The document explores the evolution of women's roles in literature, highlighting how novels, particularly those by authors like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, reflected and challenged societal norms regarding women in the 19th century. It also addresses the impact of colonialism on literature, noting how novels contributed to the portrayal of colonial attitudes while simultaneously allowing colonized individuals to explore their own identities. Furthermore, it discusses the emergence of modern Indian novels in the 19th century, influenced by Western literary forms and aimed at fostering national consciousness.

1. History Presentation

2. The New Woman
A young girl reading a book by Jean Honoré Fragonard. By the
nineteenth century , images of women reading silently, in the
privacy of room, became common in European Paintings.

3. The New Woman
• The most exciting element of the novel was
the involvement of women.
• The eighteenth century saw the middle
classes become more prosperous.
• Women got more leisure to read as well as
write novels. And novels began exploring the
world of women – their emotions and
identities, their experiences and problems.

4. The New Woman
• Many novels were about domestic life – a
theme about which women were allowed to
speak with authority.
• They drew upon their experience, wrote
about family life and earned public
recognition.

5. Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose
works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as
one of the most widely read writers in English literature.
A watercolour and pencil sketch of Jane Austen, believed to have been drawn
from life by her sister Cassandra (c. 1810)

6. Jane Austen and the New Women
• The novels of Jane Austen give us a glimpse of
the world of women in genteel rural society in
early nineteenth century Britain.
• They make us think about a society which
encouraged women to look for ‘good’ marriages
and rind wealthy or propertied husbands.
• The fist sentence of Jane Austen’s 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.’

7. Jane Austen and the New Women
• This observation allows us to see the behavior of
the main characters, who are preoccupied with
marriage and money, as typifying Austen’s
society.

8. An oil painting by Pierre Auguste Renoir's depicting a woman reading a
novel. This painting is called “The Reader” and was made in the year
1877

9. Charlotte Brontë (21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist
and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood,
whose novels are English literature standards. She wrote Jane Eyre under the
pen name Currer Bell.

10. More about Women Novelists
and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre
• But women novelists did not simply popularize the
domestic role of women.
• Often their novels dealt with women who broke
established norms of society before adjusting to
them.
• Such stories allowed women readers to sympathize
with rebellious actions.
• In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, published in 1847, a
young Jane is shown as independent and assertive.

11. More about Women Novelists
and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre
• While girls of her time were expected to be quiet
and well behaved, Jane at the age of ten protested
against the hypocrisy of her elders with startling
bluntness.
• She tells hers Aunt who is always unkind to her:
‘People think you are a good woman, but you are
bad… You are deceitful! I will never call you aunt as
long as I live.’

12. Novels for the Young

13. Embossed cover from the original
edition of The Jungle Book by
Rudyard Kipling. This book was
released in 1894 and sold millions
of copies.

14. How did Novels influence Children
and Adolescents?
• Novels for young boys idealised 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.
• The colonisers appear heroic and honourable –
confronting ‘native’ peoples and strange
surroundings, adapting to native life as well as
changing it, colonising territories and then developing
nations there.

15. How did Novels influence Children
and Adolescents?
• These novels aroused the excitement and adventure
of conquering strange lands.
• Love stories written for adolescent girls also first
became popular in this period especially in the US.
• They were set in Mexico, Alexandria, Siberia and
many other countries.
• They were mostly about young boys who witness
grand historical events, get involved in some military
action and show what they called ‘English’ courage. A
way of inducing the thought of English supremacy.

16. How did Novels influence Children
and Adolescents?
• The novels showed that the colonized people were
barbaric and colonization was a must to civilize them.
• Ramona (1884) by Helen Hunt Jackson, and a series
entitled What Katy Did (1872) by Sarah Chauncey
Woolsey, who wrote under the pen-name Susan
Coolidge along with R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure
Island and Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book (1894)
became great hits.

17. Treasure Island (1883) was
written by Robert Louis
Stevenson and was a very
successful hit in the 19th
Century.

18. Out on the Pampas (1871) was a very famous publication of George Alfred
Henty. His historical adventure novels for boys were wildly popular during
the height of the British empire.
“The Cat of Bubastes” was
written by G.A. Henty and
was published for the first
time in 1889

19. “What Katy Did” (1872) by Sarah
Chauncey Woolsey was written
under the pen name Susan
Coolidge

20. Colonialism and After

21. Robinson Crusoe !1719)
by Daniel Defoe

22. Colonialists and Novels
• The novel originated in Europe at a time when it was
colonizing the rest of the world.
• The early novel contributed to colonialism by making
the readers feel they were part of a superior
community of fellow colonialists.
• The hero of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) is
an adventurer and slave trader. Shipwrecked on an
island, Crusoe treats colored 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 but arrogantly gives him the
name Friday.

23. Colonialists and Novels
• But at the time, Crusoe’s behavior was not seen as
unacceptable or odd, for most writers of the time saw
colonialism as natural.
• Colonized people were seen as primitive and barbaric,
less than human; and colonial rule was considered
necessary to civilize them, to make them fully human.
• It was only later in the twentieth century, that
writers like Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) wrote
novels that showed the darker side of colonial
occupation.

24. Colonialists and Novels
• The colonized, however, believed that the novel
allowed them to explore their own identities and
problems, their own national concerns.

25. Joseph Conrad
(3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was the person who started writing novels
which showed the darker side of the Colonial Masters

26. Novels come to India
An illustration from a Syrian edition dated 1354. The rabbit fools the
elephant king by showing him the reflection of the moon.

27. Early Novels in India
Banabhatta’s Kadambari,
written in Sanskrit in the
seventh century is an example
of a story in prose

28. Early Novels in India
Panchatantra is another
example of a story in prose
written in the seventh century

29. Early Novels in India
There was also a long tradition of prose tales of
adventure and heroism in Persian and Urdu, known as
dastan.

30. Early Novels in India
• The modern novel form developed in the 19th
century as Indians became familiar with the
western novel.
• The development of the vernaculars, print
and a reading public helped in this process.

31. Early Novels in India
• The earliest novel in Marathi was Baba
Padmanji’s Yamuna Paryatan (1857), which
used a simple style of storytelling to speak
about the plight of widows.
• This was followed by Lakshman Moreshwar
Halbe’s Muktamala (1861).
• This was not a realistic novel; it presented an
imaginary ‘romance’ narrative with a moral
purpose.

32. Colonialism and Indian Novels
• Leading novelists of the nineteenth century
wrote for a cause.
• Colonial rulers regarded the contemporary
culture of India as inferior.
• On the other hand, Indian novelists wrote
to develop a modern literature of the country
that could produce a sense of national
belonging and cultural equality with their
colonial masters.

33. Colonialism and Indian Novels
• Translations of novels into different regional
languages helped to spread the popularity of
the novel and stimulated the growth of the
novel in new areas.

35. CREDITS
Compilation, Pictures, Designing, Animations and Editing for
all topics; and information and pictures for “Young Women”
EISA ADIL
Information for “Novels for the Young”
JERRY KISHORE (Group Head)
Information and Pictures for “Colonialism and After”
ADHAAN KHAN
Information and Pictures for “Novels come to India”
AAMIR AHMAD SYED