Indian language depicted domestic life, religious beliefs and practices which were to be kept in mind before framing laws
Question 38.
Explain any three reasons for the popularity of novels in eighteenth century Europe?

Answer: The following were the reasons for the popularity of novels in eighteenth century Europe

  • Because of print, novels were cheap as compared to manuscripts. It led novels to be widely read and gain popularity
  • Novels depicted experiences, emotions, relationships and real-life experiences, which attracted the readers. For readers, it opened a new world of experience and gave vivid sense of diversity of human life
  • Novels targeted readers like young, old, women, shopkeepers, clerks and gentleman class through stories of adventure, housekeeping, politics, social life, etc

Question Papers Download


Videos