Novels, Society and History Quiz: 10 Civics

NCERT 10th Class (CBSE) Social Science: Novels, Society and History Quiz

23 Multiple Choice Questions related to NCERT 10th Class (CBSE) Social Science: Novels society and history Quiz:

Novel is a modern form of literature born from print, a mechanical invention.
New groups of lower-middle-class people such as shopkeepers, clerks, aristocrats and gentlemanly classes formed the new readership for the novels.
It allowed readers to relish the suspense, discuss the character of a novel and live for weeks with its story.
He has shown the main character i.e. Jane as independent and assertive while girls of her time were expected to be quiet and well behaved.

A novel is a modern form of literature which is born from print, a mechanical invention.
The novel first took firm root in England and France.
From the eighteenth century, novels started flowering.
As readership grew, the earnings of authors increased and gave them the freedom to experiment with different literary styles.

The introduction of circulating libraries in 1740 provided easier access to books.
Technological improvements in printing brought down the price of books.The novel became one of the first mass-produced items to be sold because the worlds created by novels were absorbing and believable, and seemingly real.
In rural areas, people would collect to hear one of them reading a novel aloud.
Serialisation of novels in the magazines allowed readers to enjoy the suspense, discuss the characters of a novel and live for weeks with their stories.

In the nineteenth century, Europe entered the industrial age.
→ During this time, the central theme of the most novel were lives of industrial workers.
Charles Dickens published two novels named Hard Times (1854) and Oliver Twist (1838) at this time.
→ Hard Times describes Coketown, a fictitious industrial town while Oliver Twist is the tale of a poor orphan.

- The vast majority of readers of the novel lived in the city.
- The novel uses the vernacular, the language that is spoken by common people.

In the eighteenth century, women got more leisure to read as well as write novels.
In novels, they drew upon their experience, wrote about family life and earned public recognition.
The women novelists also showed women as rebels who broke established norms of society before adjusting to them.

Novels for young boys idealized a new type of man: someone who was powerful, assertive, independent and daring.
Most of these novels were full of adventure set in places remote from Europe where colonizers appear heroic and honorable.
Books like R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) or Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book (1894) became great hits.

The early novel contributed to colonialism by making the readers feel they were part of a superior community of fellow colonialists.

Some of the earliest Indian novels were written in Bengali and Marathi.
The earliest novel in Marathi was Baba Padmanji’s Yamuna Paryatan (1857), about the plight of widows.
Translations of novels into different regional languages helped to spread the popularity of the novel.

A few early novels came out of attempts to translate English novels into Indian languages.
→ However, they were instant failure because of culture difference.

In the north, Bharatendu Harishchandra, the pioneer of modern Hindi literature.
In 1882, the first proper modern novel titled Pariksha-Guru written by Srinivas Das of Delhi.
Hindi novel achieved Excellence with the writing of Premchand.

In the nineteenth century, there were two types of novels:
→ One was based on historical events.
→ Another was domestic novels which dealt with the social problems and romantic relationships between men and women.
The new well educated Bengalis (bhadralok) found himself at home in the more private world of reading novels.
By the twentieth century, the power of telling stories in simple language made Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay (1876-1938) the most popular novelist in Bengal and probably in the rest of India.

Colonial administrators found ‘vernacular’ novels a valuable source of information on native life and customs in governing Indian society, with its large variety of communities and castes.

Novels did not always show things exactly as they were in reality.
Under colonial rule, many of the English-educated class found new Western ways of living and thinking attractive.
Through the ideal characters of novel, they showed how Indian and foreign lifestyles could be brought together in an ideal combination.

In India too, the novel became a popular medium of entertainment among the middle class.
Novels encouraged reading alone and in silence.

Women also began to write novels.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, women in south India also began writing novels and short stories.
Stories of love was a staple theme of many novels.
Many men were suspicious of women writing novels or reading them which cut across communities.

Novels like Indirabai and Indulekha were written by members of the upper castes, and were primarily about upper-caste characters.
From the 1920s, in Bengal, a new kind of novel emerged that detailed the lives of peasants and ‘low’ castes.

The educated and working Indians under the English system wanted a new view of the past that would show that Indians could be independent minded and had been so in history.
In Bengal, many historical novels were about Marathas and Rajputs which produced a sense of a pan-Indian belonging.
The imagined nation of the novel was so powerful that it could inspire actual political movements.

Novels include various classes in the novel so that they could be seen to belong to a shared world.
For example, Premchand’s novels are filled with all kinds of powerful characters drawn from all levels of society such as aristocrats and landlords, middle-level peasants and landless laborers, middle-class professionals and people from the margins of society.