We have provided you with Extra and Important Questions from Class 10 Social Science History Chapter 8 Novels, Society and History. This Extra and Important Questions will help you to score 100% in your Board Exams. These extra questions will be helpful to revise the important topics and concepts.

Novels, Society and History Class 10 Important Questions with Answers History Chapter 8

Extra Questions for Class 10 History Chapter 8 Very Short Answer Type

Question: What is a novel ?

Answer: The novel is a modern form of literature. It is born from print, a mechanical invention.

Question: Which novel was serialised in a magazine in 1836 ? [CBSE 2016-17]

Answer: Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers.

Question: Why the novels were widely read and became popular very quickly ?

Answer: The novels were being printed and therefore these were widely read and became popular very quickly.

Question: ‘Novels produced a number of common interests among their scattered and varied readers.’ State any one common interest.

Answer: By identifying with the lives of the fictitious characters, the readers could think about issues such as relationship between love and marriage, the proper conduct for men and women.

Question: What do you understand by gentlemanly classes in the 18th century Europe ?

Answer: Gentlemanly classes were people who claimed noble birth and high social position. They were supposed to set the standard for proper behaviour.

Question: Who was author of Tom Jones (1749) and how was it published and what was its price ?

Answer: ‘Tom Jones was written by Henry Fielding. It was published in six volumes priced at three shilling each.

Question: Which novel was written by Samuel Richardson that told much of its story through an exchange of letters between two lovers ?

Answer: Pamela.

Question: What did Henry Fielding, a novelist of early eighteenth century claim ?

Answer: He claimed that he was ‘the founder of a new province of writing’ where he could make his own laws.

Question: What is Epistolary ?

Answer: It is written in the form of series of letters.

Question: Describe any one result of increase in the readership of novels and expansion of market for books.

Answer: With the increase in the earning of authors, their financial dependence on the patronage of aristocrats came to an end.

Question: What was subject matter of Charles Dickens’s novel ‘Hard Times’ ?

Answer: The subject matter related to the terrible effects of industrialisation on people’s lives and characters.

Question: Who wrote Germinal (1855) ? What was its subject ?

Answer: Emile Zola wrote Germinal on grim conditions on the life of a young miner in France.

Question: Mention any one novel written by Thomas Hardy.

Answer: Mayor of Casterbridge.

Question: What is Vernacular language ?

Answer: The normal spoken form of a language rather than the formal literary form.

Question: Who wrote Jane Eyre and when was it published ?

Answer :Jane Eyre was written by Charlotte Bronte. It was published in 1847.

Question: Who is the author of the ‘ Jungle Book’ ?

Answer: Rudyard Kipling.

Question: Describe one advantage of novels.

Answer: Novels produce the sense of a shared world between diverse people in a nation.

Question: Why women in the eighteenth century had more involvement in the novels ?

Answer: In the eighteenth century, the middle classes had become more prosperous. Thus women got more leisure to read as well as write novels.

Question: What was the subject matter of novels of Jane Austen ?

Answer: The novels of Jane Austen give us a glimpse of the world of women in general rural society in early nineteenth century Britain.

Question: Which Indian novelist tried to translate English novel Henrietta Temple written by Benjamin Disraeli ?

Answer: O. Chandu Menon.

Question: Which was the first modern novel in Malayalam ?

Answer: Indulekha.

Question: What is the place of Bharatendu Harishchandra in Hindi literature in north India ?

Answer: Bharatendu Harishchandra is considered the pioneer of modern Hindi literature.

Question: Who wrote the first proper modern novel ?

Answer: Srinivas Das of Delhi worte Pariksha-Guru (The Master Examiner) that was published in 1882. It was the first proper modem novel.

Extra Questions for Class 10 History Chapter 8 Short Answer Type

Question: What were the effects of growth in readership and expansion of the market for books in 18th century ?

Answer: The effects of growth in readership and expansion in the market for books were as mentioned below :

• With the expansion of market, the earnings of authors increased.
• This freed the authors from financial dependence on the patronage of aristocrats, and gave them independence to experiment with different literary styles.
• Henry Fielding, a novelist, claimed he was ‘the founder of a new province of writing’ where he could make his own laws.
• The novel allowed flexibility in the form of writing.
• Walter Scott remembered and collected popular Scottish ballads which he used in his historical novels about wars between Scottish clans.
• The epistolary novel used the private and personal form of letters to tell its story. For example Samuel Richardson’s Pamela told much of its story through an exchange of letters between two lovers. These letters tell the reader of the hidden conflicts in the heroine’s mind.

Question: How did serialisation of novels increase the popularity of novels and maga¬zines ?

Answer: Serialisation of novels increased the popularity of novels and magazines in the following ways :

• Magazines were attractive since they were illustrated and cheap.
• Serialisation allowed readers to relish the suspense, discuss the characters of a novel and live for weeks with their stories like viewers of television soaps today.
• Serialisation increased the circulation of magazines as well.

Question: Describe the main features of condition of Europe hi the nineteenth century.

Answer: Main features of condition of Europe in the nineteenth century were as mentioned below :

• 19th century was an age of industrialisation.
• Factories came up in the cities.
• Business profits had increased and the economy grew.
• Cities expanded in an unregulated way.
• Cities were full of overworked and underpaid workers.
• Unemployment had increased. Unemployed poor roamed the streets for jobs.
• The homeless were forced to seek shelter in workhouses.
• The growth of industry was accompanied by an economic philosophy which celebrated the pursuit of profit and undervalued the lives of workers. Deeply critical of these developments, novelists such as Charles Dickens wrote about terrible effects of industrialisation on people’s lives and characters.

Question: Discuss some of the changes in the 19th century Britain which Charles Dickens wrote about.

Answer: Charles Dickens dealt with the following changes :

• He wrote about the terrible effects of industrialisation on people’s lives and characters.
• His novels Hard Times describes Coketown, a fictitious industrial town, as a grim place full of machinery, smoking chimneys, rivers polluted purple and buildings that looked the same.
• Workers are known as ‘hands’ and had no identity other than as operators of machines.
• The main object of the industrialists was to earn profit.
• Human beings were reduced as simple instruments of production.
• In other novels too, Dickens focused on the terrible conditions of urban life under industrial capitalism. His Oliver Twist (1838) is the tale of a poor orphan who lived in a world of petty criminals and beggars. Brought up in a cruel workhouse, Oliver was finally adopted by a wealthy man and lived happily thereafter. But not all novels about the lives of the poor gave readers the comfort of a happy ending.

Question: Who wrote Germinal and when ? What is the subject of the novel ?

Answer: Germinal (1885) was written by Emile Zola.

It is written on the life of a young minor in France. Here the author explores in harsh detail the grim conditions of miners’ lives. It ends on a note of despair because the strike the hero leads fails. His co-workers turn against him, and hopes are shattered.

Question: Highlight any three advantages of using vernacular languages in novels.

Answer: The vernacular is the language that is spoken by common people. Its use has the following advantages :

• By coming closer to the different spoken languages of the people, the novel produces the sense of a shared world between diverse people in a nation.
• Novels also draw from different styles of language.
• A novel may take a classical language and combine with the language of the streets and make them all a part of the vernacular that it uses. Thus like the nation, the novel brings together many cultures.

Question: In what ways was woman depicted in Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre ?

Answer: Three popular themes on which women in England wrote novels in the nineteenth century were as mentioned below :

• Many novels were about domestic life.
• Jane Austen give us a glimpse of the world of women in genteel rural society in early nineteenth century.
• Some novels dealt with women who broke established norms of society before adjusting to them. Such stories allowed women readers to sympathise with rebellious actions.In Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre published in 1874, young Jane is shown as independent and assertive. While girls other time were expected to be quiet and well behaved, Jane at the age of ten protests against the hypocrisy of her elders with startling bluntness. She tells her Aunt who is always unkind to her : “People think you a good woman but you are bad…. You are deceitful! I will never call you aunt as long as I live.’

Question: What were the views of George Eliot on women novelists ?

Answer: George Eliot (1819-1880) was the pen-name of Mary Ann Evans.She was a very popular novelist and believed that novels gave women a special opportunity to express themselves freely.She believed that every woman could see herself as capable of writing fiction. She said,“Fiction is a department of literature in which women can, after their kind fully equal men.No educational restrictions can shut women from the materials of fiction, and there is no species of art that is so free from rigid requirements.”

Question: When did the novels develop in India and why ?

Answer: (1) The novels developed in India in the 19th century.

(2) Causes for development of novels : India became familiar with the Western novel.Development of the vernaculars, print and a reading public helped in the development of novel. One of the earliest Indian novels in Marathi was Baba Padmanji’s Yamuna Paryatan (1857) which used a simple style of storytelling to speak about the plight of widows.Translation of novels into different languages too helped in the development.

Question: Describe the importance of writings of Devaki Nanclan Khatri in Hindi.

Answer: The importance of writings of Devaki Nand-an Khatri is as mentioned below :

• His writings created a novel reading public in Hindi.
• Chandrakanta is a romance with dazzling elements of fantasy, contributed immensely in popularising the Hindi language and the Nagari script among the educated classes of those times.
• It was written purely for ‘pleasure of reading but it also gives some interesting insights into the fears and desires of its reading public.

Extra Questions for Class 10 History Chapter 8 Long Answer Type

Question: Write a short note on novel in Assam.

Answer: The first novels in Assam were written by missionaries.Two of them were translations of Bengali including Phulmoni and Karuna.In 1888, Assamese students in Kolkata formed the ‘Asamya Bhasar Unnatisadhan’ that brought out a journal called Jonaki.The journal Jonaki opened up the opportunities for new authors to develop the novel. Rajanikanta Bardoloi wrote the first major historical novel in Assam called Manomati (1900).It is set in the Burmese invasion, stories of which the author had probably heard from old soldiers who had faught in the 1819 campaign.It is a tale of two lovers belonging to two hostile families who are separated by the war and finally reunited.

Question: Describe the features of the novels which were written for the young boys and girls in the late nineteenth century in Europe.

Answer: The main features of the novels written for the young boys and girls in the late nineteenth century were as mentioned below :

• New type of man : Novels for young boys idealised a new type of man who was powerful, assertive, independent and daring.Most of these novels were adventurous.These novels were set in places remote from Europe.The colonisers appear heroic and honourable – confronting native peoples and strange unknown surroundings. They adapted to native life as well as changed it, colonised and developed nations there. Thus books like R L Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1883) or Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book became very popular.
• Historical : Some novels were historical adventure about conquering new lands in Mexico, Alexandria, Siberia and other countries. It threw light on historical events, military action and courage of the English people. For example, G.A. Henty’s novel Under Drake’s Flag (1883) two young Elizabethan adventurers faced death, but still remembered to assert their Englishness. His novels were wildly popular during the height of the British Empire. They aroused the excitement and adventure of conquering strange lands.
• Love stories : Love stories were written for adolescent girls and became popular especially in the US. Examples are Ramona (1884) by Helen Hunt Jackson and a series entitled What Katy Did (1872) by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, who wrote under the pen-name Susan Coolidge.

Question: Describe the picture of the new middle class as portrayed in the novel Pariksha- Guru.

Answer: (1) The first proper modern novel in Hindi was Pariksha-Guru’ published in 1882.

(2) It was written by Srinivas Das of Delhi.

(3) The characteristics of the novel are as mentioned below :

• It reflects the inner and outer world of the newly emerging middle classes.
• The characters are caught in the difficulty of adopting to colonised society and at the same time preserving their own cultural identity.
• The world of colonial modernity seems to be both frightening and irresistible to the characters.
• The novel tries to teach the reader the ‘right way’ to live and expects all ‘sensible men’ to be worldly-wise and practical.
• It expects them to remain rooted in the values of their own tradition and culture and to live with dignity and honour.

Question: Describe the development of novels in Bengal.

Answer:

• Two types of novels : In the nineteenth century, early Bengali novels were categorised into two types – one based on historical events and second dealt with domestic life, social problems and romantic relationships between men and women.
• Two famous novelists are Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay.
• Two types of people in society : There were two types of people in Calcutta. The old merchant elite patronised public forms of entertainment e.g., kabirlarai, musical soirees and dance performances. On the other hand, new bhadralok read novels at home individually. They could also be read in select groups.
• Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s contribution : Bankim would host a jatra in his courtyard where members of the family would be gathered. In Bankim’s room, his literary friends would collect to read, discuss and judge literary works. Bankim read out Durgeshnandini (1865) to such a group of friends. They were surprised to realise that the Bengali novel had achieved excellence so quickly. Thus, the contribution of Bankim was significant in thedevelopment of novels in Bengal.
• Style : (a) The prose style was enjoyed by the readers.
• (b) Initially the Bengali novel used a colloquial style associated with urban life. It also used meyeli. It was replaced by Bankim’s prose which was Sanskritised but also contained a more vernacular style.Thus, novel became popular in Bengal. It was enjoyed due to ingenious twists, and turns of the plot and the suspense and its language. In the twentieth century, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay told stories in simple language and became most popular novelist in Bengal and probably in the rest of India.

Question: “Colonial administrators found vernacular novels a valuable source of information on native life and customs.” Support the statement with suitable examples.

Answer: (1) Colonial administrators :

• It helped the colonial administrators to get information on native life and customs which was very useful for them in governing Indian society with its large variety of communities and castes.
• The British knew little about life inside Indian households.
• The new novels in Indian languages often had descriptions of domestic life.
• They showed how people dressed, their forms of religious worship, their beliefs and practices, and so on.

(2) Indians :

• Indians used the novel as a powerful medium to criticise what they considered defects in their society and to suggest remedies.
• Writers like Viresalingam used the novel mainly to propagate their ideas about society among a wider readership.
• Novels glorified the past and helped in creating a sense of national pride among their readers.
• Different types of people read novels in the same language. This created a sense of collective belonging on the basis of one’s language.
• Generally, people living in different regions speak the same language in different ways. With the coming of novels, such variations were used in the print and novels. This made readers familiar with the ways in which people in other parts of the land spoke their language.Thus, the novels brought different peoples from different regions closer to each other.