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Essay Questions Sample:
Answer the following essay questions. Your essay should not be less than 1500 words for each:
1- Historians tell us that the novel takes place in a period of rigid class distinctions in which manners, not results, are the standard by which everyone is judged. Jane Austen derives the comedy in her novel Emma from the manners and customs of the classes she portrays. Discuss
2- Emotions in this novel, as well as Jane Austen’s other novels, are often muted. How are Emma’s negative feelings of jealousy, embarrassment and mortification expressed through her actions? How are her positive feelings of delight in family, satisfaction in self-control, and doing one’s duty shown?
3 -In accordance with the chivalric tradition, a romance blooms when a gallant man proves his love for his lady by passing a series of heroic tests. In Emma, we have a sharp reversal. What tests does Emma have to pass in order to be worthy of the love of Mr. Knightly? Explain
4. In Dickens's Oliver Twist, Oliver is remarkably "good," despite the starvation and abuse he receives during his childhood. How is that related to realism? Why or why not? Elaborate and give evidences
5. Oliver Twist attacks the nineteenth-century treatment of orphans by showing how they were abused. How are orphans treated in the English society in the mid-nineteenth century? Investigate
6. Investigate what it was like to live in London during the middle of the nineteenth century.
7. Fagin is evil and cunning, and Dickens also frequently mentions that he is Jewish, leading critics to remark that Dickens was anti-Semitic, though this may not have been the case. How common was anti Semitism in Dickens's time? Explain how Jewish people were viewed and treated in England during the nineteenth century.
8. E.M. Forster worked as an essayist, lecturer, tutor to the working class, and travel guide. What was the influence of his choices of occupations on his writing style and themes in A Room with a View ? Explain
9. In A Room with a View, Forster's use of light and darkness, vision and blindness, day and night has transparent meaning in many passages: Lucy throws open the window of her room with a view while Charlotte closes the shades. Cecil is best suited to a room, while George is in his element in the sunlight of the Sacred Lake. How does that manifest the significance of the novel's title? Discuss the variations on the theme of clarity.
10. Lucy and George both stand outside England's traditional class structure. George is a clerk, the son of a journalist and grandson of a laborer. Lucy is the daughter of a lawyer and her social status is "more splendid than her antecedents entitled her to." What role does social class play in the novel? Why did Forster choose Cecil to deliver the statement: "The classes ought to mix...There ought to be intermarriage—all sorts of things. I believe in democracy ?
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