英国文学作品赏析

英国文学作品赏析

The features of Charles Dickens

1. His critical realism: While sticking to the principle of faithful representation of the 18th-century realist novel, he carried the duty to the criticism of the society and the defense of the mass.

2. He is a mas ter storyteller. With his first sentence, he engages the reader’s attention and holds it to the end.

3. What he writes is mainly the middle and lower-middle class life in London.

4. He is a master of language with a large vocabulary and an adeptness with the vernacular.

5. He is a great humorist as well as a great painter of pathos. He always mingles the two to make his fictional world realistic.

6. His characters are not only true to life but also large than life. There are both individual characters and type characters.

II. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

1. Theme: The novel sharply criticizes the religious hypocrisy of charity institutions like Lowood School, where girls are trained to be humble slaves. It rebukes the social discrimination and false convention about love and marriage. Besides, the novel is a moral fable. It tells us that people have to go through all kinds of physical or moral tests to obtain their final happiness.

2. The character analysis of Jane Eyre: Jane Eyre is an orphan child with a fiery spirit and a longing to love and be loved. She is poor and plain, but she dares to love her master, a man superior to her in many ways, as a little governess. She is brave enough to declare to the man her love for him. She cuts a completely new women image. She represents those middle-class working women who are struggling for recognition of their basic rights and equality as a human being. III. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Height

1. The novel is an extraordinary moving love story: the passion between Heathcliff and Catherine is the most intense, beautiful, and the most horrible passions ever found among human beings.

2. It is also a work of critical realism. Heathcliff is abused, rejected and distorted by the society only because he is a poor orphan of obscure parents. He suffers all kinds of inhuman treatment after the death of his benefactor. He loves Catherine dearly but forced to be separated from her. So, Heathcliff’s cruel revenge upon his enemies is justified in a way.

3. The author makes clear that it is wrong to discriminate on the basis of social status, and it is cruel and destructive to break genuine, natural human passions. Although Catherine and Edgar’s marriage is ideal in the eyes of the whole neighborhood, her love for Heathcliff is hard and everlasting.

I. The features of Shaw’s plays:

1. Problem plays: He took the modern social issues as his subject with the aim of directing social reforms. Most of his plays are concerned with political, economic, or religious problems.

2. In his characterization, he makes the tricks of showing up one character vividly at the expense of another. His characters are the representatives of ideas, which shift and alter during the play.

3. The strong sense of comedy in his play are achieved through his witty dialogues, sharp satires, and vivid portrayal of characters.

II. The theme of Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s profession

1. The play is not only moral, but also has a strong realistic theme. The guilt for prostitution lies more upon the social system than immoral woman. He shows all human sufferings are consequences of the economic exploitation.