THE HOPEWAY

Sometimes some situations come in your life when you feel just wow! You wish nothing more than the moment itself. You beg to rewind those seconds by borrowing Wells's time machine. I think it's better not to have them again. Otherwise, maybe they would lose the charm, the feeling, the appeal of joyful breathing. Take the instance of our visit to Chandannagar. Oh, my God, how can I forget my safe (?) landing with my Bros Rahul, Arindam, Tapas, Samir, Ashish, and of course my smiling, sometimes weeping, sister, Punku. That's the cool moment I want to relive again. Sandeep is a cool dude. Times spent with him may make you feel light like breeze. It's one of the perfect clicks done by Rahul, my bro. After a long while, you are heading home with your fellows. What will you think? Actually, there was not much time to think. Just enjoy and wonder with open mouth 😄. When you are sitting between the coolest Goutam and the hottest Sandip, your attitude mu...

ROMANTIC POETRY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CLASSICAL AND ROMANTIC – Romantic period was a reaction to Kant’s Enlightenment Theory of the eighteenth century. The classical stressed on reason, and order and the head. But the Romantic prefers intuition, emotion and the heart. To an Augustan writer, a child would be a civilized adult. But to the Romantic, a child is pure and holy. Wordsworth in the poem “My Heart Leaps Up” writes, ‘the Child is father of the Man’. But exceptionally, the poets like Gray, Collins and Cowper wrote with Romantic sensibility. Similarly, Byron was inspired by the classical poets. BLAKE – Blake illustrated his poems that can be read both visually and verbally. He wrote in terms of opposite. In his poem “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, Blake writes, “Without contraries is no progression”. Symbolism abounds in his poetry. He uses images of childhood in Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794). He has published Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of Experience i...

THEME OF EDUCATION IN HARD TIMES 1.      UTILITARIAN PHILOSOPHY – Dickens in his novel Hard Times has reflected the issue of imagination in the education system of the contemporary Victorian England. Through the character of Thomas Gradgrind, the author has hurled a sharp criticism at the ‘Utilitarian’ philosophy of Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill. Bentham’s declaration – ‘the greatest good of the greatest number’ – is proved by Dickens as nothing but a narrow-hearted, pleasurist system of philosophy. M’Choakumchild’s question to Sissy about the average quality of development of a country even if a small number of people would die starving, bears a poignant testimony to the inhumanity of the ‘moral arithmetic’ of Bentham and Mill. However Sissy’s character is formulated as a mouthpiece of Dickens himself. Her ‘stupid’ reply is replete with humanitarian dimensions – “… it must be just as hard upon those who were starved, whether the others were a million, or ...

FEMININITY IN DICKENS'S HARD TIMES 1.        FEMALES IN DICKENS – Hard Times (1854), subtitled “For These Times”, is one of the ‘state of the nation’ novels of Dickens. Here he presents a critique of the Poor Law Act of 1833. Again, it criticizes the Utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham – “the greatest good of the greatest number”. One of the shortest novels, Hard Times presents another well familiar motif of Dickens. He portrays femininity in not much various ways. His female characters are generally of two types – an indifferent mother and an angelic young woman. This pattern is observed in David Copperfield , Little Dorrit , Great Expectations , etc. 2.        MRS GRADGRIND – In Hard Times , the character of Mrs Gradgrind is portrayed in an unsympathetic way. She is an invalid, a permanently sick – both physically and mentally. Dickens’s own experience of cruel, nonchalant treatment by his mother haunts hi...