NCERT Solutions for Class 10 History Novels, Society and History Social Science
Novels, Society and History NCERT Solutions will be useful for you in knowing the important concepts of the chapter such as the rise of the novel, novels for the young, novel comes to India, novel in Hindi, women and the novel, nation and its history etc. These Class 10 history NCERT Solutions is going to help you in revising the concepts of chapter more clearly.
Study materials for Class 10 Social Science will help the students in learning complex topics and problems in an easy way. These Novels, Society and History questions and answers are helpful resources that can help you not only cover the entire syllabus but also provide in depth analysis of the topics.
| Study Reference for Class 10 Chapter Novels, Society and History |
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Write in Brief
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 coloniser.
(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 middle classes became more affluent, women got more leisure time to read and write novels. Also, novels began to explore the world of women, their emotions, identities, experiences and problems. Domestic life became an essential subject of novels- a field women had an authority to speak about.
(b) Robinson Crusoe's actions that make us see him as a typical coloniser are many. Shipwrecked on an island inhabited by coloured people, Crusoe treats them as inferior beings. He is portrayed as "rescuing" a native and then making him a slave. He gives him the name Friday, without even caring to ask for his name. Colonised people were seen as barbaric and primitive, and colonialism became their self-professed civiliser. Crusoe was a direct representation of this ideology of colonisers.
(c) After 1740, the readership of novels began to include poorer people because of the introduction of circulating libraries, low-priced books, and also because of the system of hiring out of books by the hour. This made books easily available to the poor people, who could not afford books earlier due to high costs and absence of lending libraries.
(d) 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.
2. 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.
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 novel Pariksha-Guru portrays.
Answer
(a) 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) The novels of Jane Austen give us a glimpse of the world of women in genteel rural society in midnineteenth century Britain. Women, at that time, were encouraged to look for a good marriage and find a wealthy and propertied husband. Her famous novel 'Pride and Prejudice' depicts this well. It writes 'it is the truth, universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a good wife'. The main characters are shown to be pre-occupied with marriage and money.
(c) The novel "Pariksha-Guru" portrays the difficulties of the new middle class in adapting to colonised society while preserving its cultural identity. It emphasises that Western ideals must be inculcated, but without sacrificing the traditional values of middle-class households. The characters in this Hindi novel by Srinivas Das are seen endeavouring to bridge the two different worlds of modern education and traditional ethics.
Discuss
1. Discuss some of the social changes in nineteenth-century Britain which Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens wrote about.
Answer
Social changes in 19th century Britain highlighted by Thomas Hardy
→ The breaking up of rural communities because of industrialization. Due to industrialization, peasants who toiled with their lands were disappearing as large or big farmers enclosed lands, bought machines and employed labourers to produce for the market.
→ In his novel ‘Mayor of Casterbridge’, Hardy mourns the loss of the more personalized world which is being replaced by a more efficiently managed urban culture.
Social Changes Highlighted by Charles Dickens
→ Charles Dickens wrote mainly about the emergence of the industrial age and it’s effects on society and the common people.
→ Growth of factories and expanded cities led to the growth of business and economy and increased the profits of capitalists.
→ At the same time workers faced immense problems. Use of machines resulted in unemployment of ordinary labour; they became homeless, creating a problem of housing. Pursuit of profit became the goal of factory owners while the workers were undervalued and almost lost their identity Human beings were reduced to being mere instruments of production.
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
The concern in both nineteenth-century Europe and India about women reading novels bore more or less similar fears. Women were seen as easily corruptible and an imaginary world that the novel provided was seen as a dangerous opening for the imaginations of its readers. In certain Indian communities, it was felt that women who read novels would leave their domestic environments and aspire to be part of the outside world- the male domain.
This suggests that women were viewed as delicate and incapable of being independent. They were merely expected to marry a man who could take care of their financial needs while they maintained his household and remained subservient to him.
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
The concern in both nineteenth-century Europe and India about women reading novels bore more or less similar fears. Women were seen as easily corruptible and an imaginary world that the novel provided was seen as a dangerous opening for the imaginations of its readers. In certain Indian communities, it was felt that women who read novels would leave their domestic environments and aspire to be part of the outside world- the male domain.
This suggests that women were viewed as delicate and incapable of being independent. They were merely expected to marry a man who could take care of their financial needs while they maintained his household and remained subservient to him.
3. 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.
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
→ Potheri Kunjambu, a lower-caste writer from north Kerala, wrote a novel called Saraswativijayam in 1892. It was a direct attack on caste oppression. The novel’s hero, an ‘untouchable’ leaves his village to escape from cruelty of a Brahmin overlord. He converts to Christianity, receives modern education and returns to his village a judge of a local court. In the meantime, the villagers bring the landlord to his court, they believe the landlord’s men had killed the hero. The judge reveals himself and the Nambuthri landlord repents and promises to reform. The novel emphasises the role of education in uplifting the lower classes.
→ In 1920, a Bengali novel Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1956) written by Advaita Malla Burman takes up the cause of ‘low castes’. The people described are the Mallas - community of fishermen. The story covers three generations and describes the oppression of the upper castes. The lives of the Mallas is tied with river Titash. As the river dries, the community dies too. This novel is special because the author himself a ‘low caste’ describing the anguish of low-caste people.
5. Describe the ways in which the novel in India attempted to create a sense of pan-Indian belonging.
Answer
The ways in which the novel in India attempted to create a sense of pan-Indian belonging were:
→ Many historical novels were about Marathas and the Rajputs which produced a sense of a pan—Indian belonging in Bengal. They imagined the nation to be full of adventure, heroism, romance and sacrifice. The novel allowed the colonized to give a shape to their desires.
→ Many historical novels were about Marathas and the Rajputs which produced a sense of a pan—Indian belonging in Bengal. They imagined the nation to be full of adventure, heroism, romance and sacrifice. The novel allowed the colonized to give a shape to their desires.
→ Bankim’s Anandmath is a novel about a secret Hindu militia that fight Muslims to establish a Hindu kingdom. It was a novel that inspired many kinds of freedom fighters.
→ Shivaji, the hero of the novel Anguriya Binimoy (1857) written by Budhadeb Mukhopadhyaya’s (1827-94) engages in many battles against clever and treacherous Aurangzeb, what gives him courage and grit is his belief that he is a nationalist fighting for the freedom of Hindus.
→ Shivaji, the hero of the novel Anguriya Binimoy (1857) written by Budhadeb Mukhopadhyaya’s (1827-94) engages in many battles against clever and treacherous Aurangzeb, what gives him courage and grit is his belief that he is a nationalist fighting for the freedom of Hindus.
→ Imagining a heroic past was one way in which the novel helped in popularising the sense of belonging to a common nation. It was another way to include various classes in the novel so that they could be seen as belonging to a shared world. Premchand’s novels, for instance, are filled with all kinds of powerful characters drawn from all levels of society.
Go Back To NCERT Solutions for Class 10 History
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Novels, Society and History Class 10 NCERT Solutions
Class 10 Social Science NCERT Solutions will help in building a great foundation of concepts and make easy for the students to understand basics. It will prepare students to do better during immense pressure and at the same time make them fresh and enhances memory. These NCERT Solutions for Class 10 will useful for students in coping with the pressure of the large board examination syllabus.
Topics in the chapter:
• The Rise of the Novel
→ The Publishing Market
→ The World of the Novel
→ Community and Society
→ The New Woman
→ Novels for the Young
→ Colonialism and After
• The Novel Comes to India
→ The Novel in South India
→ The Novel in Hindi
→ Novels in Bengal
• Novels in the Colonial World
→ Uses of the Novel
→ The Problem of Being Modern
→ Pleasures of Reading
• Women and the Novel
→ Caste Practices, ‘Lower-Castes’ and Minorities
• The Nation and its History
→ The Novel and Nation Making
NCERT Solutions for Class 10 History Chapters:
FAQ on Novels, Society and History
How NCERT Solutions of Novels, Society and History for Class 10 History can be helpful for students?
Novels, Society and History NCERT Solutions will useful in building a great foundation of concepts and make easy for the students to understand basics. It will make you well versed in variety of topics and you will be able to instantly recollect your ideas and shape your answers.
Describe the theme of Charlotte Bronte’s novels.
Charlotte Bronte dealt with women who broke established norms of society before adjusting to them. These stories allowed women readers to sympathise with rebellious actions. In Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, published in 1874, young Jane is shown as independent and assertive. While girls of her time were expected to be quiet and well behaved, Jane at the age of ten protests against the hypocrisy of her elders with startling bluntness.
Distinguish between Epistolary and Serialised types of novels with examples.
Epistolary novels were written in the forms of series of letters. Example is Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. Serialised novels were written in a format of a story which was published in instalments, i.e., each part in a new issue of journal. Example is Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers.
Why were children prevented from reading novels?
Children were prevented from reading novels because novels mainly dealt with political, social and economic issues which needed mature audience. Novels also dealt with the adult issues such as love and marriage. The novel would have immoral influences on children and they would become corrupt.