Assignment 5 : Chapter 5 : Conclusion : 22417 – Paper 210A : Research Project Writing : Dissertation Writing

• Name : Nirav Lalitbhai Amreliya

• Batch : M.A. Sem. 4 (2021-2023)

• Enrollment N/o. : 4069206420210002

• Roll N/o. : 18

• Subject Code & Paper N/o. : 22417 – Paper 210A : Research Project Writing : Dissertation Writing

• Email Address : niramreliyaunofficial@gmail.com

• Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English – Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University – Bhavnagar – 364001

• Date of Submission : 30th March, 2023

Critique of Socio-Economic and Religious Relationship to Individual Freedom in George Orwell's Novels 'A Clergyman's Daughter' and 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying.'

Chapter 5 : Conclusion

Now gradually bringing discussion to an open-ended end we find the dealings of critical reception of both the selected novels have highlighted the startling need of regurgitating and ruminating the problems like poverty, dilapidated individual liberty - of mind, thoughts, and physique, religious strictures and its hazardous impact on human behaviour leading to injured mental and physical health, deep-rooted patriarchy and its trampling over the silenced femininity, reckless material pursuits in hyper-capitalist socio-political including religious as well structure - which all is brilliantly as well as with the edge of sardonicism by sir George Orwell. 

If we go by Smyer's idea of looking at 'A Clergyman's Daughter' with historical perspective, we find allusive treatment to the novel with the real-life historically religious stagnancy that affect the individual freedom in major portion of their life and the way of conducting it which is also curbed by religious norms, societal norms such as patriarchy and misogyny and so on and so forth, Dorothy's character may emerge as a roughly developed feminine identity over course of main actions which still lacks satisfying end as a result of realist novel where fantasical happy-endings are rarest of the rare to be seen in such realist works. The cycle of such afflictions can be diagrammed as follows : 

Religious Strictures -> Superimposition of Accepted and Unquestioned Beliefs and Idealistic Rituals -> Patriarchy Being One Such Norm -> Impact on Individual Behaviour Leading to Injured Mental and Physical Health -> Resulting Into Bleak Life of Sorrows Unaddressed. 

Smyer's historical ramblings helps understand the historically undocumented tyranny which are found in the literature of that time as well as having rich allusions to the bygone ages and its dogmatic treatment to the downtrodden and subdued feminine identities - not only in terms of females as far as gender-roles are concerned, but the spirit of feminine visage found in men as well. 

The aim of locating any literary text into history is what brings the historical sense as sir T. S. Eliot has also emphasised in his essay titled as 'Tradition and Individual Talent.' Historical sense allows person to have the foreboding sense of trajectory of his/her contemporary dynamics of religious, political, social, behavioural, psychological, and so on and so forth. Albeit historical sense is crucial in reading literature, it should not impact the aesthetic aspect as well. Literary writings should be looked at and tested as well with multiple angles leaving aside the limited axiom of two-sided coin so that the multi-faceted readings can be done in order to have the better understanding in knowledge-sharing and its applying process eventually resulting into better society consisting of better learned, thoughtful, thinking, free-hearted, and open people in sense of mind and physicality as well so that dreams of all can be easily achieved without any casteist, classist, racist, gender-based, societal, and religious hindrance. 

Meyer's perspective speculates the experimentative aspect of Orwell's 'A Clergyman's Daughter' as it also stated that Orwell's frustration might have been seeped into Dorothy's bleak being in the novel. As Orwell himself told that he considered his novel 'A Clergyman's Daughter' an experiment, it can be said that it has been his success which resulted into realistic character-studies with well-maintained subtlety of psychological impacts and its correlated behaviour resulting into their character-specific actions - this nuantic interweaving of psychological and physiological correlation is what makes the novel realistic and conforming to the real-life characters making it appropriate piece of contemporaneous connection as well as criticism. 

Critique can only be made of what is present - be it tangible or abstract - and in existence. Thus realistic depiction of characters, plot, and events paves the way to understand, observe, and analyze the real-life problems that are sure to occur in everybody's life as long as they breathe on the planet earth. As it is known fact that Early-Modern phase of Literary Writing was also marked for its novel experiments with all kinds of literary forms wherein certain authors like Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, etc. emerges as the experimentative writers of the age who bore the new genres such as Stream of Consciousness, etc. Criticism and Experimentation walked in locksteps during this age when Orwell was also writing his early experimentative novels. 

Vašendová's findings have more to do with religious aspect to the novel 'A Clergyman's Daughter' as she finds the implied indictment of the religious institution especially its derailing consequences on people and in particular Dorothy who represents the idealistic feminine identity imbued in patriarchal mindset unthinkingly as well as unquestionably borrowed from the ongoing established structure statured up to serve the joys and needs of men, although in presented as sugar-coated sweet religious candy which is bitter and hazardous from within side. 

Șalariu's feminist reading of 'A Clergyman's Daughter' provides the thoughtful investigation in feminine characters along with other novels written by Orwell. Șalariu's perspective is general in analyzing feminine characters though. This type of general reading provides the outline of the core, but fails to address it with its core details. This may help in skimming over the basic idea of what the text is all about, just like the introduction of any research paper or sort of abstract-like writing related to respective text. 

Shashikant Raghunath Mhalunkar has identified the social awareness imbued within the storyline of George Orwell's novels 'Burmese Days,' 'A Clergyman's Daughter,' and 'Coming Up for Air.' In this paper, he touches upon several factors which contribute in constructing the society, here, dystopian one, these factors include poverty, social snobbery, corruption in religion, exploitation, and oppression that were present during the time of The Great Distress or the post-world war I period especially in English rural, metropolitan, and countryside settings. Why such aspects of the societies such as poverty and corruption are time and again overlooked by the politicians and rulers and thus by the common people is the core question in Mhalunkar's paper, which resonates what is famously known and named after sir George Orwell as 'Orwellian' in the argument he proposed in his probe. 

Emma Lautman sees family position in George Orwell's novel 'A Clergyman's Daughter' with its related narration in the novel. This approach is minute and important as it focuses on the family-life of hop-pickers, how they strove to make the ends meet, what social status they held in the modern age, how mainline hierarchy is separated from the lives of them being poor and they being rich. 

Oğuz unlike Șalariu becomes specific in looking at the feminist theme in the novel 'A Clergyman’s Daughter' as the interception of Foucauldian idea of "power-play" as well as "master-slave relation" is brought to analyze feminism in the novel. Oğuz's clarity in identifying Dorothy's character as her being an essentialist at the same time an anti-essentialist; this is revealed in the former and recent life of Dorothy as first she tries to fit into the religiously patriarchal structure having gender-based discrimination against woman which she thinks to be appropriate for purity and chastity if woman out of which she is left with no satisfying and uplifting thing but the mental trauma, amnesiac brain-states, and a perceivable guilt of having her most time wasted into meaningless ritualistic ceremonies of church. 

Dorothy's characterization encompasses the feminine agonies and aspirations thanks to the brilliance of subtle understanding of human behaviour, psychology, and possession of the lens through which the layers of society can be observed of the author sir George Orwell. 

J. R. Hammond in his book 'A George Orwell Companion' reflects upon the novel 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying' with auto-biographical perspective. As 'David Copperfield' is said to be the implicit auto-biography of sir Charles Dickens, so Hammond tries to see 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying' as implicit auto-biography of Sir George Orwell himself. 

Valerie Meyers in the fifth chapter of her book titled as 'George Orwell' and 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying: Orwell’s Portrait of the Artist' respectively gives account of George Orwell's then-time need of money which was the cause of him publishing this novel with expectation of some income in exchange of the selling of the novel. She also like Hammond finds the very novel having quite adjacent rooted into Orwell's personal life, but apart from this, she also focuses on the portrayal of an artist who struggles - even in real life - to secure his subsistence from his writings, but rarely this happens, mostly all writers - unless being in good possession of wealth - pass their lives in penury and die in the same material condition. 

Sarah Graham in her article titled as 'Defined by the Home: Housing and Class Connections in George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying' is focusing on the family institution of the modern British social and familial hierarchy which is also focused on by Emma Lautman while looking at 'A Clergyman's Daughter' of the same author. Graham's stress is laid upon the class stratification in British society and its cause which is the World War I coming up with lack of funding in building new houses leading towards the worsening of slum areas and their hindered development due to lack of enough fund. 

Nicholas Guild forms the proposition of vacillating Godon Comstock between "swinish priesthood" at his sixteen to turning back to the hell to serve there as he finds no heaven to reject to give meaning to and find worth for his so-called priesthood which he constructed in his mind with the flair of fantasy. 

Eliza A. Morgan in her article 'Existential Orwell: Capitalism, Religion, and Philosophy' gives the outline of how Capitalism curbs the individual art and its submission to the "Money God" who is representation of the capitalist and Capitalism itself. She quotes Nicholas Guild : "poverty is revealed as a kind of spiritual death, a squalid, nasty business that isolates a man from normal human contacts." Albert Camus's 'The Myth of Sisyphus' is also referred while talking about the concept of "spiritual death" in context of Gordon Comstock's unwilling returning to the duty which once he despised and wanted to run away from. 

Christen M. Madrazo in his paper titled as 'Comstock's Lack and Desire: A Lacanian Reading of Orwell's Aspidistra' gives a brilliant insight to look into deep regimes of Gordon's psychological formation with the help of sir Jacques Lacan's tool for identification of relation between "gap and desire" which fits well into Gordon Comstock's character. What Lacan says is that wherever there is a gap or lack of any kind in human mind, it tries to fulfil it by means of a subject in form of thing, people, event, place, abstract ideas, or anything that that person finds it to the match of one's likeness and surrounding situations. This same befits the character of Gordon Comstock as he earlier despises the money for it having become the sole means for one's survival, but later on fails to change the mode of world into which it is moulded by the Capitalist Idealism where wealth is worshipped and answered by all those who believe money as a modern tool for wielding the world-power in one's hand, this is where George Orwell clenching to spread the awareness of how money-mindedness is gradually curbing the individual's freedom of every kind. 

Martha C. Carpentier in her article titled as 'Poem, Creed, Letter, Foetus : George Orwell's 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying'' presents multi-faceted aspects of one text that is 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying.' More importantly, she also has observed the inner conflict of Gordon Comstock's rejection of the idea which endorse the population control which Gordon finds the failure of Capitalism which puts bar between the lovers to make love at their pleasure and have as many as children they want, this sounds like Winston Smith's hatred towards the "Junior Anti-Sex League" in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' because he fails to express his love to Julia. 

All this meticulous detailing as well as its well-documentation paves the way for researchers and learners to grasp the theoretical concepts in more comprehensive way and serves as a ready reference to the already promulgated literary theories by various significant critics and literary writers in form of their written and spoken records of works.

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