NCERT Solutions for Class 10 History Chapter 8 Novels, Society and History

 Question 1.

Explain the following:
(a) Social changes in Britain which led to an increase in women readers.
(b) What actions of Robinson Crusoe make us see him as a typical colonizer.
(c) After 1740, the readership of novels began to include poorer people.
(d) Novelists in colonial India wrote for a political cause.
Answer:
(a) As the eighteenth century led to prosperity, women got more time and more leisure to read and write novels. Numerous novels began depicting domestic life.

(b) Robinson Crusoe, the hero of Daniel Defoe is a slave trader who treats coloured people as inferior creators. This makes us believe that he was a typical colonizer.

(c) As the prices of books came down without minimizing the innovation, the access to books became easier. The poor could now afford buying books.

(d) Novelists in India, had a political objective. They wrote novels to produce a sense of national belonging and cultural equality. It was only because of such writings that they were able” to
increase their readership.

Question 2.
Outline the changes in technology and society which led to an increase in readers of the novel in eighteenth-century Europe.
Answer:
The invention of the printing press, development of the means of communication and transport, growth of the middle classes and relative increase in the number of the poor had an increase in the readership. Numerous novelists began writing about the middle classes, the poor and their social problems. The printing press made it easy for the novelists to write novels.

Question 3.
Write a note on:
(a) The Oriya novel
(b) Jane Austen’s portrayal of women.
(c) The picture of the new middle class which the noval Pariksha-Guru portrays.
Answer:
(a) The Oriya novel, such as Chaa Mana Atha Guntha depicted the rural misery, greed for land and the landlordism. It was a painful narration of a system existing in Orissa.

(b) Jane Austen in her novel Pride and Prejudice wrote about women’s flight, life of a women in men’s life: man must have a wife; woman is his necessity.

(c) Srinivas Das’s Pariksha Guru is about the new middle class who seek to adopt themselves in the colonial system.

Discuss

Question 1.
Discuss some of the social changes in nineteenth-century Britain which Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens wrote about.
Answer:
Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens were renouned English novalists. Hardy (1940-1928) and Charles Dickin (1812-1870) wrote about the social changes in the 19th century Britain. In his Hard Times, Dickens pointed about the terrible effects of the industrialisation on the life of the people.

Hardy’s novels Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess, Return of the Natives, The Mayor of Casterbridge, wrote about the advantages of the simple life. He says that if the people wanted peace, they need to be honest, decent and faithful.

Question 2.
Summarise the concern in both nineteenth-century Europe and India about women reading novels. What does this suggest about how women were viewed?
Answer:
There is a concern which one finds both in 19th century Europe and India: The concern is about women: Women’s life is made the theme of novels; their character is focussed as one that make the novel readers around. This makes women read about what novels. We find women readership increasing novel after, novel. This is evident from either Hardy’s Tess or Premchand’s Nirmala. All this suggest that women’s character and their Problems are made theme of the novels.

Question 3.
In what ways was the novel in colonial India useful for both the colonizers as well as the nationalists?
Answer:
Novels have proved useful for both the colonizers as well as for the nationalists. They give information about life, living, social developments, economic conditions and the culture of the people by the novelists. All these informations are used by the colonissers who deal with the colonial people accordingly. These informations are used by the nationalists as well. These novel, relate to the nationalists as to how they could organise people and also know their economic and serial life on the basis of which they formulate their programme.

Question 4.
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:
Novelists write about societies. Their plot comes from the society they write about their problems are social about which they write. Some novelists make issue of caste as the theme of their novels. Chander Menon in his Indulekhar and Poth Kurijambu in his Saraswathi Jayan take up the problem of caste system as the theme of their novels Such novels make a deep impact on the include of the readers about their social system.

Question 5.
Describe the ways in which the novel in India attempted to create a sense of pan-Indian belonging.
Answer:
Novelists areas related to the soils as are other people. They are as sensitive as are others. The developments around them also have i an impact on their minds and also on their writing. The novelists of the first half of the twentieth century India were deeply influenced by the waves of liberation struggle. In the novels written during this period, there is a sense of pan- Indian belonging. Novels are about social, political and economic life; about people belonging to all types of classes together with their problems.

NCERT Solutions