NCERT Solutions For Class 10 History Chapter 8 Novels Society And History

Chapter 8 Novels Society And History Important Dateline

• 1719: Daniel Defoe’s novel ‘Robinson Crusoe’ was published.
• 1740: Circulating libraries were introduced.
• 1854: ‘Hard Times’ published.1857: Baba Padamji’s ‘Yamuna Paryatan’ was published.
• 1878: ‘Rajasekhara Caritamu’ published by Kandukuri virselingam
• 1889: The novel ‘Indulekha’ was published by O. Chandu Menon.
• 1894: Rudyard Kipling published Jungle Book.
• 1905: ‘Sultana’s Dream’ written by Rokeya Hossein.
• 1936: Prem Chand’s ‘Godan’ was published.
• 1956: Advaita Malla Barman’s “Titash Ekti’ Nadir Naam was published.

Chapter 8 Novels Society And History Important Concepts And Terms

Novel: A novel is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose.

Gentlemanly Classes: People who claimed noble birth and high social position. They were supposed to set the standard for proper behavior.

Epistolary: Written in the form of a series of letters.

Serialized: A format in which the story is published in installments, each part in a new issue of the journal.

Vernacular: The normal, spoken form of a language rather than the formal, literary form.

Satire: A form of representation through writing, drawing, painting, etc., that provides a criticism of society in a manner that is witty and clever.

Chapter 8 Novels Society And History Ncert Textbook Exercises

Question 1. Explain the following:

1. Social changes in Britain led to an increase in women readers.
2. What actions of Robinson Crusoe make us see him as a typical colonizer?
3. After 1740, the readership of novels began to include poorer people.
4. Novelists in colonial India wrote for a political cause.

Answer:

• As the middle classes became more affluent, women got more leisure to read and write novels. Also, novels began to explore the world of women, their emotions, identities, experiences, and problems.
  • Domestic life became an essential subject of novels – a field women had the authority to speak about.
• Robinson Crusoe’s actions that make us see him as a typical colonizer are many. Shipwrecked on an island inhabited by colored people, Crusoe treats them as inferior beings.
  • He is portrayed as “rescuing” a native and then making him a slave. He gives him the name Friday, without even caring to ask for his name.
  • Colonized people were seen as barbaric and primitive, and colonialism became their self-professed civilizer. Crusoe was a direct representation of this ideology of colonizers.
• After 1740, the readership of novels began to include poorer people because of the introduction of circulating libraries, low-priced books, and also because of the system of hiring out of books by the hour.
  • This made books easily available to poor people, who could not afford books earlier due to high costs and the absence of lending libraries.
• Novelists in colonial India wrote for a political cause because the novel was a powerful medium for expressing social defects and suggesting remedies for the same.
  • It also helped establish a relationship with the past. Since people from all walks of life could read novels, it was an easy way to popularise anti-colonial ideas.
  • It also helped bring about a sense of national unity among the people.

Question 2. Outline the changes in technology and society which led to an increase in readers of the novel in eighteenth-century Europe.

Answer:

1. Print-made novels to be read widely and become popular quickly.
2. Novels produced a number of common interests and a variety of readers.
3. Readers were drawn into the story and identified themselves with the lives of fictitious characters. They now could think about issues like love and marriage, and proper conduct for men and women.
4. Prosperity, due to industrialization, made new groups join the readership for novels. Besides the aristocratic and gentlemanly classes, new groups of lower-middle-class people such as shopkeepers and clerks joined in.
5. The rise in the earnings of authors freed them from the patronage of aristocrats. They could now experiment with different literary styles. The epistolary novel – Samuel Richardson’s Pamela – written in the 18th century was the first of its kind. It was a story told through letters.
6. Books became cheap and even the poor could buy them. Circulating libraries made books easily accessible. Publishers also started hiring out novels. Books could now be read in private or could be heard by more people, while one of them read it out.
7. Magazines serialized stories (Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers was the first), illustrated them, and sold them cheaply. All these changes increased the number of readers.

Question 3. Write a note on:

1. The Oriya novel
2. Jane Austen’s portrayal of women
3. The picture of the new middle class which the novel Pariksha-Guru portrays.

Answer:

1. In 1877-78, Ramashankar Ray started to serialize the first Oriya novel, “Saudamini”; but it remained incomplete. Orissa’s first major novelist was Fakir Mohon Senapati.
   • He wrote “Chaa Mana Atha Guntha” which deals with land and its possession. This novel illustrated that rural issues could be an important part of urban concerns.
2. The novels of Jane Austen give us a glimpse of the world of women in genteel rural society in mid-19th century Britain.
   • Women, at that time, were encouraged to look for a good marriage and find a wealthy and proper husband. Her famous novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’ depicts this well.
   • It writes, ‘It is the truth, universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a good wife’. The main characters are shown to be preoccupied with marriage and money.
3. The novel “Pariksha-Guru” portrays the difficulties of the new middle class in adapting to colonized society while preserving its cultural identity.
   • It emphasizes that Western ideals must be inculcated, but without sacrificing the traditional values of middle-class households.
   • The characters in this Hindi novel by Srinivas Das are seen endeavoring to bridge the two different worlds of modern education and traditional ethics.

Question 4. Discuss some of the social changes in nineteenth-century Britain that Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens wrote about.

Answer:

Social changes in nineteenth-century Britain highlighted by Thomas Hardy are:

1. The breaking up of rural communities because of industrialization. Due to industrialization, peasants who toiled with their lands were disappearing as large or big farmers enclosed lands, bought machines, and employed laborers to produce for the market.
2. In his novel ‘Mayor of Casterbridge’, Hardy mourns the loss of the more personalized world which is being replaced by a more efficiently managed urban culture.

Social Changes Highlighted by Charles Dickens are:

1. Charles Dickens wrote mainly about the emergence of the industrial its effects on society and the common people.
2. The growth of factories and expanded cities led to the growth of business and economy and increased the profits of capitalists.
3. At the same time, workers faced immense problems. The use of machines resulted in the unemployment of ordinary laborers; they became homeless, creating a problem with housing.
   • The pursuit of profit became the goal of factory owners while the workers were undervalued and almost lost their identity. Human beings were reduced to being mere instruments of production.

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:

The concern in both nineteenth-century Europe and India about women reading novels bore more or less similar fears.

Women were seen as easily corruptible and an imaginary world that the novel provided was seen as a dangerous opening for the imaginations of its readers.

In certain Indian communities, it was felt that women who read novels would leave their domestic environments and aspire to be part of the outside world – the male domain.

This suggests that women were viewed as delicate and incapable of being independent.

They were merely expected to marry a man who could take care of their financial needs while they maintained his household and remained subservient to him.

Question 6. In what ways was the novel in colonial India useful for both the colonizers as well as the nationalists?

Answer:

The novel in colonial India was useful for both the colonizers as well as the (CBSE 2009) nationalists on account of a variety of reasons.

Colonial rulers found “vernacular” novels illuminating the information they provided on native customs and life. The novel was useful in the governance of this diverse country.

Indian nationalists used the form of the novel to criticize colonial rule and instill a sense of national pride and unity among the people.

Question 7. Describe how the issue of caste was included in the novels in India. By referring to any two novels, discuss the ways in which they tried to make readers think about existing social issues.

Answer:

Indians used novels as a powerful medium to criticize what they considered defects in their society and to suggest remedies.

The issue of caste was included in the Indian novels for this same purpose. Novels like Indirabai and Indulekha were written by members of the upper castes with upper-caste characters.

• Potheri Kunjambu, a lower-caste writer from north Kerala, wrote a novel called Saraswativijayam in 1892. It was a direct attack on caste oppression.
  • The novel’s hero, an ‘untouchable’ leaves his village to escape from the cruelty of a Brahmin overlord.
  • He converts to Christianity, receives modern education, and returns to his village as a judge of a local court.
  • In the meantime, the villagers bring the landlord to his court, they believe the landlord’s men have killed the hero.
  • The judge reveals himself and the Nambuthri landlord repents and promises to reform. The novel emphasizes the role of education in uplifting the lower classes.
• In 1920, a Bengali novel Titash Ekti Nadir Naam written by Advaita Malla Burman took up the cause of low castes.
  • The people described are the Mallas – a community of fishermen. The story covers three generations and describes the oppression of the upper castes.
  • The lives of the Mallas are tied to the river Titash. As the river dries, the community dies too.
  • This novel is special because the author himself was a ‘low caste’ describing the anguish of low-caste people.

Question 8. Describe the ways in which the novels in India attempted to create a sense of pan-Indian belonging.

Answer:

The ways in which the novels in India attempted to create a sense of pan-Indian belonging were:

1. Many historical novels were about Marathas and the Rajputs which produced a sense of a pan-Indian belonging in Bengal.
2. They imagined the nation to be full of adventure, heroism, romance, and sacrifice. The novels allowed the colonized to give shape to their desires.
3. Bankim’s Anandmath is a novel about a secret Hindu militia that fought Muslims to establish a Hindu kingdom. It was a novel that inspired many freedom fighters.
4. Shivaji, the hero of the novel Anguriya Binimoy (1857) written by Bhudeb Mukhopadhyaya (1825-94) engages in many battles against clever and treacherous Aurangzeb. What gave him courage and grit was his belief that he was a nationalist fighting for the freedom of Hindus.
5. Imagining a heroic past was one way in which the novel helped popularise the sense of belonging to a common nation. It was another way to include various classes in the novel so that they could be seen as belonging to a shared world. Premchand’s novels, for instance, are filled with all kinds of powerful characters drawn from all levels of society.

Chapter 8 Novels, Society And History Short Questions And Answers

Question 1. Novels were useful for both colonial administrators and Indians in colonial India.
Support the statement with an example.

Answer:

To colonial administration:

1. A source to understand native life and customs.
2. Novels helped to govern Indian society with various communities and castes.
3. Those helped me to learn the domestic life, dresses, religious worship, etc.
4. Some of the books were translated into English by British administrators or Christian missionaries.

Read and Learn More Class 10 Social Science Solutions

To Indians:

1. Indians used the novels as a powerful medium to criticize defects that they considered in society and to suggest remedies.
2. To establish a relationship with its past.
3. To propagate their ideas about society.
4. Novels glorified the accounts of the past and helped create a sense of National Pride among the readers.
5. Those helped in creating a sense of collective belongingness on the basis of one’s language.

Question 2. Explain how novels became a popular medium of entertainment among the middle class during the late 19th century.

Answer:

1. The world created by novels was absorbing, believable, and seemingly real.
2. While reading novels, the readers are transported to another person’s world and begin looking at life as it was experienced by the characters of the novel.
3. Novels allowed individuals the pleasure of reading in private as well as in public.
4. The stories of novels were discussed in homes, meetings, or even in offices.

Question 3. What were the advantages of serialized novels?

Answer:

1. A story is published in installments, keeping the suspense for the next issue.
2. Serialization allowed readers to relish the suspense, discuss the characters of a novel, and live for weeks with their stories.
3. This was possible since the magazines were illustrated, cheap, and affordable.

Question 4. What were the advantages of vernacular novels?

Answer:

1. They were written in the language of common people.
2. Vernacular novels produced a sense of a shared world between diverse people of a nation.
3. Novels also draw from different styles of languages. A novel may be written in a classical language combined with the language of the street to make them all a part of the vernacular that it uses,
4. Novels were read individually. Sometimes in groups also.

Question 5. Describe any two popular themes on which women writers in England wrote in the 19th century.

Answer:

Domestic Life: Women writers wrote about domestic life themes with which they (CBSE 2010) were familiar. For this, they drew upon their experience and earned public recognition.

For instance, the novels of Jane Austen depict a society that encouraged women to look for ‘good’ marriages and find wealthy husbands.

Rebellious Women: Women novelists, like Charlotte Bronte, dealt with women who rebelled against existing norms of society before adjusting to them.

In her novel Jane Eyre, Jane is shown as independent and assertive. While girls of her age were supposed to be docile, meek, and well-behaved, Jane was shown protesting against the hypocrisy of her elders.

Question 6. Explain, how novels became a popular medium of entertainment among the middle class during the late 19th century in India.

Answer:

The circulation of printed books allowed people to assure themselves in new ways. (CBSE, Delhi 2010) Picture books, translations from other languages, popular songs sometimes composed in contemporary events, stories in newspapers and magazines–all these offered new forms of entertainment. Within this new culture of print, novels soon became immensely popular.

In Tamil, for example, there was a flood of popular novels in the early decades of the 20th century. Detective and mystery novels often had to be printed again and again to meet the demands of the readers.

In the late 19th century and the early 20th century, written texts were often read aloud for several people to hear.

Individuals sitting at home or traveling in trains enjoyed them.

Question 7. Write three methods by which printed books became more accessible to people.

Answer:

There were a series of innovations in the printing technology in the 19th century.

1. Richard M. Hoe of New York perfected the power-driven cylindrical press. He could print 8,000 sheets per hour. His press was very useful for printing newspapers.
2. The late 19th century saw the development of the offset press capable of printing six colours at a time.
3. Electrically-operated press in the early 20th century increased the rate of printing operations.
4. Methods of feeding paper improved, the quality of plates became better, machines were fed, and automatic paper reels and photoelectric controls of the color register were introduced.

Question 8. How did the novels contribute to the growth of nationalism in Europe?

Answer:

Within the novel, people can see people living in different worlds and sharing a collective identity.

By identifying with their collective identity people felt they belonged to one nation even though they were living in different places.

Question 9. What was the theme of the novel written by Thomas Hardy?

Answer:

The theme of novels written by Thomas Hardy was about the farming communities of England that were breaking up due to the mechanization of agriculture.

Question 10. What were the themes of novels for the young during the 19th century in England?

Answer:

The popular themes were historical adventures of young boys who got involved in some military action and showed courage.

Question 11. What is the importance of Sewasadan by Prem Chand in the History of novels in India?

Answer:

Sewasadan deals with the poor condition of women in the society. It forces the readers to get out of world fantasies and seriously ponder over real-life issues that are confronted by ordinary people.

Question 12. Why did Colonial rulers find Indian novels useful?

Answer:

Indian novels gave colonizers an insight into the lives of the colonized people, their traditions, and their culture.

The Britishers being outsiders knew nothing about the varied customs prevalent in various Indian societies.
This helped them in framing their administrative policies.

Question 13. Novels are useful for the nationalists. Explain. Answer:

The nationalists got an opportunity to glorify the accounts of the past. These novels helped in creating the feeling of Nationalism.

Novels inspired political movements – Anandamath inspired many freedom fighters.

Question 14. Describe the pleasure of reading novels.

Answer:

It offers a popular medium of entertainment. The novels spread the way of silent reading because novels are generally read alone and in silence.

Question 15. Describe the reason for the popularity of novels among women.

Answer:

The reason for the popularity of novels among women was that it allowed for a new conception of womanhood. Stories of love showed women who could choose or refuse their partners and relationships.

Question 16. Write a brief description of Rokeya Hossein and her novels.

Answer:

Rokeya Hossein (1880-1932) was a reformer, who wrote a satiric fantasy in English called ‘Sultana’s Dream’ (1905) which shows a topsy-turvy world in which women take the place of men.

Her novel Padmarag also showed the need for women to reform their condition through their own actions.

Question 17. What was the effect of men’s suspicion about women writing novels or reading them?

Answer:

As men became suspicious of women writing novels or reading them, they started writing in secrecy. Sailabala Ghosh Jaya, a popular novelist, could only write because her husband protected her.

Question 18. What was the attitude of people in India in the 19th century towards women reading? How did women respond to this?

Answer:

There was not a universally favorable attitude.

Conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed and Muslims feared educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances. Rebel women defied such prohibition.

A Muslim girl in north India defied her family and secretly learned to read and write Urdu. Rashsundari Debi, a young married girl in a very orthodox family, learned to read in the secrecy of her kitchen. Later she published her autobiography in Bengali.

A few Bengali women like Kailash Bashini Debi wrote books highlighting the experiences of women. In the 1860s, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai of Maharashtra wrote about the miserable lives of upper-caste women.

Women writing in Tamil expressed their gratitude to books. The attitude in general was to keep women imprisoned at home, ignorant, forced to do hard domestic work, and subject to unfair treatment.

In Punjab, folk literature exhorted women to be obedient wives (Ram Chaddha’s Istri Dharm Vichar).

The Khalsa Tract Society published cheap booklets with the same message. In Bengal, – an entire area in Central Calcutta- the Battala – was devoted to printing popular books. They were cheap editions of religious texts, scriptures as well as scandalous literature.

Women’s education was not encouraged by the majority as Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossein reported in her address to Bengal Women’s Educated Conference.

Question 19. Which form did the epistolary novel use to tell its story? Explain with an example.

Answer:

The epistolary novel uses the private and personal form of letters to tell its story.

For example, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, written in the eighteenth century, told much of its story through an exchange of letters between two lovers. These letters tell the reader of the. Eden conflicts in the heroine’s mind.

Question 20. Briefly describe the two earliest novels in Marathi.

Answer:

Yamuna Paryatan and Muktamala were the two earliest novels in Marathi.

1. Yamuna Paryatan (1857). This was the first novel in Marathi. Its author was Baba Padmanji. It used a simple style of storytelling to speak about the plight of widows.
2. Muktamala (1861). Lakshman Moreshwar Halbe’s Muktamala was the second Marathi novel. This was not a realistic novel; it presented an imaginary ‘romance’ narrative with a moral purpose.

Question 21. In which two worlds did the early Bengali novels live in the 19th century?

Answer:

In the 19th century, the early Bengali novels lived in the following two worlds:

1. Many of the novels were located in the past, their characters, events and love stories based on historical events.
2. Another group of novels depicted the inner world of domestic life in contemporary settings. Domestic novels frequently deal with the social problems and romantic relationships between men and women.

Question 22. What do you know about the languages of the novel?

Answer:

The novel uses the vernacular, the language that is spoken by common people. By coming close to the different spoken languages of the people, the novel produces the sense of a shared world between diverse people in a nation.

The novel also draws from different styles of language. A novel may take a classical language and combine it with the language of the streets and make them all a part of the vernacular that it uses. Like the nation, the novel brings together many cultures.

Question 23. What do you know about the development of the novel in Assam?

Answer:

1. The first novels in Assam were written by the missionaries. Two of them were translations of Bengali including Phulmoni and Karuna.
2. In 1888, Assamese students in Kolkata formed the Asamya Bhasar Unnatisadhan which brought out a journal called Jonaki. This journal opened up opportunities for authors to develop the novel.
3. Rajanikanta Bardoloi wrote the first major historical novel in Assam called Manomati (1900).
   • It is set in the Burmese invasion, stories of which the author had probably heard from old soldiers who had fought in the 1819 campaign.
   • It is a tale of two lovers belonging to two hostile families who are separated by the war and finally reunited.

Question 24. What message does Gulavadi Venkata Rao’s novel convey?

Answer:

In Gulavadi Venkata Rao’s novel Indirabai, the heroine is given away in marriage at a very young age to an elderly man. Her husband dies soon after, and she is forced to lead the life of a widow.

Despite opposition from her family and society, Indirabai succeeds in continuing her education. Eventually, she marries again, this time a progressive, English-educated man.

Women’s education, the plight of widows, and problems created by the early marriage of girls were important issues for social reformers in Karnataka at that time.

Chapter 8 Novels Society And History Multiple Choice Question And Answers

Question 1. Oliver Twist was written by

1. Emile Zola
2. Thomas Hardy
3. Jane Austen
4. Charles Dickens

Answer: 4. Charles Dickens

Question 2. Jane Austen’s famous novel was

1. Hard Times
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. Jane Eyre
4. Jungle Book

Answer: 2. Pride and Prejudice

Question 3. Which of the following novels was not written by Charles Dickens?

1. Hard Times
2. Germinal
3. Oliver Twist
4. Pickwick Papers

Answer: 2. Germinal

Question 4. Who wrote the ‘Jungle Book’?

1. Charlotte Bronte
2. R. L. Stevenson
3. Rudyard Kipling
4. None of these

Answer: 3. Rudyard Kipling

Question 5. The earliest Indian novel was written in which of the following languages?

1. Tamil
2. Hindi
3. Bengali
4. Telugu

Answer: 3. Bengali

Question 6. The first modern novel in Malayalam is

1. Swarna Lekha
2. Indu Lekha
3. Sindu Lekha
4. None of these

Answer: 2. Indu Lekha

Question 7. Who is the pioneer of modern Hindi literature?

1. Bharatendu Harishchandra
2. Srinivas Das
3. Devaki Nandan Khatri
4. Munshi Premchand

Answer: 1. Bharatendu Harishchandra

Question 8. The first modern Hindi novel is:

1. Parikhsha-Guru
2. Godan
3. Chandrakanta
4. Sevasadan

Answer: 1. Parikhsha-Guru

Question 9. Which was the first novel written by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee?

1. Anandmath
2. Sultana’s Dream
3. Muktamala
4. Durgeshnandini

Answer: 4. Durgeshnandini

Question 10. Which one of the following novels is written by Rokeya Hussein?

1. Pariksha Guru
2. Godan
3. Anandmath
4. Sultana’s Dream

Answer: 4. Sultana’s Dream

Question 11. Which of the following novels deals with caste oppression?

1. Sultana’s Dream
2. Indu Lekha
3. Saraswativijayam
4. Godan

Answer: 3. Saraswativijayam

Question 12. Which was the first historical novel written in Bengali?

1. Anandamath
2. Anguriya Binimoy
3. Sultana’s Dream
4. Durgesh Nandini

Answer: 2. Anguriya Binimoy

Question 13. Who was the central character of Prem Chand’s Rangbhoomi?

1. Tulsidas
2. Surdas
3. Kabirdas
4. None of these

Answer: 2. Surdas

Question 14. Which of the following novels was not written by Munshi Premchand?

1. Rangbhoomi
2. Godan
3. Sewasadan
4. Pariksha-Guru

Answer: 4. Pariksha-Guru

Question 15. Name the novel which was based on the effect of industrialization.

1. Hard Times
2. Oliver Twist
3. Germinal
4. Pickwick Papers

Answer: 1. Hard Times

Question 16. What is an ‘epistolary novel’?

1. A novel written in a series of letters.
2. A novel based on a biographical account
3. A novel written in poetic verse
4. None of these.

Answer: 1. A novel written in a series of letters.

1. Passage Based Questions And Answers

1. Identify famous characters from novels (mentioned in your textbook), after reading the following clues. Write the name of the character, the name of the novel, and the name of the authorities.

1. He is a blind ‘untouchable’ beggar who struggled against the forcible takeover of his land and set up a tobacco factory.
2. She was an intelligent and educated upper-caste woman who challenged the existing practices and married an educated man outside her caste.
3. He was shipwrecked on an Island, rescued a native, and named him ‘Friday’, without conduction even bothering to ask him a name.
4. She was an independent and assertive young girl who challenged the hypocrisy of elders.

Answer:

1. The name of the character is Surdas.
   • The name of the Novel is Rangbhoomi.
   • The author of the novel-Prem Chand.
2. The name of the character is Indulekha.
   • The name of the novel is also Indulekha.
   • The name of the author is Menon. (the main character of Madhuban).
3. The name of the character is Robinson Crusoe.
   • The name of the novel is Mayor of Casterbridge (1886). The author’s name is Daniel Defoe.
4. The name of the character’. The name of the novel is Jane Eyre. The Author’s name is Charlotte Bronte’s.

2. Matching of Columns

Match the books given in Column A with the name of the author

Answer: 1.-(c) 2.-(d) 3.-(e) 4.-(a) 5.-(b).

3. Puzzle Solving Questions And Answers

Solve the crossword puzzle with the help of the given below clues.

Across:

2. A book written in the form of a series of letters.

5. Traditional art of storytelling.

6. A format in which the story is published in installments, each part in a new issue.

8. Language spoken by common people.

Down:

1. Writer of a novel.

3. A form of writing that criticizes society in a witty and clever way.

4. Indulekha married a groom belonging to this caste in Kerala.

7. Prose tales of adventure and heroism.

Answer:

1. JANE EYRE
2. EPISTOLARY
3. SATIRE
4. NAYAR
5. KISSA-GOI
6. SERIALISED
7. DASTAN
8. VERNACULAR