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 MEG – 03/2020-21
Answer all questions.

1. Do you think Fielding attempts to correct distortions in human behavior through the moral
view point of Tom Jones? 20

After completing the novel, I decided to return to this quote in Tom Jones in order to
understand why the narrator seems to admire this low-brow form of entertainment. Perhaps
Fielding incorporates this noisy, rowdy form of entertainment into his novel to illustrate the
contrast that is paramount among human nature. By praising this form, I feel the narrator may
be exemplifying the differences between this novel and literature that preceded it. Pope
criticizes and pokes fun at English pantomime entertainment in The Dunciad, but Fielding
employs both vulgar humor and high moral education, illustrating that the two can exist side-
by-side to demonstrate the contrast between the qualities of human nature. This contrast
displays the complications of human nature and the contradictory behaviors many embody
rather than portraying human beings as only good or only evil.English pantomime incorporates
this contrast by employing both comedy and tragedy as does this novel. The most apparent
contrast in the novel is the setting in which the characters often travel through both city and
country. There are also opposing characters and behaviors throughout the novel. For instance,
Thwackum and Square represent opposing ideologies. While Square and Thwackum both
admire similar morals and behaviors, they contrast greatly as well: “Square held human nature
to be the perfection of all virtue, and that vice was a deviation from our nature in the same
manner as deformity of body is. Thwackum, on the contrary, maintained that the human mind,
since the fall, was nothing but a sink of iniquity, till purified and redeemed by grace” (108).
Another clear contrast in the novel also occurs between Tom and Blifil. Although Tom lands
himself in a great deal of trouble due to his own weaknesses and flaws, Blifil is also responsible
for creating an evil picture of Tom. It is the realization of this contrast between the two that
eventually leads to the resolution of the novel. Fielding incorporates the theme of hero versus
villain to illustrate these complexities of human nature.

An even greater contrast in the novel is the conflict between natural behavior and false
appearance in which certain characters conceal or reject these inherent human behaviors by
professing religious, economic, or moral dogmas. Blifil is portrayed as civil and morally superior
to Tom. On the other hand, some interpret Tom as a rogue and evil. At book’s end, the truth
eventually illustrates Blifil’s ability to conceal the intrinsic wickedness of his nature. Tom allows
for his natural, animalistic instincts and behaviors to show through. He easily often succumbs to
these impulses and instincts. Because of this, Tom demonstrates the naturalness and the
goodness that comes with instinctual behaviors as a component of human nature. In so doing,
he corrects the fabrication of formal appearances created by other characters like Blifil.
However, this inability to conceal some of these frailties often gets him into some trouble. I felt
that perhaps this incongruity between an individual’s natural behaviors and what he makes of

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himself using formal appearances is the reasoning for these complexities and differences in
human nature.

It seems Fielding’s purpose behind the novel was not simply to moralize society, but rather to
illustrate that human beings can exemplify both good and evil and are free to make their own
decisions. The contrast used throughout the novel reflects this ideology as Tom realizes,
through both failures and successes, the direction towards a life full of love and happiness.

2. Examine the various narrative techniques in Wuthering Heights critically. 20

Although Wuthering Heights was Emily Bronte’s only novel, it is notable for the narrative
technique she employed and the level of craftsmanship involved in it. Although there are only
two obvious narrators, Lockwood and Nelly Dean, a variety of other narratives are interspersed
throughout the novel. The reasons for this are that the whole action of Wuthering Heights is
presented in the form of eyewitness narrations by people who have played some part in the
narration they describe. Unlike other novels where parallel narratives exist i.e. same event,
within the same time frame being narrated from different perspectives, Wuthering Heights has
a multi-layered narration, each individual narrative opening out from its parent to reveal a new
stratum (level) of the story. This intricate technique helps to maintain a continuos narrative
despite of the difficulties posed by the huge time-shifts involved in the novel.

Lockwood’s narrative is the outer framework of the story. He is then present as the recipient of
Nelly’s story and she in turn is the recipient of tertiary narratives.

A.) Heathcliff: Chapter 6, 29

B.) Isabella: Chapter 13, 17

C.) Cathy: Chapter 24

D.) Zilla: Chapter 30.

Nelly’s narrative is so dramatised that we could argue that much of it is in the form of a tertiary
narration, e.g. the conversation involving Heathcliff, Catherine and Edgar on Heathcliff’s return
is recorded in the words of the participants. The effect of this is to present the story directly to
the reader so that our perception is constantly changing as if we were witnessing a drama.

The difficulty facing the author at the beginning if the novel was to find a method by which the
reader could be introduced into the household of the Heights, so that its characters and its
ambience could be understood. The purpose of Bronte’s narrative is to draw the reader into a
position where he can only judge its events from within. Lockwood presents the normal
outsider or the reader, by drawing him into the penetralium, the reader is cleverly introduced

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to the realities of this hostile and bewildering environment. The narrative form poses severe
limitations for the author in that she cannot use her own voice, the story must speak entirely
for itself, its values must be self-generated, created for us by the language which must be
emotive and strong, particularly in moments of self revelation and strong feeling. In Wuthering
Heights each narrative takes place within the action occupying an important place in the
dramatic structure so that the reader never stands completely outside the story. We, like
Lockwood, find ourselves as the direct recipients of Nelly’s narrative, we are immediately inside
the world of Wuthering Heights and therefore the events loom large and have a more dramatic
impact, because they are not prefaced for us by editorial comment or introduction provided in
the first person by the author.

While the larger frameworks of Lockwood and Nelly’s narratives, provide the necessary
objectivity, the smaller more condensed narratives like Catherine’s diary give us direct glimpses
into the imaginary lives of the main protagonists, these together form the core of the story and
are joined in subtle ways with each other. They suddenly appear without warning and the
memory of them remains vibrant in the background. The modify over veins of all the outward
events that Nelly or Lockwood describe, allowing for an individual response or appreciation to
the core developments of the story. Bronte seeks to engage the reader directly through the
reactions of her narrators, the technique is abrupt and dramatic allowing little time for insight
but confronting us with a sharply focused scene where the characters are realised first as
physical presences, they are set in motion at once and the chain if events begins to occur, the
reader is immediately caught up in the overall experience of the story without having time to
consider its meaning. The background, the setting, the climate, the houses and the animals all
take on a life of their own, images of past and present are flashed together "a glare of white
letters startled from the dark as vivid as spectres - the air swarming with Catherines".

Thus the novel itself begins at a point where the action is almost completed. The questions
which Lockwood asks of Nelly Dean, promote answers which give him little insight but it is
Lockwood’s fascination with the character of Mr. Heathcliff which causes his mind to become
"tiresomely active", thus requiring a full circumstantial narrative. The kind of curiosity aroused
by Bronte in Lockwood and therefore in the reader, demands a complete imaginative reliving of
the past. It is only through experiencing the events as Lockwood did from Heathcliff’s arrival to
that point in time that he can be in a position to understand the complex set of relationships he
witnessed in the household of Wuthering Heights, that is why the apparently artificial narrative
structure is both necessary and convincing and we accept its conventions without questions.
Past and present interact on one another forming a single close knit drama without division into
parts.

The year 1801 is the story’s starting and finishing point up to the time of Lockwood’s arrival at
Wuthering Heights, as is September 1802 the start and finish of the events dealt with in the
final chapters. Nelly’s story is studded with dates which allows us to work out the precise dates
of major events, the ages of the characters and often even the day of the week when an event
occurs.

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The only sudden jumps from present to distant past:

Catherine’s Diary: Chapter 3.

Beginning of Nelly’s Narrative: Chapter 4.

Heathcliff’s 2nd narrative: Chapter 29.

As the novel contains a history of 2 families whose fates are worked out over three generations,
it is important that a reasonable exact timescale is adhered to. Without cluttering the narrative
with dates, Bronte achieves this by the precise plotting of the lives of Catherine and Heathcliff.
Their life stories provide the time framework for the novel and other events and the births,
lives and deaths of other characters are related to us in conjunction with developments in the
lives of the two main characters.

Lockwood is the outsider, coming into a world in which he finds bewildering and hostile, he’s a
city gentleman who has stumbled on a primitive uncivilised world which he doesn’t understand,
but which fascinates him. He arrives at the end of November 1801 as a tenant of Thrushcross
Grange. After his initial meetings with his landlord, Mr. Heathcliff, he is laid up for two months
during which time his fascination with Wuthering Heights leads to the beginning of Nelly’s
narrative. By January 1802, he is sufficiently recovered to return to the Heights where he
informs Heathcliff of his intention to return to London for 6 months. He returns briefly in
September 1802, when he hears the conclusion of Nelly’s narrative and the final events of the
novel take place.

In the novel Lockwood presents the situation as he sees it, the reader is thus brought closer to
the action, seeing it through the eyes of the narrator himself. The presence of Lockwood in the
book allows the author the author to begin the story near the end and work backwards and
forwards in time with little difficulty. The opening chapters of the book are narrated by
Lockwood and provide the reader with their introduction to this early 19th century world. The
format of Lockwood’s narrative is that of a personal diary, which allows the development for
the reader of an easy intimacy with an impartial character whose style - self-conscious, a little
affected and facetious is nicely calculated to engage sympathy, while allowing ground for the
reader to be amused at the narrators expense.

With all his limitations, Lockwood is intelligent and perceptive and his precise detailed
descriptions are used by his creator to create subtle changes in situation and character, an
example of this is that when Lockwood first visited Wuthering Heights, he commented on the
chained gate, while at the end of the novel when he returns to find Heathcliff dead, he noticed
"Both doors and lattices were open". Changes in character are also hinted at by Lockwood’s eye
for detail, he has noticed changes in both Cathy and Hareton - Cathy once described by
Lockwood as "the little witch", now has "a voice as sweet as a silver bell". Hareton described in
the opening chapters as a boor and a clown and has by the end of the novel become "a young
man respectably dressed" with "handsome features", therefore Lockwood, by fulfilling the role

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as the detached outsider and observer, brings a dimension to the novel which is quite different
from the perception provided by Nelly.

3. What is your understanding of the Pip – Estella relationship in the Great Expectations?
Illustrate with examples. 20

In Great Expectations, Mr. Jaggers advises Pip, "Take nothing on appearances." Certainly, the
Pip-Estella relationship is an example of the Appearances vs. Reality theme that prevails
thoughout Charles Dickens's classic novel.

From the first meeting of Pip with Estella, Pip falls victim to believing in appearances. The
beautiful, haughty girl whose name means "star" is elevated in Pip's esteem simply because she
lives with the rich Miss Havisham and is dressed in lovely clothes and speaks in a deprecating
way to him, calling him "common." Immediately, because this vision of superior loveliness who
speaks properly has termed him "common," Pip experiences a humiliation. But, despite her
cruel ways, Pip falls hopelessly in love with the beautiful Estella, perhaps even because she is
unattainable. He perpetuates his delusions by hoping that if he becomes a gentleman, Estella
will accept him as an equal and requite his love.

Of course, the truth is that from the beginning, Pip's birth has more legitimacy than that of
Estella's. For, his parents were married and, albeit poor, they were certainly not criminals as
are the parents of Estella, whose birth came out of the streets of London.

In addition to the theme of Appearance vs. Reality, the relationship of Pip and Estella
also points to a salient theme in the works of Dickens: Class Stratification. The theme of social
class is central to Great Expectations as it acts as extends into the other themes such as
the Appearance theme. Pip's angst over being "common," as Estella has labeled him, is his
driving force to become a gentleman and entertain the "great expectations" of having bettered
himself sufficiently so that he will become worthy of Estella. But, of course the class structure
is a false one in Great Expectations, thus paralleling the Appearance vs. Reality theme, as Pip
later learns; rather, it is what one is as a person that is truly of value. Estella, for all her beauty
and daintiness is but common in her heart; she is incapable of noble thoughts and acts while
Joe, the humble blacksmith is truly a good and noble man.
To me, one of the major themes of the novel is the idea that suppressed emotions can make a
person into something of a cripple. We see this most clearly in the character of Miss Havisham.

But we also see this theme some in the relationship between Pip and Estella. Estella is
something of a cripple herself because she cannot act according to her true feelings. Miss
Havisham has raised her in such a way that she can't get past hating men. But this is not how
she truly feels. We see this in the fact that she keeps trying to spare Pip from harm even as she
is harming him.

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The relationship between the two of them is a very dysfunctional one, with Pip loving her and
her trying to hurt him. Dickens is trying to show us (through this relationship) how much
suppressed emotions can hurt people.

4. How are the issues of race and imperialism woven into the narrative of the Heart of
Darkness? 20

Both race (or even racism) and imperialism are treated as the common attitudes of white
people at the time the book takes place. This book is set on the river Thames around the turn
of the 20th century. Generally speaking, the Europeans aboard the ship (as well as most other
Europeans at this time) are largely ignorant of the lives of the natives they encounter
traveling. Because these natives look so very different, the general attitude is that they are
sub-human - closer to animals than they are to humans. This is evidenced by the repeated
referrals of black people as "niggers," "cannibals," "criminals," and "savages."

Kurtz's treatise, called the "International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs" is yet
further evidence of the elitist attitude carried by white men at this time. It is one thing to
merely refer to those peoples in passing as less than human - here is a man (and the characters
who support his thinking) who genuinely believes they are harmful to civilized society, so he
plans to educate others to fear them.

Marlow is one of the few characters whose thoughts pose an opposition to the general attitude
of indifference if not blatant disrespect. He is often reflecting with sympathy on different
situations in which groups of black men are seen working or enslaved. His thoughts rarely drive
him to action and even his actions (like sharing the buscuit with the man on his ship) are as
slight as his sympathy - but it is clear the author presents this opposing viewpoint to remind the
audience of the humanity of a group of people who are viewed and mostly treated, like
animals.

Heart of Darkness, novella by Joseph Conrad that was first published in 1899 in Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine and then in Conrad’s Youth: and Two Other Stories (1902). Heart of
Darkness examines the horrors of Western colonialism, depicting it as a phenomenon that
tarnishes not only the lands and peoples it exploits but also those in the West who advance it.
Although garnering an initially lacklustre reception, Conrad’s semiautobiographical tale has
gone on to become one of the most widely analyzed works of English literature. Critics have not
always treated Heart of Darkness favourably, rebuking its dehumanizing representation of
colonized peoples and its dismissive treatment of women. Nonetheless, Heart of Darkness has
endured, and today it stands as a Modernist masterpiece directly engaged
with postcolonial realities.

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Heart of Darkness tells a story within a story. The novella begins with a group of passengers
aboard a boat floating on the River Thames. One of them, Charlie Marlow, relates to his fellow
seafarers an experience of his that took place on another river altogether—the Congo River in
Africa. Marlow’s story begins in what he calls the “sepulchral city,” somewhere in Europe. There
“the Company”—an unnamed organization running a colonial enterprise in the Belgian Congo—
appoints him captain of a river steamer. He sets out for Africa optimistic of what he will find.

But his expectations are quickly soured. From the moment he arrives, he is exposed to the evil
of imperialism, witnessing the violence it inflicts upon the African people it exploits. As he
proceeds, he begins to hear tell of a man named Kurtz—a colonial agent who is supposedly
unmatched in his ability to procure ivory from the continent’s interior. According to rumour
Kurtz has fallen ill (and perhaps mad as well), thereby jeopardizing the Company’s entire
venture in the Congo.

Marlow is given command of his steamer and a crew of Europeans and Africans to man it, the
latter of whom Conrad shamelessly stereotypes as “cannibals.” As he penetrates deeper into
the jungle, it becomes clear that his surroundings are impacting him psychologically: his journey
is not only into a geographical “heart of darkness” but into his own psychic interior—and
perhaps into the darkened psychic interior of Western civilization as well. After encountering
many obstacles along the way, Marlow’s steamer finally makes it to Kurtz. Kurtz has taken
command over a tribe of natives who he now employs to conduct raids on the surrounding
regions. The man is clearly ill, physically and psychologically. Marlow has to threaten him to go
along with them, so intent is Kurtz on executing his “immense plans.” As the steamer turns back
the way it came, Marlow’s crew fires upon the group of indigenous people previously under
Kurtz’s sway, which includes a queen-figure described by Conrad with much eroticism and as
exoticism. Kurtz dies on the journey back up the river but not before revealing to Marlow the
terrifying glimpse of human evil he’d been exposed to. “The horror! The horror!” he tells
Marlow before dying. Marlow almost dies as well, but he makes it back to the sepulchral city to
recuperate. He is disdainful of the petty tribulations of Western civilization that seem to occupy
everyone around him. As he heals, he is visited by various characters from Kurtz’s former life—
the life he led before finding the dark interior of himself in Africa.

A year after his return to Europe, Marlow pays Kurtz’s partner a visit. She is represented—as
several of Heart of Darkness’s female characters are—as naively sheltered from the awfulness
of the world, a state that Marlow hopes to preserve. When she asks about Kurtz’s final words,
Marlow lies: “your name,” he tells her. Marlow’s story ends there. Heart of Darkness itself ends
as the narrator, one of Marlow’s audience, sees a mass of brooding clouds gathering on the
horizon—what seems to him to be “heart of an immense darkness.”

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5. How does Muriel Spark handle time in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie? 20

The sinister Jean Brodie continues to bewitch: decades after the publication of the novel that
bears her name, the myth of her humanism persists; she has long been shorthand for a strain of
idealism and independent thought that she never represented in the first place. The Prime of
Miss Jean Brodie, about a controversial teacher and the rebellious pupils in her charge, is often
categorized alongside more conventional novels and films set in the classroom—stories about
inspiring educators and their unformed and stubborn, but ultimately obedient, students—and
is even treated on occasion as one of the genre’s progenitors. It’s a dubious distinction for a
book that so gleefully scorns the ideas it’s credited for popularizing. Why, after all these years—
and a play, and an academy award winning film adaptation—can we still not get a handle on
Jean Brodie? Because Muriel Spark wanted it that way.
First time readers burdened with the expectation that they are encountering The Dead Poet’s
Society for women are sure to be astounded: Miss Brodie is charming and shallow, generous
and tyrannical, curious and cruel. In an early passage, the insightful Sandy reflects on the way
another student is continuously rejected by her cohort for the sake of everyone else’s
belonging:
“Then suddenly Sandy wanted to be kind to Mary Macgregor, and thought of the possibilities of
feeling nice from being nice to Mary instead of blaming her. Miss Brodie’s voice from behind
them was saying to Rose Stanley, ‘You are all heroines in the making. Britain must be a fit
country for heroines to live in. The League of Nations…’ The sound of Miss Brodie’s presence,
just when it was on the tip of Sandy’s tongue to be nice to Mary Macgregor, arrested the urge.
Sandy looked back at her companions, and understood them as a body with Miss Brodie for the
head. She perceived [them]…in unified compliance to the destiny of Miss Brodie, as if God had
willed them to birth for that purpose.
“She was even more frightened then, by her temptation to be nice to Mary Macgregor, since by
this action she would separate herself, and be lonely…So, for good fellowship’s sake, Sandy said
to Mary, ‘I wouldn’t be walking with you if Jenny was here.’ And Mary said ‘I know.’ Then Sandy
started to hate herself again and to nag on and on at Mary, with the feeling that if you did a
thing a lot of times, you made it into a right thing.”
As a reader, you begin to question your own perceptions, but like Miss Brodie’s wary students,
you second guess yourself. Her monologues about Giotto seem vapid; maybe you don’t know
enough about art. Her personal narratives about her dead fiancee seem solipsistic; maybe it
becomes important later. And then she praises Mussolini—perhaps this is one of those things
we dismiss, magnanimously, as a “product of its time?” (The novel was written in 1961). Even
upon rereading, even upon reflection, you’ll have doubts: this is a novel that can’t be
outsmarted.

Miss Brodie’s interest in fascism is one of the novel’s more tantalizing themes. Her admiration
presents itself early, in a flashback, as Sandy observes the Brownies and Girl Guides, and recalls
their similarity to the fascistiwhose photographs Miss Brodie fawningly displayed in her
classroom. Although alarm bells will ring for any adult reader, the ten-year-olds repeat their
instructor’s sentiments passively, just as they do for her lectures on manners or John Knox.

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Until it motivates the book’s climax, it’s discussed with chilling irregularity. It’s background
noise, a feature of ordinary life in 1930s Edinburgh—at least, for the students of one Jean
Brodie.
The first time I read the novel I read the fascism as pure synecdoche—Miss Brodie is obsessed
with fascism because she is a fascist, and so, therefore is her program of education, and
perhaps (I imagined Spark thought) education in general. But if it were really this simple, the
novel’s message (and its slippery central character) wouldn’t be so difficult to pin down. The
scant glimpses we get of Jean Brodie after the war’s end are almost anti-climactic. With Europe
rising from ruins around her, she shrugs off her previous support of Mussolini and Franco and
calls Hitler “naughty.” When her death is alluded to, it seems like the unremarkable passing of a
woman in her 60s to more or less natural causes. She’s not felled by an assassin, and she
doesn’t take her own life. All we know of her later years is that she was obsessed with a futile
investigation into which of her former students betrayed her to her superiors way back in 1939.

But The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is not about the allure of any particular noxious idea as much
as it is about allure itself, the ease with which people take refuge in their own blind spots, and
the way our thoughtless (often social) loyalties to facile modes of thought can force us to act in
bad faith. Because Miss Brodie is unorthodox, we want her to be radical. Because she is
cultured, we want her to be wise. Because she is nearly brought down by Presbyterian
conservatives, we want her to prevail against social injustice. But she is none of these things.
One of the finale’s many ironies is that after Miss Brodie survives an ugly smear campaign she
doesn’t deserve, she’s brought down by a betrayal she does—though even this is ambiguous:
there’s a nagging sense that her traitor’s accusation is just an excuse, covering yet another
personal vendetta.
The most illuminating scene Spark delivers, as far as power is concerned, comes when the Miss
Brodie chastises her absent bosses—and, by proxy, former prime minister Stanley Baldwin—in
front of her class: “This was the first intimation, to the girls, of an odds between Miss Brodie
and the rest of the teaching staff. Indeed, to some of them, if was the first time they had
realized it was possible for people glued together in grown-up authority to differ at all.” Were
Miss Brodie (or for that matter, any authority) unassailable, the girls’ education would only
require supplanting the binary of “teacher vs student” with “enlightened vs unenlightened.”
Spark is less concerned with any specific, fully developed system of dangerous thought than she
is with the ego and blind loyalty that undergird all such systems, equally. It’s no mistake that as
an adult, Sandy (converted, cloistered, renamed ‘Sister Helena’) writes a book about “moral
perception”. Grappling properly with the contradictions that weave through Spark’s novel
cause the scales to fall from one’s eyes.

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