Influence of ‘Absurd theatre’ on the play “The Birthday Party”

Ø     About theatre of absurd:-

The Theatre of the Absurd ( French: Theater de l'Absurde) is a designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s, as well as one for the style of theatre which has evolved from their work. Their work expressed what happens when human existence has no meaning or purpose and therefore all communication breaks down, in fact alerting their audiences to pursue the opposite. Logical construction and argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech and to its ultimate conclusion, silence.

“Absurd theatre is associated with existentialism.”

 Critic Martin Esslin coined the term in his 1960 essay "Theatre of the Absurd." He related these plays based on a broad theme of the Absurd, similar to the way Albert Camus uses the term in his 1942 essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus ". The Absurd in these plays takes the form of man’s reaction to a world apparently without meaning, and/or man as a puppet controlled or menaced by invisible outside forces. Though the term is applied to a wide range of plays, some characteristics coincide in many of the plays: broad comedy, often similar to Vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism and the concept of the "well-made play".

Ø     “Theatre of Absurd” = “Expression in art of the meaninglessness of human existence.”

   

Ø     Characteristics of the “Theatre of Absurd:-

1.Broad comedy

2.Menacing and tragic effect

3.Alienation effect

4.Hopelessness in characters

5.Fragmentations

6.Parody of the concept of ‘well maid play’

7.Unconventional writing

8.Irrationality

9.At some extent similar to the characteristics of Postmodernism.

Ø     The Birthday Party:-

 

The Birthday Party (1957) is the second full-length play by Harold Pinter and one of Pinter's best-known and most-frequently performed plays. After its hostile London reception almost ended Pinter's playwriting career, it went on to be considered "a classic".

The Birthday Party is about Stanley Webber, an erstwhile piano player in his 30s, who lives in a rundown boarding house, run by Meg and Petey Boles, in an English seaside town, "probably on the south coast, not too far from London". Two sinister strangers, Goldberg and McCann, who arrive supposedly on his birthday and who appear to have come looking for him, turn Stanley's apparently innocuous birthday party organized by Meg into a nightmare.

Ø     Effect of ‘Theatre of Absurd’ in “The Birthday Party”:-

This play comes under both “Comedy of Menace” and “Theatre of Absurd”. For Beckett, absurdity is a metaphysical predicament, Eugene Ionesco visualizes absurdity in concrete terms. For these dramatists, much of the absurdity in human existence emerges from our failures in language, communication, motivation, judgment and human relationships. Harold Pinter presents the same Theatre of the Absurd one finds in the plays of Beckett and Ionesco. Pinter, however, presents his plays in a deceptively realistic idioms and convention and goes to unmask the absurdity of the human situation and the conventional theatre. The Birthday Party has a credible dramatic situation, but not a credible plot structure, characters or any logical, progressive and linear action. In Pinter’s theatre, the persistent presence of a closed room, with a few persons huddled together inside, in a sort of “non-communicative conversation”, is significant. The dramatic image of his play is based on a basic human situation: individual’s search for security in a world which is full of anxiety, terror, false friendship and a lack of understanding between people “We live on the verge of disaster”. The absurd character, in order to reveal the precariousness of man’s existential security, is built up by three distinct elements: mystery, menace and humor. Pinter successfully creates a drama of human relations at the level of language. The plot of the play hinges on Stanley who isolates himself from the world by putting up in a squalid seaside boarding house, owned by Meg and Petey. The couple protects Stanley and tries to make him comfortable. But the peaceful atmosphere is disturbed by unexpected guests, McCann and Goldberg, the agents of unknown forces who have come to claim Stanley. Pinter presents personal breakdown, disillusionment and decay through the linguistic terror unleashed by McCann and Goldberg. Pinter’s play is the absurd story of language. In fact, it is only language that significantly happens in the play, with the characters, plot narrative and stage action hiding behind the language. Language significantly evolves the absurdity in the characters, emotions, relationships and situation. Stanley is tormented not so much by McCann and Goldberg, but by the language used by them. For Pinter, language positively creates a stasis in a communication. Uttering leads characters into pauses and silences, and any verbal assertiveness causes communicative disjunction. The dialogue between Petey and Meg are more an attempt at evasion than communication. According to Ganz, “The most distinctive elements in Pinter’s dramatic technique are the ambiguity that surrounds events, the mysterious behaves of characters, the near Omni presence of menace, and the silences and other verbal characteristics.” For instance, Pinter uses repetition as a mode to create laughter and also to ease the tension of the scene and divert the audience’s response slightly from the action. In the first Act, Meg repeatedly asks a question to create laughter

Meg – Is that you, Petey?

Pause

Petey- is that you?

Pause

 Petey?

 Petey – what?

Meg –Is that you?

 Petey – Yes it’s me.[The Birthday Party: 24]

Absurd ideas and fanciful imagination indicate the feeling of hollowness in Meg and Petey’s married life and also in Stanley’s life gripped by uncertainties and insecurities. This peaceful atmosphere is disturbed by the unexpected entry of McCann and Goldberg who come to perform a “job”. They not only disturb Stanley but arouse his fear for unknown reasons. And this tension passes on to Meg as Stanley starts behaving peculiarly. Pinter is more preoccupied with our fears, our anxieties that reflect throughout the play. Meg’s fear of losing Stanley, “You wouldn’t have to go away if you get a job” (The Birthday Party: 9), reveals her sense of insecurity. The arrival of the two men at the boarding house reflects Stanley’s fear of losing the security, which he was getting from Meg. Again, Stanley’s fear becomes an inevitable cause for absurd imagination. He says:

“They’re coming today.”

Meg: Who?

Stanley: They’re coming in a van.

Meg: who? They’ll carry a wheel barrow in a van.

Stan: They’re looking for someone.

Meg: No they’re not. (The Birthday Party: 24)

Pinter’s dialogues are so created that the ambiguity is maintained and yet they unnerve the audience and open several avenues for interpretations. In this context, Hobe says: “Pinter has consistently relied upon language device for his effects rather than ritualistic visual devices characteristic of the theatre of Absurd”. Pinter uses silence and pauses as mediums of communication. He says that the characters convey a lot by being silent or giving a pause during their conversation, both the actors and the spectators are left wondering as to what would follow. Terror is intensified further with the arrival of two agents who start interrogation and cross-examination. They accuse him of unknown guilt and sins. Stanley remains speechless and only makes the inarticulate gurgling sounds. His silence only denotes the gradual fading of memory, the disintegration of the human personality. In the process of cross-examination words become weapons. Stanley is virtually brain-washed through a flood of incomprehensible questions. Pinter’s plays can be seen as structures of poetic images of an unverifiable and, therefore, dream-like world between fantasy and nightmare. His observation of linguistic quirks is extremely sharp; his dialogue must be considered to be one of the most realistic representatives of the genuine vernacular of the mid-twentieth century. But the real speech of the real people is to a large extent composed of solecism (mistake of grammar idiom) and tautology; it can also be compared to nonsense poetry. In Pinter’s drama, implied meaning with an undertone of ambiguity is quite manifest. He has attained this unique dynamism by a clever manipulation of the exchange pattern of the dialogue. He stresses on four different aspects of language: rhythm, tempo, intensity and tension. These aspects are manifest in the brief exchanges amongst characters and their subtle moves are also precisely illustrated through lingual variation. In Pinter, the structure of the dialogue plays a vital role in creating a tense dramatic atmosphere of menace, and the absurd changes, from one to another, which is a major linguistic element in The Birthday Party. Pinter arranges his words meticulously, and he listens to them through silence. Pinter as an absurdist knows that life never shapes itself. He wants the existential adjustment to come first, and hence, the characters and situation are minutely observed. Dialogue is shaped on bad syntax, tedious repetitions and excruciating contradictions. Through dialogue he presents the inadequacy of the words we use. He hints at the unspoken and latent. He creates an absurd atmosphere by means of the theatrically useful nature of words pertaining to correct rhythm. Illusions, past recollections and childhood memories also become a medium for the characters to relieve their mounting tensions and serve for them as an escape from the present world of brutality. Meg easily enters into her world of happy memories and illusion the next day after the Birthday Party. She is not aware of the harsh reality that Stanley had to undergo harassment, and that he was carried away by force by McCann and Goldberg. With an unconscious irony, she recollects the happy moments and insists….

 “I was the belle of the ball.”

 Petey: Were you?

Meg: oh Yes, They all said I was Petey, I bet you were, too.

 Meg – oh!. It’s true, I was.

 (Pause) I know I was. (The Birthday Party: 59).

The Birthday Party evokes a mood of terror and mystery by creating a distorted world. Esslin (1969:205} rightly remarks: “It speaks plainly of the individual’s pathetic search for security of secret dreads and anxieties of the terrorism of our world.”

Ø     Conclusion:-

 As a whole, Harold Pinter’s plays reveal our state of solitude, nothingness, meaninglessness and isolation. In Pinter’s world, language has lost its semantic power and significance. The characters in The Birthday Party are neither capable using the language; language for them is like movement, the irrationality, aggressiveness and violence. Language, like an absurd hero, brings to the audience the absurdity of human situation. Pinter succeeds in creating an allegorical drama of epic proportions: Man versus his birth and existence, or Man versus language. But, though Man is foredoomed to failure in any epical battle between himself and nature, fails heroically. Absurdity engulfs everything and everyone, even language and life itself.

                                         William Wordsworth was born on April 7th, 1770, in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. Young William Wordsworth’s parents, Father - John and mother - Ann, died during his boyhood. Raised amid the mountains of Cumberland alongside the River Derwent, Wordsworth grew up in a rural culture, and spent a great deal of his time playing outdoor games, in what he would later remember as a communion with nature. In the early 1790s Wordsworth lived for a time in France, then in the grip of the violent Revolution; Wordsworth’s philosophical sympathies lay with the revolutionaries, but his loyalties lay with England, whose monarchy he was not prepared to see overthrown. While in France, William Wordsworth had a long affair with Annette Vallon, with whom he had a daughter, Caroline. A later journey to France to meet Caroline, now a young girl, would inspire the great sonnet “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free.

                             The publication of ‘Lyrical Ballads’ represents a moment for English poetry; it was unlike anything that had come before, and paved the way for everything that has come after. According to the theory that poetry resulted from the “spontaneous overflow” of emotions, as Wordsworth wrote in the preface, Wordsworth and Coleridge made it their task to write in the simple language of common people, telling concrete stories of their lives.

                         According to this theory, poetry originated in “emotion recollected in a state of tranquility”; the poet then surrendered to the emotion, so that the tranquility dissolved, and the emotion remained in the poem. This explicit emphasis on feeling, simplicity, and the pleasure of beauty over rhetoric, ornament, and formality changed the course of English poetry, replacing the elaborate classical forms of Pope and Dryden with a new Romantic sensibility. Wordsworth’s most important legacy, besides his lovely, timeless poems, is his launching of the Romantic era, opening the gates for later writers such as John Keats, Shelley, and Lord Byron in England, and Emerson and Thoreau in America.  

                             In the beginning of Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” he addresses his predecessors and talks about poetry before his time. “They who have been accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will no doubt, frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness (Stanza 4).” Wordsworth claims that’s his predecessors will have issues with his poetry based on simplicity and the language that he maintains throughout his poems. Unlike other poets his ideas lead straight to the point, and there are no completely abstract, innate or thought provoking ideas that can surmise from his poetry. 

                           Following the success of ‘Lyrical Ballads’ and his subsequent poem The Prelude, a massive autobiography in verse form, Wordsworth moved to the stately house at Rydal Mount where he lived, with Dorothy, his wife Mary, and his children, until his death in 1850. Wordsworth became the dominant force in English poetry while still quite a young man, and he lived to be quite old; his later years were marked by an increasing aristocratic temperament and a general alienation from the younger Romantics whose work he had inspired. Byron—the only important poet to become more popular than Wordsworth during Wordsworth’s lifetime—in particular saw him as a kind of sell-out, writing in his sardonic preface to Don Juan that the once-liberal Wordsworth had “turned out a Tory” at last. The last decades of Wordsworth’s life, however, were spent as Poet Laureate of England, and until his death he was widely considered the most important author in England. But the themes that run through Wordsworth’s poetry, and the language and imagery he uses to embody those themes, remain remarkably consistent throughout the Wordsworth canon, adhering largely to the tenets Wordsworth set out for himself in the 1802 preface to ‘Lyrical Ballads’. 

                           Many of Wordsworth’s poems deal with the subjects of childhood and the memory of childhood in the mind of the adult in particular, childhood’s lost connection with nature, which can be preserved only in memory. Wordsworth’s images and metaphors mix natural scenery, religious symbolism (as in the sonnet “It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,” in which the evening is described as being “quiet as a nun”), and the relics of the poet’s rustic childhood—cottages, hedgerows, orchards, and other places where humanity intersects gently and easily with nature. William Wordsworth’s poems initiated the Romantic age by emphasizing feeling, instinct, and pleasure above formality and mannerism.

                     ‘Lyrical Ballads’ is a collection of poems written by Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth, although you might hear some people refer to Lyrical Ballads simply as Wordsworth's because he contributed the majority of the poems.                                 

                        The collection, originally published in 1798, was a direct response to the ideas and styles found in the literature written between 1660 and 1798, a period commonly referred to as the Neo classical era. Lyrical Ballads was a clear and intentional challenge to this literary tradition. In fact, when Lyrical Ballads was originally published in 1798.  This Preface, written by William Wordsworth, was one of the first and most direct attempts to challenge the popular poetic practices of the 17th and 18th centuries and offer a new poetic theory to replace them. For this reason, Lyrical Ballads is used to mark the end of the Neo classical period and the beginning of the Romantic period of literature, the period of literature that lasts from about 1798 to 1850 and emphasizes nature, the imagination, and the importance of personal experience rather than scientific logic.

                         William Wordsworth and coleridge saw the problems introduced by the Industrial Revolution as evidence of the failures of Enlightenment philosophy and the Neo classical poetry that came out of it. This context is helpful to keep in mind when reading Lyrical Ballads, for many of its poems portray the return to a more natural lifestyle as a remedy to the problems created by the Industrial Revolution.  

                            In the 1800 Preface, Wordsworth claims that the rigid aesthetics of Neo classical poetry are arbitrary and distort the freedom and naturalness of poetic expression. His preface to the Lyrical Ballads became the symbol and the instrument of romantic revolt. The second edition of Lyrical Ballads appeared in two volumes in 1800 in Wordsworth's name alone. He describes poetry as the spontaneous overflow of emotions. Coleridge remarked that half the Preface was in fact the child of his own brain. In the beginning of Wordsworth’s “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” he addresses his predecessors and talks about poetry before his time. “They who have been accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will no doubt, frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness (Stanza 4).”                       

                             Thus, Wordsworth claims that’s his predecessors will have issues with his poetry based on simplicity and the language that he maintains throughout his poems.  Wordsworth and his predecessors can come to terms on one aspect that he maintains in his, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”. He also believes that poetry can be on multiple topics and not restricted on one subject, which is totally true, as poetry has been arranged on multiple topics and not necessarily linked to the natural aspects that Wordsworth highly prescribes. Wordsworth criticizes some of his contemporizes and his predecessors style and diction claiming that, “ the reader will find that personifications of abstract ideas rarely occur in these volumes; and utterly rejected as an ordinary device to elevate style, and raise it above prose.

Conclusion:-

Thus, we can say that the chief aim of the poem in ‘Lyrical Ballads’ has been to choose “incidents and situations in the common life” and to relate them in a selection of language used by people.

               Swift’s satire in Gulliver’s Travels                         

Jonathan swift was born in Dublin, Ireland on November 30, 1667. Jonathan swift was known as anglo - Irish satirist, poet and pamphleteer. Swift was also famous for his “Gulliver’s Travels’’, “The battle of the books’’, “A tale of a tub”. Swift is probably the prose satirist in the English language. But he is not more famous for his poetry. Swift is also famous of two style of satire:-

1. The Horatian:-

2. Juvanalian style:-

Definition of satire:-

“Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphics, and performing art, in which wises, follies, abuses and shortcomings and held up to ridicule ideally with the intent shaming, individual corporation, and society itself into improvement”.

There are two types of satire:-

1. Comic satire:-

2. Corrosive satire:-

                   Gulliver’s Travels is the best example of his satirical work. There are so many satirical elements described in the Gulliver’s Travels by swift. In its day Gulliver’s Travels is very famous and unique. It was not written for amuse. Some people think that satire is the weapon of exaggeration. And exaggeration is only one facet of his satiric method. Swift was thorough a satirist that some of his readers misread the part of houyhnhnms.

                             Swift was a prolific writer, notable for his satire. Swift uses Gulliver’s to satirize vivid aspects of England and English society .In other way Swift through the character of Gulliver, criticize the religious enmity of within English and society by informing us about the hatred between the Lilliputians. Swift also satire on the over plentifulness of “Projector” in English. Swift is also satirize anyone who chooses a philosophy over reality. We can also say that Gulliver’s Travels was written during the restoration period. The way this book is written presents political theme from that time including satire. Gulliver’s Travels is an epic satire.

                      Swift has been using satire as a medium for a quarter of a century in Gulliver’s Travels. His life was full of melancholy and satire was his defense against human world and his enemies. In its serious function, satire is a medium between two perceptions. The unillusioned perception of people as they actually are and the ideal perception of people as they ought to be. Jonathan swift is the second type of hater and Gulliver’s Travels is his greatest satirical attempt to “shame men out of their vices”.

                          The selection of metaphor in each voyage presents more particularly the vivid points of Swift’s satirical vision. The effect of scale of life in Lilliput is to strip human affairs of their grandeur. This idea is continued in the second voyage, in the character of Gulliver who is now in Lilliputians in brobdingnagins. And where the Lilliput highlights the meanness of human pride and the brobdingnagians also highlight the grossness of human, this satirizing pride in human appearance. In the activity of Grand Academy of Lagado, the dangers and wastefulness of pride in men reason uninformed by common sense satirized by Swift. We can say that the final choice of the houyhnhnms as the representational of reason unlimited by excessive emotion serves a double role for Jonathan Swift’s desire.

Jonathan Swift’s satirical work:-

                   Swift’s power of his satirical writing have earned Swift a reputation and position as a greatest prose satirist in English literature. “Gulliver’s Travels” is his world renowned masterpiece. “Modest Proposal” is also famous satirical work. “A death of a late famous general” is the best satirical elegy written by Swift. Swift also famous for his satirical poems.                  

Swift’s allegorical satire in “Gulliver’s Travels” :-

“Swift was a wild human that worried all humankind……….”

                    Our main concern it about satire. So let’s have a look on the satire and irony. Lilliput is also full of satires. Swift also satirize the intrigues against other political parties, pride of human evil of taboos in Lilliput are the main points of satire. We can say that misanthropy hide behind the satirizing people. 

                                Swift satirically remarked of all most all second class work like farming and etc. According to higher class people. Swift says that,

“I have ever hatred all nations, profession, and

Community but principally I hate and detest

That animal called man…..upon this great

Foundation of misanthropy the whole building of my “Travels” is created.”

                   Every customs, place, expressions and feelings of voyage are satiric. One can say that Gulliver’s Travels is not simple but very mock satire on people and hypocrite. The character of Flimnap and others, narrow-minded communication of the man of 1^st voyage , all these things satirized by Swift.

                           In book IV, Gulliver has come to the horses. They have pure reason but they are not human. We know they are not human but they seem and ideal for humans-until Jonathan Swift represent them as feelingless creatures, dull and unhuman. Because that M. H. Abrams sats the

“Gilliver’s Travels is a satire again Mankind.”

                                The six inches’ tiny people’clown of a Brobdingnag and his trivial mentality, lazy king of Laputa and yahoo’s ridiculous behavior, yahoo’s appetite for food and clothes also described satire in Gulliver’s Travels. Swift also represents the real England by giving biting or sarcastic remark,

“………….heap of conspiracies, mueders, massacre, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice fiction,

Hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage madness hatred, envy, lust, malice, or ambition could produce………………”

                               Critical remark on Gulliver shows that Swift critically satirise England little in their thoughts and ideas.

                              Swift has made gigantic figures, six inches height, more moral people and in fourth voyage more lecherous and dangerous yahoos to criticized and satirized whole human society. Swift indirectly criticized the arrogant European imperialists who treat the people through brutality.

                             In “Gulliver’s Travels” Swift is not only creat a satire of allegory but he also satirise allegory of politics. Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” is the great satire that covers politics, morality, human values, society, limitations. He has cleared all the satirical aspects in a unique and different way. It is really bitter satire of human and society.

Swift’s  social satire in “Gulliver’s Travels”:-

 We can say that Swift is a social satirist and “Gulliver’s Travels” is the best example of his social satire. Swift every time satire on social aspects. There is a satire on politics, human psysiognomy, intellect, manners and morality. In the 1^st voyage Swift satire on politics and political tacticed in England through Lilliputians. In the second voyage to Brobdingnag Swift satire on human body.

                                 In the third voyage to Laputa Swift satire on human mind, and their intellect, and philosophy. In the houyhnhnms, there is a satire on moral short comings of mankind.

                                Thus we can say that Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” is a greatest masterpiece of art containing social satire. All the satirist is at heart a reformer. And Swift successfully satirises on politics, physical awkwardness and human itellact and moral shortcomings.

Swift’s  political satire in “Gulliver’s Travels”:-

                           As a satirist Swift satirize on many things in Gulliver’s Travels Book-I, like he satire on human greatness, England, dominant whig party, war with France. Swift supported France in the war but it is a fact that he also strongly satirises this war itself. Swift also satirize the needless bickering and fighting between the two nation.

                          Another example of political satire can be found in chapter 2 and 3. There are explicit satire of British Government in chapter-2.There are another form of political satire is realized in the first culture that is met by Gulliver. The nation of the Lilliput also satirized by Swift.

Comic and corrosive satire in ‘Gulliver’s Travels

  Jonathan Swift regarded as a master of comic & corrosive satire and there is no lacking of Gulliver’s Travels. There are many example of comic satire in the voyage to Lilliput. Swift has corrosive satire in the climax of part -2. Swift’s comic satire in part-3. There is also the element of corrosive satire in part -3.

·     1^st voyage of Lilliput Swift satire in a comic way like one outstanding passage of comic satire in this account and it is the passage dealing with the ‘high-heels and low heels’ and ‘big-endias and little-endias’.

·     In chapter-7 :- Swift satire on that Gulliver is in Blefuscu, lying on the ground to kiss the hands of the Emperor and the Empress.

·     In the voyage to Brobdingnag Swift’s comic satire evoke at the expense of Gulliver. Because Gulliver is reduced in status and becomes an object of the comic satire.

Jonathan Swift’s satire of nation:-

                       Swift satire on England and satirically relates body functions and physical attributes to social issues during English rule of Europe. To explain his reader the importence of many topics during the time of European rules Swift uses the tone of mockery.

                     Swift also satire on society of England and he shows the basic problems of human society through his journey. Swift satirize various class of society, war and power of perception. Swift continuous his satire of war when Gulliver meets a man who can bring to life important figures from the past.

Swift’s use of satire in “Gulliver’s Travels”:-

                 Swift can be describing as a useful device to bring out auther’s real intention.

In ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ Swift satirize the eighteenth century. Through this we can say that how Swift uses Gulliver to satirize the society of eighteenth century and England. Through this we can mark that Swift uses Gulliver as a object of his satire. In Gulliver’s Travels Swift describe Gulliver’s 1^st voyage is to Lilliput and he satirize the pigmy human beings. In Brobdingnag Swift satirize the meanness of giants. On the flying island of Laputa, he satirizes the scientists and philosopher. And in fourth voyage to very strange place houyhnhnms he satire on human beings like creature.

                                                                                       

                                    Jonathan Swift mastered the genre of satire. With the blending of dramatic irony and parody. We can saw the height of Swift’s genius in writing satires.

          There are three main type of satire:-

·     Horatian :-

·     Juvanalian :-

·     Menippean :-

Horatian satire mocks, Juvanalian aims to destroy and to provoke and Mennipean aims to spread its internal attacks at a large number of targets. Horatian satire is famous of all typs of satire. A kedy satire is that the audience is also laughing at their ownself. A voyage to Lilliput’ is one of the most popular Horatian satires.

For Juvanalian satire we can say that it is the very bitter type of satire and it not targets on painful and hurtful laceration. It target is organization, companies, individuals, social vices.

Menippean satire is more psychological. ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ qualifies as a Menippean satire. It satirise various aspect of society. We mark multi-faceted satiristic approach of swift in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’.

The court matters of Lilliputians in ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ which is the main part of political satire. Gulliver toured Laputa as the guest. He goes there as a low-ranking courtier and observed how ruin was brought about by the blind persuit of science without practical result. This was a satire on Royale society and bureaucracy and its experiments.

                          We analyze that each and every part of the ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ is full of satire and mockery. There is some irony of Swift: - the Lilliputians were tiny people with immense pride, Gulliver has huge figure, innocent and belittled. Swift, here, also satire on what he felt was whisg’s corruption in England at that time.

                     Philip Harth, in “The Problem Of Political Allegory In Gulliver’s Travels” claimed that people of that time definitely saw illusion in description of Swift about Lilliput. In which they put England, Flimnap with Walpole, low-heel and high-heel, whigs and tories, but they could not imagined the account of Gulliver’s advanture in the land of Lilliputians was intended as a consistent allegory of political history of England in the early 18^th century. This was true even of contemporary reaction of satire.

                  Jonathan Swift’s satire became more direct.  Swift satirically compares pigmy’s vanity with the humanity of Gulliver. Gulliver’s evolution of their learning was definitely meant by Swift to be ironic. His microscopic vision, paralleling the use of microscopes in Europe, it only exaggerated the ugliness. The satire of Jonathan swift was to view one’s own country and customs with Brobdingnagians. He was now able to recognize the human folly. Gulliver’s rage at the bird that seized food from Gulliver’s hands was also the example of satirical caparison done by Swift. Swift also satirizing Europe as a perfect state. Swift shows Brobdingnagian’s king as a good and idle one while Gulliver as the corrupted man. Swift’s irony was thoroughly punished.

                       According to J. A. Downie, Swift of course criticized the British politics and Walpole’s political morality and the methods by which he achieved and maintained power. Swift satirize the parodied scholars, he also criticized the notions of learning. Swift also satirized England for vast inequalities of wealth. Swift makes ironic twist by showing Gulliver reluctantly and bitter against his pride.

Conclusion :-

     In “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift the first significant way of satire engaged with the utopian mode. And this irony of utopian conventions was both common and particular.

     Gulliver never fell short on aspect of society to criticize. This type of Mennipean satire points out several issues of Jonathan Swift’s satire and collect them all together under the same book. Thus Gulliver conclude all of Swift’s object of satire beautifully, and making“Gulliver’s Travels” Swift’s best piece of satire. 

Nuleeni as a victim of society   ‘The fakeer of Jungheera’ is a long poem by Henry Vivian Derozio. He was born on 18^th April, 1809 in Kalkatta, west Bengal.

                       In ‘The fakeer of jungheera’ Henry Derozio talks about victimized women of the society. Nuleeni and fakeer are the main characters. There are also other supportive characters in it. In the days of Henry Derozio Indian subcontinent was cought by many evils like ‘sati pratha’, killing girl child by boiling the still born baby in the hot pot of the milk etc.

                        Here, in the Henry Derozio’s poem ‘The fakeer of jungheera’ Nuleeni is a central character. She is described as a victimized woman. Nuleeni loves the fakeer, who was muslim, lived in jungheera.

                              Nuleeni was a beautiful and rich lady. She was the Brahmin widow. She described as a pale faced and speechless woman. She now watches the dead body of her husband covered with sandal wood. The use of sandal wood would obviously points the upper class family.

                               Here the poet points the Heroine-Nuleeni as a “perfect” Bengali beauty with large black eyes, long black unbraided tresses, and a pale lily complexion and a majestic walk. She seems to be in full control of her emotions, when she arrives at this strange “death’s festival”. Though her eyes speaks more than her tongue could. It is only in stanza XIII the poet comments on the meanness and cruelty of the world that tries to buy love and imprison the, but the heart was made free and can not be imprisoned.

“ ye mean, ye cruel ! in whose bosoms cold

The thought springs idly that love may be sold-

What! Dare you id our feelings all depart

And give for golden dross th’ imprisoned heart?

Go! Tell the ocean when its billows roar

To rest in piece nor lost the sounding shore;

Bad them be hushed, andflee into their cave;

Go! When the spirit of the storm on high

Drive their mad courses through the blackening sky,

Bid they may hear your voices, and obey! –

But oh! The heart enthralled can never be,

Lord of itself, created to be free! ”

                          In stanza – XIV we comes to know about the names of the beautiful widow and she is called Nuleeni. Her situation is hopeless, she does not reflect on death but upon love, especially the most ‘bliss hours’ she spent in those scented ‘bright bowers’ with her lover – fakeer.

                          Nuleeni never loved loved her dead husband but her true feelings were for someone else. She suffers from pain not at the loss of her husband but the pain of separation of her beloved. She rises like a burning in the fire of her “hopes, affections and happiness”.

                          Nuleeni was married to a Brahmin and her husband dies in an early youth. So she was brought to the spot where her husband to be cremated. All the women singing praise song for sati. Women song of going to heaven but Nuleeni was lost in the thoughts of fakeer. Nuleeni refuse to die on the funeral pyre of her husband.

                            As she mounts the funeral pyre and takes “seven circuits”, her mind is on rescue and escape by her craft lover, a Muslim fakeer, who doesn’t disappoint her. Nuleeni as always dreamt of him and is now satisfied in his embrace. She escapes with the fakeer to his cave in Jungheera to a life from death. She escapes death, she starts a life of love though frightened by violent social conditions. She believes that the lover’s courage and her unfailing love will make them victorious. Now her beautiful and fair face brightens. The bold audacity of the fakeer who snatches her from the midst of a group of mourning upper class Hindu,at the funeral.

                              Now they forgot the society, they forgot the discrimation and strength of power.  Nuleeni now free from all the bondages of society. Both of them completely forgot themselves and did not realize that their lives were at risk. She was snatched by the fakeer from the hand of so called people like hunters. Because when she lived with so called upper class Hindus, she always tolerate humiliations, she don’t want to die with her husband but orthodox Hindu society force her to do that.

                                Nuleeni and fakeer lived very happily in their cave. They both are lost in the materialistic life. They are lost in their world. But Nuleeni also feared of some unseen danger. She smelt something wrong. She worried for she doesn’t want to depart from her lover – fakeer at any cost.

                             As happens in ancient Greek trajedies and Shakespearian trajedies, their mistakes of risking their life were waiting for them. As Nuleeni and fakeer were run – away, the father of Nuleeni – so called upper class Hindu widow’s father would definitely revenge them.

                             In the 19^th century, on on one hand the prohibited sati system on the other hand they allowed being satiwith permission.

                             Now starts the tragic events one by one. The father of beautiful widow Nuleeni determines to fakeer. He goes to the king Shah Shiva, of his time. Nuleeni’s father request him to send his army with him to revenge the fakeer. At this stage the uncertainty of life and the death begins. Nuleeni’s father comes to the place where fakeer and Nuleeni lived with the army to take revenge to his insult. Nuleeni’s father did not even think of his daughter’s happiness or love.

                            Now Nuleeni and fakeer has no choice. He would be cought and punished, if he runs away from the battle field. Fakeer decide to fight back the army of Nuleeni’s father. Nuleeni fears that the dubious hour might – bring doom. But fakeer is confident of victory.

“Ere lang I’ll warm thee in my beast again-”

With the ‘battle cry’ of ‘the moslim ringing after’ to fight the ‘royal cavalry’.

                                 Section XXI described the battle scene where he is mortally wounded with a lance.

An unseen hand with a glittering lance

Checked the chieftain’s fierce advance,

And forth the blood from his bosom streamed,

And quenched hope’s latest ray as it beamed ! –

                            Nuleeni cradles him in her arms and dies together with him – her “eloquence had all burned out”.

                            She prefers to die together with someone she loves than with her husband whom she does not. The Sanskrit word sati implied a “good and virtuous women” who was devoted to her husband. According to Hindu customs these virtuous found expression in the act of self – immolation. The woman – who sacrificed herself continued to be called sati long after they were dead and gone.

 Conclusion :-

                                Through this poem “fakeer of Jungheera” by Henry Derozio we can say that Nuleeni became a victim of society twice. When her husband died, our so called upper caste Hindu society force her to become a sati. No one can understand her feelings and affection. In another way we can say that when she escape with her beloved fakeer, her father comes there where they lived. And both of them became a victim.

Hamlet: From the perspective of feminist & psychological approach

v     Psychological approach:-

                        Although Freud himself made some applications of his theories to art and literature, it remind for an English disciple, the psychoanalyst Ernest Jones, to provide the 1^st full – scale psychoanalytic treatment of a major literary work. Jone’s Hamlet, originally published as an essay in The American Journal Of Psychology in 1910, was later revised and enlarged.

                               Hamlet’s much – debated delay in killing his uncle, Claudius, is to be explained in terms of internal rather than external circumstances and that the “ play is mainly concerned with a hero’s unavailing fight against what can only be called a disordered mind”. Jones points out that no really satisfying argument has ever been substantiated for the idea that Hamlet revenges his father’s murder as quickly as practicable. Shakespeare makes Claudius’s guilt as well as Hamlet’s duty perfectly clear from the outset – if we are to trust the words of the ghost and the gloomy insights of the hero himself. The fact is, however, that Hamlet does not fulfill this duty until absolutely forced to do so by physical circumstances – and even then only after Gertrude, his mother, is dead. Hamlet displays throughout the play, especially as it is directed against Ophelia and his almost physical revulation to sex – this misogyny also elucidates by Jones.

                                  The attitude of the child towards his father is dramatized in the characters of the ghost and Claudius, both of whom are dramatic projections of the hero’s own conscious – unconscious dilemma towards the father figure. The apperition of king Hamlet represents the conscious ideal of fatherhood, the image that is socially receivable.

See, what a grace was seated on his brow:

Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself,

An eye like mars, to threaten and command,

A station like the Herald Mercury

New – lighted on a heaven – kissing hill,

A combination and a form indeed,

Where every God did seem to set his seal,

To give the world assurance of a man:

This was your husband.

                         On the other hand, his view of Claudius represents Hamlet’s hostility for his father as a rival for his mother’s affection. The new king – father is the symbolic perpetrator of the very deeds towards which the son is impelled by his own unconscious motives: murder of his father and incest with his mother. Hamlet cannot bring himself to kill Claudius because to do so he must, in a psychological sense, kill himself.

                               A corollary problem in Hamlet is the pronounced misogyny in Helmet’s character. Because of his mother’s abnormally sensual affection for her son, an affection that would have deeply marked Hamlet as a child with an oedipal neurosis. He has in the course of his psychic development repressed his incestuous impulses so severely that this repression colors his attitude towards all women. The famous “Get thee to a nunnery” speech has even sinister overtones than are generally recognized, when we understand the pathological degree of Hamlet’s conditions and read “nunnery” as Elizabethan slang for brothel.

This theme relates ultimate to splitting of the mother image which the infantile unconscious effects into two opposite picture: one of a virginal Madonna, and the other of a sensual creature accessible to everyone……when sexual repression is highly pronounced, as with Hamlet, then both types of women are felt to be hostile. Misogyny, as in the play, is the inevitable result.

                       Although it has been attacked by the anti – Freudians and occasionally disparaged by the neo – Freudians. “Both as an important seminal work which led to a considerable re – examination of Hamlet, and as an example of a thorough and intelligent application of psychoanalysis to drama”.

v     Feministic Approach:-

                      As we see in chapter 6, Hamlet is afflicted. The death of his father and the “o’erhasty marriage” of his mother to his uncle so threaten Hamlet’s ego that he finds himself splintered, driven to action even as he resists action with doubts and delays. He is a son who must act against his “parents”, Gertrude and Claudius, in order to revenge his father and alleviate his own psychic injury, a symbolic castration. A feminist reading indicates a solution: for Hamlet, delaying and attacking the feminine is a handy substitute for avoiding Claudius. Many times Hamlet’s speech signals his perhaps unconscious thoughts that it is his mother’s fault for being an object of competing male desires whether she actually had a hand in the king Hamlet’s murder or not.

                        The feminism is based upon Hamlet’s loathing of his mother and all feminine subject as well. His fear and hatred for women turn inwardly and destroy him. Hamlet contends with the women’s body, his mother’s, and he finds its sexual proclivities disgusting, as he rails at her in her chamber. He loathes himself for being born out of the female body; his own sexual conflicts and confused desires threaten him from the unconscious. Hamlet condemns his mother’s incestuous union with Claudius but mirrors the incest in his own oedipal desire for his mother – Gertrude.  

                                  The play reflects the role of women in Elizabethan society, from the way Ophelia must obey her father – Polonius without question. But the cultural roles of such women of the court are not applicable to women of all classes in Elizabethan time or our own, what women stand for psychologically and sexually in ‘Hamlet’.

                                 The night from which the apparition of king Hamlet initially emerged is described in female terms, compounding the fear of unrest in general with fear of feminine. Claudius has taken his wife “our sometime sister, now our queen……with mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage”.

                                Gertrude pleads with Hamlet to stop mourning his father, and Claudius ask him to think of him as a new father. When Hamlet thinks of himself, he thinks first of “this too to sallied flash”, which he would destroy had “the everlasting not fix’d”. If his flesh is sullied, his mother’s polluted: in the monologue he blames his mother’s “frailty” for exchanging “Hyperion” for a “satyr”. She is “unrighteous” in her lust.

                          Hamlet’s meditation upon his mother’s fault and his later assault upon her keys to understanding his torment, but while many critics have been content to move through the play seeing Gertrude only through her son’s angry eyes, Carolyn Heilbrun has provided an important feminist revision of Gertrude. Gertrude expresses herself well throughout the play. She is solicitous of Hamlet, asking him to sit near her tie give him a sense of belonging to the new court, and her speech to Laertes upon Ophelia’s death is a model of decorum and sensitivity, one instance in which her usual directness would not be appropriate. As Hamlet rails against his mother and even violently seizes her in act – III, she betrays no knowledge of the murder. She thinks Hamlet mad and promises she will not betray him, and she does not. We do not know her motives for marrying Claudius – perhaps she feared for her life and really did not have a choice.- but she is honest enough to admit that sex had something to do with it. It is interesting that he assumes she had a choice in marrying Claudius; perhaps he sees her as much more powerful than she really is in the situation.

                            Let us contrast the distorted image of the mother Hamlet projects upon Gertrude with these evident dimensions of her character. Their relationship is important for feminism; Gertrude is the literal and symbolic ground of all the conflict in the play; her body and soul are contested by her son – Hamlet, her husband and courtiers. The king Hamlet’s ghost desire for leniency with his wife is not matched by similar sentiments of other male characters in the play. And when Laertes warns Ophelia about Hamlet’s intention, she jibes him about his own sexual escapades with women. Ophelia is a more sympathetic – and more reliable – character compared to her hypocritical brother and scheming father. She also seems to be a better judge of Hamlet’s strange behavior. We can say that queen’s behavior was very different with compared to her husband, as he drinks and carouses into the night.

                               Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” speech follows these shifting scenes of falsehood and betrayal. Ophelia interrupts him and is greeted as “nymph”; Hamlet ask her to pray for him, but then begins to berate her savagely, the 1^st time he has really let his emotions go in front of someone else. In the play – within –the play, the poison used to kill the king Hamlet is described as a “Hecat’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected”. The witch Hecate is a dark feminine image from early Greek mythology.

                               The final act begins with Hamlet and Laertes fighting in Ophelia’s newly dug grave, after which Hamlet confesses his love for her, a question that has been left hanging until now. Perhaps her death awakened in him his true nature as a lover of women instead of a victim of them, but we must remember it was his habit of misdirected anger that led to her despair and suicide. Hamlet and the two women he loved join his two fathers and Laertes in death.

Conclusion:-

                        Through ‘Hamlet’ we attracted by feministic approach because in real world also it happened everywhere as same in this movie both the female character.