We have Provided the NCERT/CBSE Solutions chapter-wise for Class 10 Social Science Chapter 8 Novels, Society and History with Answers by expert subject teacher for latest syllabus and examination. Students can take a free NCERT Solutions of Novels, Society and History. Each question has right answer Solved by Expert Teacher.
CBSE Solutions Class 10 Social Science Novels, Society and History
Write in Brief
Q1. Explain the following:
(a) Social changes in Britain which led to an increase in women readers
Answer: The eighteenth century Britain saw the middle classes become more prosperous. As a result, women got more leisure time to read as well as write novels. Besides, novels began exploring the world of women – their emotions and identities, their experiences and problems. Many novels were written about domestic life- a field women had an authority to speak out.
(b) What actions of Robinson Crusoe make us see him as a typical coloniser.
Answer: Robinson Crusoe is the hero of Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe. In the novel, he gives an impression of superiority. He is an adventurer and slave trader. Shipwrecked on an island, he treats coloured people not as human beings equal to him, but as inferior creature.
(c) After 1740, the readership of novels began to include poorer people.
Answer: After 1740, the readership of novels began to include poorer people because they had easier access to books with the introduction of circulating libraries. Technological improvements in printing brought down the price of printed books, and innovations in marketing led to expanded sales. In France, publishers made super profits by hiring out novels by the hour; many poor people eagerly read them.
(d) Novelists in colonial India wrote for a political cause.
Answer: 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.
Q2. Outline the changes in technology and society which led to an increase in readers of the novel in eighteenth-century Europe.
Answer: – Print made novels to be read widely and become popular quickly.
- Novels produced a number of common interests and a variety of readers.
- 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, proper conduct for men and women.
- Prosperity, due to industrialisation, 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.
- The rise in the earnings of authors freed them the from the patronage of aristocrats. They could now experiment with different literary styles. Epistolary novel – Samuel Richardson’s Pamela – written in the 18th century was the first of its kind. It was a story told through letters.
- 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.
- Magazines serialised stories (Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers was the first), illustrated them and sold them cheap.
All these changes increased the number of readers.
Q3. Write a note on:
(a) The Oriya novel
Answer: In 1877-78, Ramashankar Ray started to serialise the first Oriya novel, “Saudamini”; but it remained incomplete. Orissa’s first major novelist was Fakir Mohon Senapati. He wrote “Chaa Mana Atha Guntha” that deals with land and its possession. This novel illustrated that rural issues could be an important part of urban concerns.
(b) Jane Austen’s portrayal of women
Answer: 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.
(c) The picture of the new middle class which the novel Pariksha-Guru portrays.
Answer: Srinivas Das’s novel Pariksha-Guru (The Master Examiner), published in 1882, cautioned young men of well-to-do families against the dangerous influences of bad company and consequent loose morals.
Discuss
Q1. Discuss some of the social changes in nineteenth-century Britain which Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens wrote about.
Answer: Thomas Hardy, the nineteenth-century British novelist, focussed his attention on the problems and changes in rural community. This was actually a time when traditional rural communities of England were fast vanishing. Large farmers fenced off land, bought machines and employed labourers to produce for the market. The old rural culture with its independent farmers was dying out. Hardy wrote about all these changes in his novel ‘Mayo r of Casterbridac
Charles Dickens, the foremost English novelist of the Victorian age, wrote mainly about the emergence of industrial age and its terrible effects on people’s lives and characters.
Growth of factories led an increase in the business profits and economy. But at the same time, workers faced problems. Cities expanded in an unregulated way and were filled with overworked and underpaid workers. Use of machines resulted in unemployment of ordinary people and they began to roam the streets for jobs. Homeless were forced to seek shelters in workhouses. Pursuit of profit became the goal of industrialists. On the other hand, lives of the workers were undervalued.
Charles Dickens tried to describe all these changes in his novels ‘Hard Times! and ‘Oliver Twist,’.
Q2. Summarise the concern in both nineteenth-century Europe and India about women reading novels. What does this suggest about how women were viewed?
Answer: (i) The concern in both nineteenth-century Europe and India about women reading novels bore more or less similar fears. Conservative people in both the places got worried about the effects of the novel on women who were taken away from their real surroundings into an imaginary world where anything could happen.
(ii) In Europe, when women started reading and writing novels many people feared that they would now neglect their traditional roles as wives and mothers and homes would be in disorder.
Similar fears could be sensed in Indian air too. Women were advised to stay away from the immoral influence of novels. They were seen as easily corruptible.
(iii) It was felt in both Europe and India that if women read novels, they would go astray. They would lose interest in home and hearth and would find ways to go outside.
Now we can easily infer that women were viewed as incapable of being independent. They were not expected to go against the wills of their male partners. The domestic sphere was seen as the proper place for women. Once they got married, they were expected to take care of the household chores.
(iv) Thus, their status in this male-dominated society was not of much importance. They could neither take their own decisions, nor could they do as per their wishes. In short, they were completely helpless.
Q3. In what ways was the novel in colonial India useful for both the colonisers as well as the nationalists?
Answer: The novel in colonial India was useful for both the colonisers as well as the nationalists on account of a variety of reasons. Colonial rulers found “vernacular” novels illuminating for the information they provided on native customs and life. It was useful in the governance of this diverse country. Indian nationalists used the form of the novel to criticise colonial rule and instill a sense of national pride and unity amongst the people.
Q4. 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 existing social issues.
Answer: (i) 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.
(ii) 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.
(iii) 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.
(iv) While novelists before Advaita Malla had featured ‘low castes’ as their main character, Titash is special because the author is himself a ‘low caste’.
(v) The central character of Munshi Premchand’s novel Rangboomi, Surdas is. a visually impaired beggar from a so-called ‘untouchable caste.’
Q5. Describe the ways in which the novel in India attempted to create a sense of pan-Indian belonging.
Answer: (i) In the novels, nation was imagined in a past with historical characters, places, events and dates.
(ii)For example, in Bengal, historical novels dealt with Marathas and Rajputs and produced a sense of a pan Indian belonging.
(iii)The novels imagined a nation to be full of adventure, heroism, romance and sacrifice. They allowed the colonised to give shape to their desires.
(iv) In Bhudeb Mukhopadhyay’s novel Anguriya Binimoy (1857), its hero Shivaji fights a war with the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb.
(v) During the battles, Man Singh advices Shivaji to make peace with Aurangzeb.
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