ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Previous
Next

LITERATURE QUESTIONS

CULTURAL AND LITERARY (18TH 19TH) CENTURIES

Question [CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
How does the following representative quotation from Brontë’s Jane Eyre reflect on Victorian social conventions? “You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield, further than to receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protégée, and to be grateful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your duty, you have a right to expect at his hands”
A
It reiterates the class divisions that kept both men and women from social mobility.
B
It suggests that women were increasingly accepted as professionals.
C
It indicates that British society had become much more egalitarian.
D
It reveals the stern consequences of the Industrial Revolution.
Explanation: 

Detailed explanation-1: -“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.” “Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes.” “Oh! That gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!”

Detailed explanation-2: -Social class is presented in Brontë’s Jane Eyre through Jane’s lack of money and how others view her because of this. It is also presented through Jane’s role as a governess and the money she later receives in her uncle’s will.

Detailed explanation-3: -She views these social classes that society has constructed for us as a tool to determining character and is constantly yearning for a way out of the class which was forced in. Her manners and education reflect a person in the upper-class but is still stuck in the working-class.

Detailed explanation-4: -She says, “I should not like to belong to poor people” (36) and “I should not like to go a-begging” (36). To Jane, at least as a child, it is better to live in a wealthy household as an unwanted outsider than to be part of a poor family.

There is 1 question to complete.
Previous
Next