MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, CULTURE AND RESEARCH

OF THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA

“ION CREANGĂ” STATE PEDAGOGICAL

UNIVERSITY OF CHIŞINĂU

Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures

English Philology Chair

Novosuțchi Nicoleta

Similiarities and Differences of the characters from short stories of the 19th
and 20th centuries.

Evaluation II

Scientific adviser:

Tătaru Nina

CHIȘINĂU, 2021
 It was in the Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading literary genre in
English. Women played an important part in this rising popularity both as authors and as readers.
Circulating libraries, that allowed books to be borrowed for an annual subscription, were a
further factor in the rising popularity of the novel. The 1830s and 1840s saw the rise of social
novel. This was in many ways a reaction to rapid industrialization, and the social, political and
economic issues associated with it, and was a means of commenting on abuses of government
and industry and the suffering of the poor, who were not profiting from England's economic
prosperity. Stories of the working class poor were directed toward middle class to help create
sympathy and promote change. The greatness of the novelists of this period lies not only in their
truthful description of contemporary life, but also in their profound humanism. They believed in
the good qualities of the human heart and expressed their hopes for a better future. The poorest,
the most unprivileged sections of the population were described by Charles Dickens. He looked
into the darkest corners of the large cities.

One of his most popular works to this day is A Christmas Carol (1843). He is also admired
for his later novels, such as Dombey and Son (1846–48), Little Dorrit (1855–57), Great
Expectations (1860–61)

As for Dickens’s characters, one "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is
London itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to the lower reaches of the
Thames, all aspects of the capital are described in his work. Dickens is famed for his depiction of
the hardships of the working class, his intricate plots, and his sense of humour. But he is perhaps
most famed for the characters he created, for his ability to capture the everyday man and thus
create characters to whom readers could relate.

Dickensian characters-especially their typically whimsical names-are among the most

memorable in English literature. The likes of Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Jacob Marley, Oliver
Twist, The Artful Dodger, Bill Sikes, Pip, Miss Havisham, David Copperfield, Samuel Pickwick,
and many others are so well known and can be believed to be living a life outside the novels that
their stories have been continued by other authors. Often these characters were based on people
he knew. In a few instances Dickens based the character too closely on the original, as in the
case of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House, based on Leigh Hunt, and Miss Mowcher in David
Copperfield, based on his wife's dwarf chiropodist.

A rival to Dickens was William Makepeace Thackeray. His short stories seem to many
readers cynical, because he scrutinizes almost every character and every group with impartial
vigor, dragging forth every fault and every weakness into the light. On the title page of 'Vanity
Fair' he proclaims that it is a novel without a hero; and here most of the characters are either
altogether bad or worthless and the others very largely weak or absurd, so that the impression of
human life which the reader apparently ought to carry away is that of a hopeless chaos of
selfishness, hypocrisy, and futility. One word, which has often been applied to Thackeray, best
expresses his attitude—disillusionment. The last sentences of 'Vanity Fair' are characteristic:
'Oh! Vanitas Vanitatum! which, of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or,
having it, is satisfied?— Come, children, let us shut the box and the puppets, for our play is
played out.'

However he may ridicule his heroes and his heroines (and there really are a hero and
heroine in 'Vanity Fair'), he really feels deeply for them, and he is repeatedly unable to refrain
from the expression of his feeling.
 In his books as clearly as in those of the most explicit moralizer the reader finds the
lessons that simple courage, honesty, kindliness, and unselfishness are far better than external
show, and that in spite of all its brilliant interest a career of unprincipled self−seeking like that of
Becky Sharp is morally squalid.

All three Brontë sisters introduced an unusual central female character into the novel and
complex relationships and problems this character was involved in. With unusual courage and
directness, together they changed the way the novel could present women characters: after the
Brontës, female characters became more realistic, less idealized and their struggles became the
subject of a great many novels later in the 19th century.

Charlotte Brontë's (1816–1855) work was Jane Eyre ['dʒein 'eə], which is written in an
innovative style that combines naturalism with gothic melodrama, and broke new ground in
being written from an intensely first-person female perspective. One of its two main theses is the
assertion of the supreme authority of religious duty, but it vehemently insists also on the right of
the individual conscience to judge of duty for itself, in spite of conventional opinion. So it was
denounced at the time as irreligious. The Romanticism appears further in the volcanic but
sometimes melodramatic power of the love story, where the heroine is a somewhat idealized
double of the authoress.

Emily Brontë's (1818–1848) novel was Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights can be
called an early psychological study of passion and violent characters. Emily Brontë's characters
are unique, and their violent emotions are connected with the Yorkshire moors where the action
takes place. The moors are varying to suit the changing moods of the story, and they are
beautifully described in all seasons. The central characters, Cathy and Heathcliff live out their
passion in the windy, rough countryside of Yorkshire, and the landscape is as wild as their
relationship. To achieve her artistic purpose – to study her heroes’ psychology and moral
conflicts - the author of the book makes no difference between the supernatural and natural, both
work together. On the one had the plot is full of mystery. On the other hand, the novel is very
concrete: the time of the action, the landscape, geography and climate are realistic.

Thomas Hardy is a great representative of the late 19th century realism in England.
Country people with their patriarchal mode of life are his main characters. He chiefly preferred
to describe small people: farmers, schoolteachers, petty tradesmen, etc., because he felt that in
their experiences the real facts of life stand out most truly. For such people Hardy showed warm
affection and sympathy. Hardy’s characters, particularly women, and their fates are
unforgettable. Their tragic lives express the author’s fatalism and pessimism about life.

He conveys the idea that people cannot be happy in the environment where true love and
sincere friendship are ruined by the prejudices of narrow-minded people. Man is a victim of a
blind chance and a mysterious, all-powerful fate. People have no control over environment, so
man’s longing for happiness is doomed to disappointment. Hardy’s theory is a sheer fatalism—
that human character and action are the inevitable result of laws of heredity and environment.

In his works he portrays all the evils of his contemporary society – poverty, exploitation,
injustice and misery. Hardy focused more on a declining rural society and the changing social
and economic situation of the countryside. The illustrations of his rural interests are such novels
as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure
(1895).

Jane Austen's plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of women on
marriage to secure social standing and economic security. Austen brings to light the hardships
women faced, who usually did not inherit money, could not work and their only chance in life
depended on the man they married. She reveals not only the difficulties a woman faced in her
day, but also what was expected of men and of the careers they had to follow. This she does with
wit and humour and with endings where all characters, good or bad, receive exactly what they
deserve.

At the beginning of the 20th century modernism became an important literary movement.

Modernism represents a “a deliberate and radical break with the traditional bases both of
Western culture and of Western art” (Virginia Woolf ) There are controversities concerning the
beginning of modernism. Still Virginia Woolf states that modernism began in 1910, the date of
the first postImpressionist exhibition in London. There are established features that define
modernism thematically and historically. From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of
modernism include: 1) the need to escape from the certainties of the nineteenth century;

2) a challenge to realism, search for alternative ways of representing reality; not focusing
on the external reality, moving the idea of reality to the inner world.

3) an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing; an emphasis on HOW seeing

or perception takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived;

4) new kinds of tools, such as the stream of consciousness, interior monologue

5) representing consciousness, perception, emotion, the relation of the individual with the
society;

6) a rejection of the objectivity, fixed points of view, and clear-cut moral positions;

7) narrations from different points of view and perspectives;

8) spontaneity and discovery in creation.

Stream of Consciousness is a literary style in which the author follows visual, auditory,
tactile, associative impressions and expresses them using "interior monologue" of characters
either as a writing technique or as a writing style that mingles thoughts and impressions in an
illogical order, and violates grammar norms.

Main characteristics:

 Recording thoughts and feelings

 Exploring external and internal forces that influence individual’s psychology

 Disregard of the narrative sequence

 Absence of the logical argument

 Disassociated leaps in syntax and punctuation

 Prose difficult to follow

The novels, short stories, and poetry of the early 20 th century critiqued existing forms of
identity, suggested new alternative forms, and provided readers with a space in which to reflect
on the ways in which they might transform themselves and their surroundings. 
 For Hemingway’s works inner dialogues are typical. He seldom speaks of the feelings of
his characters, much is left unsaid, but he manages to make the reader feel what his hero feels.
Needless repetition and irrelevant information should be avoided. Hemingway likens this style to
an iceberg since only a fraction of it lies visible above water; the rest – the greater mass – is
unseen below. An attentive reader will uncover the missing parts if the story's message is
delivered in a short but succinct manner. One more peculiarity of Hemingway’s style is the use
of weather as an accompaniment to the emotional tones of different scenes. The background of
every tragic episode in a Farewell to Arms is rain. In his novels the author proves that private
happiness is impossible in the restless world of the 20th century. Seeing misery around him,
Hemingway’s hero cannot be happy.