Twentieth-Century English Literature

Twentieth-Century Literature

Main features of 20th Century Literature  

[ Literary Creativity of 20th Century England.]

• Many women writers like Virginia Woolf, Iris Murdoch and Margaret Drabble wrote about female experiences. They attacked male-dominated codes, norms and themes. Their main characters are women and they write from a female point of view. They wrote about the lives, problems and special concerns of women in the modern world.

• Many writers wrote psychological novels examining the deep and hidden psyche of the characters.

• Writers wrote about taboo subjects like lesbianism, gay, sex openly. The works of modern writers had no fixed themes. They were too open to many interpretations.

• Since this century faced two World Wars, the writers wrote against war, violence and barbarism. Patriotism began to be thought of as absurd and meaningless.

• Writers invented new forms and techniques, breaking away the established literary rules. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence introduced the stream of consciousness technique. Similarly, many absurdist writers introduced the theme of the meaninglessness of human existence.

• In this period, the marginal groups raised their voice in their works. Writers such as G.B.Shaw and John Galsworthy attacked the social and political corruption of England.

• Writers like T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden and W.B. Yeats wrote about religious awakening. These writers thought that the modern world has gone mad because man has lost faith in religion and God.

• Science fiction and detective novels also emerged in this period.

Drama of  Twentieth-Century

Theatre of the absurd / Absurdist dramatists:

Samuel Beckett is considered the grandmaster of the theatre of the absurd. The other dramatist belonging to this group are Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. The writers belonging to this group show their anguish at the absurdity of the human condition. For them, man’s existence on earth is meaningless. We do the same thing day after day. There is no newness or growth. They claim that our life is boring, dull and monotonous. The characters in their plays are often handicapped and like prisoners. They cannot communicate with other individuals. There is no proper plot and there is action without any purpose.

Samuel Beckett: He was born in Ireland. His plays are despairing plays. His characters refuse to love and relationship with another person. He sees language as building a wall between human beings that stops them from communicating. His major dramas are:

Waiting for Godot:  This play shows two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, waiting for Godot whom they haven’t known. Godot never comes to meet them, and may not even exist. They do a lot of talking but their communication is meaningless and without any logical reasoning.

Krapp’s Last Tape: It has only one character, an old man sitting in a closed room with the tape-recorder, in which he hears his previous recordings and compares them to his present situation.

Harold Pinter: The central theme of his plays is every person is a stranger to the other. Humans can not communicate meaningfully with others. Humans are trapped in their own world. His major plays are:

The Caretaker:  The main theme of this play is that no one takes care of others. There are only three characters and each character are empty. Their words and actions do not match.

No Man’s Land: This play shows the meeting of two old men who had known each other when they were young. One is now rich and successful while the other man is in many ways a failure. In a sense, they are enemies. Although on the surface they meet as friends, there is always a feeling of danger between them. In some ways, it is the rich and successful man who is the real failure because in his heart he is living in the ‘no man’s land’ of no feelings and no hope.

The Birthday Party

Serious plays on social and political criticism:

G.B. Shaw: He was born in Ireland. He gave new points of view and way of looking at themselves and the society they lived in. He delighted in showing the opposite of what his audiences expected. Several of his plays show in various ways the working of his theory of the ‘Life Force’, the power that drives people to value life as a great gift and fight for a better world, and that leads women, in particular, to want to have children so that life can be continued. He did not believe in Christianity but the life force. He uses comedy to expose the social evils. Shaw wrote more than 50 plays during his lifetime. His major plays are:

Man and Superman: This drama shows that a women’s real aim in life is to find the man that nature tells her is the right father for her children.

The Apple Cart: This is a political play that shows that he was in favour of monarchy rather than democratic leaders.

The Devil’s Disciple: In this play, the man whom conventional society has thought of as evil and selfish is willing to sacrifice himself for others, while the minister of religion discovers that he should have been a soldier.

Major Barbara: In this play, the heroine, a woman of strong personality and ideals, exchanges her belief in Christianity for that in the Life Force.

Arms and the Man: He presents a soldier as a sympathetic figure who does not want to fight.

Pleasant and Unpleasant

John Galsworthy: He criticizes the social and political evils of society and shows great sympathy towards poor and helpless people. His major novels are:

Strife: In this play, he shows how the strike troubles the poor and working-class people.

Justice: This is about a poor man who signs a false cheque and later is sent to jail by the judge. Hopelessly he kills himself.

Comic plays

Oscar Wilde: His most famous play is ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ which is filled with witty language. Two girls in this play fall in love with the name Earnest. They are in search of a man named Earnest. Two men pretend to be Earnest and trap those girls in their love. This shows the difference between appearance and reality. The characters are shallow and cunning with double standards.

Tom Stoppard: He chooses characters from earlier plays and places them under different situations to provide audiences with new insights. His play ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’ is about two minor characters of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Similarly, his other play ‘Travesties’ contains the characters of Wilde’s play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ but they are analyzed from a different point of view.

Also Read

• Historical Survey of English Language & Literature 

• History of Eighteenth-Century English Literature 

• Literature For English Language Development for Secondary Level Education 

• Romanticism | Romantic Poetry of Early 19th Century 

• Twentieth-Century English Literature 

• Victorian Novelists - Later Nineteenth Century Novelists

20th Century Poetry

The poets who participated in the war or whose poems are about war are termed, war poets.

First World War Poets

These poets participated in the First World War in England.

Rupert Brooke: He had a Romantic and patriotic view on war. In his poem ‘Soldier’, he glorifies England and says that he will be proud even if he dies for England.

Siegfried Sasson: He attacked the warlords or officers who ordered soldiers to kill other soldiers. He thought that war is destructive, pointless and inhuman because it turns humans into beasts. He also hated the patriotic satisfaction of the people at home who believed the heroic stories that the government told them about war. He also hated people who glorified war without understanding the misery and suffering of people who went into the battlefield. In his poem ‘Everyone Sang’ he writes how the end of the war brings comfort to everyone.

Wilfred Owen: His poems show very sorrowfully the discomfort, danger and pain of the soldiers, and the permanent damage which the war did to their minds and happiness. For him, the soldiers who fight from different countries are all humans and their suffering is the same. No one can become a hero by killing fellow humans. In his poem ‘Strange Meeting’ he imagines a meeting in hell with an enemy soldier he had killed who reminds him of their common humanity. His other poem ‘Anthem for the Doomed Youth’ shows the waste of many young men in the First World War who died as cattle.

Second World War Poets

These poets saw the destruction caused by the Second World War. The heroic patriotism was lost forever. War did not only kill soldiers it also killed their hopes and future. The poets wrote demanding the end of all sorts of war.

Poets who Attacked Modern Civilization

W.B. Yeats:

He was an Irish poet. In his earlier days, he wrote poems about Ireland, its people and traditions. In later days, his poems became more universal in theme. He was disturbed by the brutality, loss of values and fragmentation caused by modern civilizations. His major poems are:

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

In this poem, the Airman knows that he will die in a war that won’t leave any positive effect on his country. Though he is fighting for the people, actually it won’t benefit the people and his village.

The Second Coming

He thought after every 2000 years, the earth gets destroyed and a new era begins. He envisions that the modern civilization is very near to destruction because it is about to pass 2000 years and new monotonous types of creatures will rule this world.

Sailing to Byzantium:  The theme of this poem is that art never dies, it escapes old age, decay and biological change.

T.S. Eliot:  He is one of the pioneers of modern poetry. He was disturbed by the damage, loss of hope, and fragmentation caused by the two world wars. He thought that belief on Christianity and submission to God are only means to escape from fragmentation caused by modern civilization. For him, modern man is sexually impotent, hollow, fragmented and destroyed. His major poems are:

The Waste Land:  This is a long, complex poem that brings together a group of characters from different parts of the world and from different times. It gives a true picture of western civilization where people suffer from emptiness, barrenness, loss of values, cultural decay. Here Hindu philosophy, Buddhist philosophy and Christian philosophy are brought together to make people aware that modern man should find solace from these ancient philosophies. He used a fragmentary technique to show the fragmented man. The ending of this poem is :

Four Quartets:  In this poem collection, he claims that God is the only source that will provide wholeness and purpose to man’s life. Modern people are depressed and fragmented because they have forgotten the values of religion and God.

W. H. Auden: His earlier poems show concern for important political and social events. He thought that the present situation of politics and social systems need to be changed. He thought that literature should help social and political change. He wrote directly about political events and their effect on private lives. His poems are about depression, unemployment and indifference of human kinds towards others' sufferings. He also hated modern civilization that made humans like a machine without love and affection. In his poem ‘Museum of Fine Arts’ he shows how people are indifferent towards other's sufferings. In his later years his poems show that spirituality and belief in Christian values can help humans to overcome anxiety, loss and depression. He was also like Yeats because he believed that modern civilization has gone mad because humans have lost faith in God.

Poets who wrote about nature and natural life

Dylan Thomas: The language of Dylan Thomas is completely different: full of life, energy and feeling with great strength and power. His works praise and delight in natural forces: the life of nature and the countryside, the forces of birth, sex and death. His poems raise issues completely different from others.

Ted Hughes

He is considered an animal poet because most poems are about animals and their uniqueness. He thought that violence is unconsciously hidden in the human and animal world. He describes the beauty and brutality he saw in nature. Some of his fine poems are ‘The Pike’ and ‘The Cave Birds’.

20th Century Novelists

Women Novelists

Virginia Woolf

She is the leading figure of a modern experimental novel. She also used the stream of consciousness technique in her novels to reveal the true psyche of her characters. Her novels are about loneliness and love. She was a supporter of women’s rights. Her novels show the psyche of characters rather than sequences of events in the external world. Her famous novels are:

To the Lighthouse

This play presents a family holiday on an island. The youngest son wants very much to go by boat to the lighthouse but is prevented by his father. The son becomes very sad. After 10 years the same family goes to visit the same island. The son visits the lighthouse as ordered by his father. But this time also he is sad and hates his father. This novel shows the conflict between factual truth and deeper truth.

Mrs. Dalloway

In this novel, Mrs. Dalloway invites people to her party, but the people who come there seem lonelier in the crowd.

Orland

This presents the main character who begins as a man in the 16th century and ends as a woman in 1928, still only thirty-six years old. On the surface, the story is fanciful and amusing but it is highly symbolic.

Iris Murdoch

Her characters face difficult moral choices in their search for love and freedom and are often involved in complex networks of love affairs. Her novels are complex. Her characters struggle with society but at last, they think that they can not change themselves and their society. Her major novels are ‘The Bell’, ‘A Severed Head’ , ‘Under the Net’ and ‘The Black Prince’.

Doris Lessing

She is one of the most politically conscious women novelists of the 20th century. Her characters are unable to distinguish between the way things appear to be and the way they really are. Much of her works are concerned with the everyday and inner lives of sensitive women. She wrote psychological novels exploring the madness of characters and their deeper self-analysis. Her major novels are:

The Grass is Singing

This novel is set in southern Africa. It explores the mind of the wife of a poor white farmer and the difficulties that lead to her destruction.

Children of Violence

This novel is about Martha Quest who tries to isolate herself from the old ideas of society, politics and religion. She lives by her own beliefs and ideals.

The Golden Notebook: It is a powerful attempt to write honestly about women’s lives and beliefs and the pressures that political and social events in 20th-century life and society put on them. The male characters in the novel often try to hurt females because they themselves are weak.

d). Margaret Drabble: Her main characters are always women, and they are often women who are studious and intelligent. Before joining their literary career, she had been an actress in the theatre. She is often called the “women’s novelist”. She explores the theme of feminism, searches for identity, equal rights, freedom and justice. Her characters are confused women who try to integrate the family life and her career.

Her major novels are

The Milestone

It is about a girl who has avoided any deep feelings or close relationships with other people. She finds that she is brought into the world of human feelings by her love for her child.

The Waterfall

It is about a poetess, who is unable at the beginning of the novel to connect body and mind. She is saved from the coldness of her life by sexual love, and is at last able to understand herself and her personality as a woman.

The Ice Age

This novel presents a wider picture of an unhappy world in which the coldness of the spirit and the feelings that comes when people only live in one part of their personalities is shown as a danger to the whole society.

Detective novelists ( Spy novelists)

The detective novels are based on mystery, suspense and murder. The main character goes in search of finding the murderer, robber or something lost. The main character has to disguise themself in order to find the murderer or to solve the mystery. The detective novelists are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and John Le Carre. Agatha Christie’s famous detective novel is ‘The Mysterious Affair of Styles’ and John Le Carre’s famous novel is ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’.

Science fiction

Science fiction is generally described as stories based on developments in science or technology, either existing developments or fictional developments of the future. Early science fiction falls into three main areas/themes/categories:

Pessimistic View

Some writers were afraid of the rapid developments of science and technology. They thought that scientific developments put in danger to future of man and this world.

Neutral View

Some writers thought that developments of science are both boon and curse. They raised the question of what may happen after man has defeated the problems of war, disease and poverty. They may go beyond the limits of the human body and gain some qualities of machines.

E Optimistic View

Some writers were in favour of rapid advancement in science and technology. They thought that although man may have lost something of natural life on earth, they can explore the world of space.

Arthur Clarke

His books take an optimistic view of technological progress. His novels and stories often focus on space travel and other ways in which technology will shape the future. In his novel, ‘The City and the Stars’, the struggle between man and the machine is shown. His other novel ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ takes up the subject of exploration in space.

George Orwell

His ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ is also a science fiction in which he shows how the advancement of all watching T.V would help to limit the freedom of people.

H.G. Wells

He was very interested in the scientific advances of his age and looked ahead to imagine what the results might be in future. He was optimistic about scientific advances although he was conscious of possible dangers. He also shows the struggle between humans and non-humans.

Doris Lessing

Most of the novels are science fiction. She describes the world after it has been almost destroyed. Her famous science fiction is ‘The Four-Gated City’.

Other Novelists

Rudyard Kipling

He was born in India and spent much time there but later moved to England. His novels project his ideas that English and England are superior to others. His novel ‘Kim’ presents an Indian boy named Kim who is born of foreign parents. Kim helps the agent of the British Empire to acquire some secret papers from the Russians. His other novel ‘The Jungle Book’ is about a boy who is raised by wolves. He lives in the remote areas of India but later leaves the jungle in order to become a man.

E.M Forster

He presented new ideas about people and society. He was a humanist writer. Though he was British, he attacked the British government for its inhuman treatment of Indians. He attacked the false and pretentious behaviour of people. He thought that society should be free from materialistic attitudes to achieve harmony and understanding. His famous novels are:

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Howard’s End

This novel shows the conflict between spirituality and materialism. He attacks the people who are running towards wealth and false appearance. The people are judged by society as failure may indeed be more successful than others. Success is not marked by money and wealth but by goodliness, humanity and spirituality.

D.H. Lawrence

His works express the inner qualities of human nature. His novels have an influence on the psychological theories of Sigmund Freud. His works analyze the human relationship in depth. He shows how the relationship between people is always changing. He analyzes the relationship between man and his environment, the relationship between the generations, the relationship between man and woman, the relationship between instinct and intellect. His major novels are:

Sons and Lovers

This is a thinly autobiographical novel. This novel deals with the conflict between Paul’s working-class father and his middle-class mother. The mother turns towards her son for the emotional fulfilment denied to her by her husband. The novel ends with the death of the mother which gives relief to the son.

The Rainbow

This novel tells the story of a family through three couples who are of three generations:

First-generation

(Lydia and Tom)-They have a deep and loving understanding of each other and also communicate with the outside world.

Second generation

(Anna and Will): They have physical passion for each other but their souls remain separate.

Third generation

(Ursula and Anton): They do not love each other but try to force their own wishes on the other.

James Joyce

He was born in Ireland. He created a completely new style of writing which is termed as ‘stream of consciousness technique’ or ‘interior monologue’. This technique allows the reader to move inside the minds of the characters and presents their thoughts and feelings in a continuous stream. It breaks all the usual rules of description, speech and punctuation. The works of Joyce are complex, paradoxical with no fixed themes. He brings history and myth in his novels to give new insights. He wrote realistic novels. His major novels are:

Ulysses

This novel is about an artist named Stephen Dedalus who wants to free himself from this cruel world. The titles and characters of this novel are connected with and reflect characters and events from ancient Greece stories. This novel is funny, touching, satirical and paradoxical.

The Dead

It is about a husband who realizes that his wife is in love with another man. But when he finds that her lover is dead, he finds satisfaction.

Finnegan’s Wake

George Orwell

He was a political conscious novelist. He attacked all kinds of falsity, barbarism and corruption in the British government.

His major novels are

Nineteen Eighty-Four

This book describes a future world where word and action are seen and controlled by the government. The government has developed a kind of television that can watch people in their homes. The government changes the language and teaches them to talk about only those what the government want them to do. This book provides a pessimistic picture of a future government where people’s feelings and emotions will be controlled by the government.

Animal Farm

It is a political allegory, which tells the story of a political revolution that has gone wrong. The animals on the farm, led by pigs, drive out their master Jones and take control of the farm. Soon the purity of their political ideas is destroyed and they end by being just as greedy and dishonest as the farmer whom they had driven out.