CHAUCER’S PORTRAYAL OF THE SERGEANT OF LAW

            Chaucer in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales tells about the qualities and skill of the Sergeant of Law.  The Sergeant of Law was a wise and prudent person who was held in great reverence.  The Sergeants of Law were the King’s legal advisers chosen from amongst well-established barristers.  This Sergeant was one of such persons.

            Stating the qualifications of the Sergeant of Law, Chaucer tells that he had very often been appointed by the King to act as a judge in assize.  An assize was the county court which used to be held periodically to administer justice.  He was also empowered to exercise full powers of a judge.  As a result of his knowledge and renown, he used to receive plenty of fees and rich robes from his clients.  The Sergeant of was also a highly skilled and clever purchaser of land.  He bought all the land he could and was so smart that nothing in his purchase could be questioned.  Chaucer also adds that he secured to be more busy than he actually was to make his clients think high of him.

            While describing the Sergeant of Law, Chaucer shows his ironic satire.  He “reports in outward praise and inward condemnation the characteristics of the Sergeant”.  The Sergeant is an eminent barrister but he is also a shrewd business man.  He uses his legal knowledge for his own benefit in purchasing land.  He had also won many robes and fees in dishonest manner.  The lawyers of the Middle Ages were apparently a set of greedy men who exploited people by extracting exorbitant fees and gifts from them.

            Chaucer was not alone in criticising the corruptness of legal practitioners of his day.  Langland, Wycliff and Gower too have found fault with the shrewd selfishness of lawyers.

THE SOUL’S PRAYER

                                                                                                                       Sarojini Naidu

           Sarojini Naidu was one of the most gifted Indian poets. Her poems are appreciated not only in India but also in abroad. Popularly known as ‘the Nightingale of India’, Sarojini Naidu wrote in English about themes that are essentially Indian. Her poetry also reflects her love for her nation.

                 The poem The Soul’s Prayer reveals Sarojini Naidu’s mystic vision about the problems of life and death. The poem is an imaginary conversation between the poet and the God. The poet imagines herself to be a child of thirteen year old. She feels pride to take birth from His breath.  She pleads God to reveal the meaning of life and death.

Speak, Master, and reveal to me
Thine inmost laws of life and death.

The poet prays to God to give her not only the bliss of life but also the pain and sufferings of life. She strongly believes that only when she passes through the trials and tribulations of life, her soul will get satisfied. She further asks God to explain her the most complex thing of what happens to one before one’s birth and after one’s death. She wants God to tell this secret to her.

The God then answers her prayer. He promises her to provide her everything. He accepts to give her both “the passionate rapture and despair”. The God allows her to enjoy all emotional experiences both good and bad. She shall have both joys and sorrows, She shall have love that will burn her like fire and pain that will purify her like water.

God also informs her that even after having the experience of love, hatred, joys, sorrows, highs and lows of life, her soul will not get satisfied. It will have a strong desire to be released from the blind prayer. Her tired and forgiven soul will beg to learn about peace instead of intensity. It will want to know how to leave the burning and cleansing, and simply experience quite, underrated peace.

           At last, the poet finds solace in the knowledge that Life and Death, Light and Shadow are merely the two faces of God. Sarojini Naidu compares life to a prism through which the color of life, including joy and sorrow are realized. In the concluding stanza God bends from His sevenfold height with care to teach His children the meaning of His grace

           Thus, the poem concludes with a belief that life and death are interlinked with one another. So Shadow and Light are just like birth and death, like night and day, like inhaling and exhaling. .

THE OLD PLAYHOUSE

Kamala Das

            Kamala Das is a well-known Indian poet writing in English.  She is one of the most controversial poets of post-independence India.  She deals with sexual problems in a frank manner. In The Old Playhouse, Kamala Das emphasizes the dominant role played by men in the man-woman relationship ignoring the woman’s self.

.           The speaker of the poem is a woman. She gives an account of her unsatisfactory and disappointing marriage life with her husband. She compares herself to a swallow and her husband a captor who wanted to tame her and keep her fully under his control by the power of his love-making. 

The husband wanted to make her forget all those comforts which she had enjoyed in her home before being married. He also wanted her to forget her very nature and her innate love of freedom by keeping her in a state of dependence to him. 

The speaker says that she had come to her husband with a view to developing her own personality. But all she has had from her husband are lesson about him. Her husband, who is a self-centered person, makes love with her and he feels pleased by her bodily response to his love-making. He approves her state of mind and her mood when he makes love to her and he feels pleased by the tremors of her body during the sexual union. 

However, he fails to understand that her response to his love-making is purely physical and therefore, superficial. She never experiences any feeling of oneness with him. According to the speaker,  love and affection  mean nothing to her husband. To him, she is nothing but a plaything, a sexual partner and a housewife.

 In the course of the sexual union, he kisses her very hard , pressing his lips against hers and letting his saliva flow into her mouth. He presses his whole body against hers with great vehemence gratifying his sexual desire in this process. In this physical union, her husband is successful. But he never realizes that she is still   emotionally unsatisfied and hungry. In the emotional and spiritual sense, he completely fails. 

The Old Playhouse, is a poem of protest against patriarchy in which  Kamala Das voices against the domination of the male and the consequent dwarfing of the female.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS REFLECTED IN THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD

            Goldsmith is one of the all-rounders of English literature.  There is no form of literature which Goldsmith did not leave untouched.  He made a name in all that he attempted. He wrote remarkable poems, plays and essays. Dr.Johnson wondered at Goldsmith’s versatility and said “He touched nothing that he did not adorn”.

            The work by which Goldsmith is still remembered is The Vicar of Wakefield. It is the best novel in the English language which won him recognition as a novelist. By relating a simple story in a simple manner, Goldsmith has presented in The Vicar of Wakefield the new literary form which became immensely popular. The novel reflects the social conditions that existed in England during Goldsmith’s time.

            The whole novel revolves around the central character, Dr.Primrose, the Vicar of Wakefield. He is quite happy with his six children. Misfortune strikes him when the town merchant to whom he has entrusted all his money becomes bankrupt.  Primrose shifts to a far-off village where he takes on lease the land of one Squire Thornhill. Thornhill is a notorious libertine.  He carries away Primrose’s eldest daughter Olivia, marries her and then abandons her. He then tries to spoil Miss Arabella whom Primrose’s eldest son George loves. To get rid of the impediments to his plan, he gets Primrose imprisoned for non-payment of rent. In the meantime George is also imprisoned on charge of having fatally wounded one of Thornhill’s men.

            Sir William Thornhill, uncle of Squire Thornhill comes to prison at the end and arranges for the release of the good-natured Primrose and punishes his unscrupulous nephew, Squire Thornhill.

            During Goldsmith’s time, there were two distinct classes in the country – the rural and the urban.  The rural tilled the soil and lived contentedly.  The urban dwellers ran after money.  The two town ladies Lady Blarney and Miss Carolina infect Primrose’s girls with their city fashions. They help Thornhill seduce Olivia.  This shows the fast spreading of the corrupt town culture.

            The rural areas could not support the rising population.  As a result, the young men living in villages went to far-off cities in search of jobs.  This condition was most vividly represented in The Deserted Village.  It figures in The Vicar of Wakefield also. When  Dr.Primrose becomes penniless and is forced to leave Wakefield, George decides to go  to London  in search of a suitable job.

            One flagrant evil of the time was the hardship of prisoners making them all the more criminal-minded. In the chapters dealing with Primrose’s imprisonment, the prisoners are shown to be a demoralized mass.  Primrose says that imprisonment should be designed to correct and not to punish prisoners and that capital punishment should be abolished.  These views were gaining momentum in Goldsmith’s time.

            The Vicar of Wakefield is viewed as Goldsmith’s thinly veiled autobiography.  It has been pointed out that the viar takes after Goldsmith’s father, Charles Goldsmith.  Primrose is a Protestant clergyman like Charles Goldsmith.  Again, like Charles, Primrose also has very strong views on monogamy.

            The Vicar of Wakefield is often described as a sentimental novel, which displays the belief in the innate goodness of human beings. But it can also be read as a satire on the sentimental novel and its values, as the vicar's values are apparently not compatible with the real "sinful" world. It is only with Sir William Thornhill's help that he can get out of his calamities.

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TOM JONES AS A PICARESQUE NOVEL

            Henry fielding was a well-known English novelist and dramatist of the 18^th century. His contribution to the development of English novel as a major art form is significant and unique. He paved the way for the psychological realism that came after him. He is noted for his rich but crude humour and satire.  His novels and plays criticized the government of the time and often struck a discordant note with contemporary leaders. It was he who popularized the new genre – picaresque novel in English.

            Picaresque novel has its origin in the early Spanish literature. The term ‘picaresque’ is derived from the Spanish word ‘picaro’ which means ‘rogue’ or ‘rascal’. Hence, a picaresque novel is a long tale that depicts the adventures of a rogue who lives in a corrupt society.  It consists of a series of loosely connected episodes in the manner of journeys.  In a picaresque novel, the author generally uses a first-person narrative. The best known Spanish picaresque novel is Don Quixote by Cervantes. Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones are some other important picaresque novels.

            The object of the picaresque novel is to take a central figure through a succession of events, introduce a great number of characters and thus build up a picture of society.  This is exactly the pattern which the story of Tom Jones follows. Tom Jones makes adventures in Somersetshire, on the road to London and also in London. He has a number of adventures on the roads and inside inns. He meets thieves and rogues, rescues damsels in distress, falls in love, fight duels, gets arrested and imprisoned, gets cheated by cunning people and helped by apparent scoundrels.  He encounters the members of the lowest rungs of society as well as the high aristocrats. Through these characters and events, Henry Fielding gives a realistic portrait of the 18^th century England.

                        In most of the picaresque novels, the protagonists are invariably orphans and are exposed to dishonour in the society. They often live as a social outcast and appear as darker characters.  They tell their stories from their point of view. Tom Jones also follows this pattern of the picaresque novel. Tom Jones, the hero of the novel, is a foundling.  He is mysteriously discovered one night in the bed of the wealthy, virtuous and benevolent Mr.Allworthy.  The kind Squire brings him up and educates him.  But Tom incurs the anger of his benefactor(Squire Allworthy) with the result that he is sent out of his house.  Now begin the travels of Tom Jones.

            Accompanied by a schoolmaster Mr.Partridge, he sets out for London. Fielding also sends his heroine, Sophia on adventures along the highway.  On the way, Tom meets with a number of adventures, some of which are amorous in nature.  He goes from place to place stopping at numerous inns on the way. He meets several strange persons like Harriet, Fitzpatrick, Nancy, Nightingale, Mrs.Miller and Mrs. Waters.  On their way to London they meet beggar, highwaymen and finally fall among gypsies in whose camp they spend a night.  Finally they reach London. But Tom’s adventures do not come to an end there. He meets Lady Bellaston, a lustful woman who for some time supports him in London. However, misfortune follows him and he is imprisoned in London. In this way the story of Tom Jones is a long string of adventures and escapades.

            The picaresque novel offers criticism of the age whose picture it presents. Cervantes in his great picaresque novel Don Quixote gives a smashing blow to the tradition of chivalry. A similar satirical picture of a corrupt society is presented in Tom Jones. Tom Jones ridicules the folly, vices and weaknesses of mankind in general.

            Thus Tom Jones has several traits of the picaresque novel. Yet, in one essential point it differs greatly from the picaresque tradition.  Unlike the picaresque novel Tom Jones has a coherent and well-knit plot.  It further shows a harmony between characters and incidents.

EPITHALAMION AS A WEDDING ODE

            It was Charles Lamb who called Spenser ‘the poet’s poet’ because of his abundantly predominant poetic faculty.  He is also regarded the second father of English poetry as he did yeoman service to English poetry in a variety of ways.  He left behind works of immortal value which served as a mirror to shape their works for a host of poets who came in his wake.

            Spenser introduced into English literature not only new metrical forms but he also introduced many kinds of poetry.  One such genre is ‘marriage hymn’ or ‘wedding ode’.  Spenser derived this form from Latin and introduced it into English. Epithalamion and Prothalamion are the two remarkable wedding odes ever written in English. When Prothalamion was composed in honour of the double marriage of Lady Elizabeth and |Lady Catherine, the two daughters of the Earl of Worcester, Epithalamion praises the poet’s own marriage with Elizabeth Boyle whom  he courted for more than a year.

            Spenser fell in love with a beautiful Irish lady by name Elizabeth, during his stay in Ireland.  He wrote his Amoretti poring forth his love for her in a series of 88 sonnets. Fortunately, for Spenser his love for his lady culminated in his marriage with her in 1595.  Spenser offered this poem as a wedding gift to the bride in the place of ornaments.  If the poet had chosen to present the latter, Elizabeth would have missed an invaluable treasure and the English speaking world would have missed “the most gorgeous jewel in the treasure-house of the Renaissance”

            The Epithalamion consists of 23 stanzas or strophes and a final seven-line tornato. It is easily the first of its kind, not only among Spenser’s own lyrics but among all English odes, for its sustained beauty, for its melody, for its richness of ornament and for its happy blending of the narrative, the descriptive and the lyric elements

            Spenser begins his poem Epithalamion by invoking the learned sisters or the Muses to help him in writing his love’s praise.  He asks the learned sisters to wake themselves up before the sun spreads his golden beams and then go to his bride’s bed room and dress her up, “as the wished day is come”. He further wishes delightful music to be sung while his bride pits on her dress.  The poet also wants the nymphs of the woods, streams and mountains to come with flowers to cover the ground where the bride treads and honour her with garlands.

            And now the bride is awake.  The poet requests the fair Hours and the three maids of  Cyprian Queen to adorn his most beautiful bride.  After this, the bride is ready to come forth.  So, the poet asks all the virgins and boys to get ready and be prepared for the wedding procession.  He requests the sun-god to be favourable and grant him that one day exclusively for himself.

            The procession starts. “The minstrels begin to shrill aloud”. The pipe, the tabor and the timbrels give the merry music without any discordant note and dancing party accompanies. The boys run up and down the street in great jubilation, shouting “Hymen io Hymen”. Crowned with a garland, the bride looks like a maiden Queen.

            The poet then describes her inward beauty, the splendor of her lively spirit. Sweet love and constant chastity dwell in her.  She has unspotted faith and comely womanhood.  The bride is now taken to the church where the marriage is to be performed.  She is brought up to the high altar and the sacred matrimonial function is celebrated in the midst of roaring organs and praises of the Lord.  While the holy priest blesses her, red roses flush up on her cheeks. The poet then asks his bride to give him her hand, as a pledge of love.

            After this, he wishes the day to end and welcomes night.  He wants the bride to be brought to the bridal bower and laid in her bed, in the midst of lilies and violets.  The poet wishes that their joy be protected from peril, foul horror, false treason, dreadful disquiet, tempestuous storms and so on.  He wants the night to be calm and quiet and as happy as when Jove lay with Alcmena.

            The poet then invokes the aid of |Juno, the wife of Jupiter as she is the protector of marriage and of woman.  So the poet prays for her blessings.  Then he invokes the glad Genius, Hebe and Hymen and requests them to protect the bridal bower and genial bed and help bring forth fruitful progeny.

            In his conclusion, Spenser says that his love should have been duly honoured or decorated with many jewels or ornaments.  But it is not done so due to hasty accidents and want of time.  So he offers this poem to his bride as a token on the happy occasion of their wedding.

            As in the marriage hymns Spenser keeps up the conventional elements namely the bringing home of the bride, the bridal song, the dance of young men and maidens, the light of blazing torches and the accompanying music. But his highest achievement is that in this poem convention and personal feeling found their perfect meeting.  Some of the marriage customs, namely, crowning the bride with a garland, lighting her way with torches and strewing her threshold with flowers are also brought into the frame work of this poem when Spenser is giving expression to one of the most supreme moments of his life. We notice the steady progression of the bridal day from morning to night which at once reveals the poet’s wealth of fancy and the range of his music.

            In conclusion, the poem is admired for its theme, for its pictorial and dramatic quality, for its sincere tone and melodious sweetness, for its decorative and homely fancy and finally for its refrain.  E.De Selincourt remarks: “The Epithalamion seems to concentrate into itself the essence of Spenser’s art.  This song is Spenser’s highest poetic achievement.”

NIGHT OF THE SCORPION

                                                                                                                         Nissim Ezekiel

           

            Night of the Scorpion is a poem written by Nissim Ezekiel who is one of the leading Indian poets. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award. The poem depicts two levels of understanding. One describes mother’s selfless love for her children. On the second level, the poem presents a charming picture of the innocent world of illiterate and superstitious villagers of India.

            The poem opens with the poet’s reminiscence of a childhood experience. One night, when there was a steady rain, a scorpion had crept into the poet’s house. It crawled behind a bag of rice. It stung his mother and went again into the rain. All the neighboring farmers came like swarms of bees. They uttered the names of God to minimize the movement of the Scorpion. They believed that the poison would move in the mother's veins with the movements of scorpion. They began to search for it with candles and lanterns. They could not find the scorpion.

            The poor farmers said that the sins of her earlier birth would be washed away with this suffering  and it would reduce the misfortunes of her next birth. They also felt that the sin gained in this birth would be diminished by this pain. They said that poison would also purify her physical and spiritual ambition. His mother was lying on the ground wriggling her body out of pain.

            The poet’s father was a septic rationalist. He had been trying all kinds of  powders, herbs and mixtures. He even poured a little paraffin upon the bitten toe and put a match. However, after twenty hours the pain subsided. The poet’s mother thanked God, that the Scorpion spared her children and had chosen to sting her.

            The poem, thus, brings out the mother's pure love for her children and also describes the superstitions and ignorant practices followed by the villagers.

Character of Dr. Primrose

Dr.Charles Primrose is the protagonist of Goldsmith’s novel The Vicar of Wakefield. He is the narrator of the story. He is virtuous, intelligent moral and religious. He is a loving husband of Deborah and a caring father of six children. He considers that all the members of his family are “equally generous, credulous, simple and inoffensive.”

Dr.Primrose has fortune of his own. He donates his small clergyman’s salary to orphans and widows. He never cares for money. His unconcern for money is revealed in the fact that he has entrusted all his money and property with an unscrupulous merchant who finally deceives him. When he loses his money and is compelled to live with a meagre salary of fifteen pounds a year, he readily accommodates himself to the new environment. He often advises his daughters to avoid the traps of worldly pleasures and comforts.

Dr.Primrose is a committed vicar. As he keeps no assistants, he personally knows everyone in the parish. One of his favourite topics to discuss is that of matrimony.  He has written and published many pamphlets arguing that a husband or wife should never remarry if his or her partner dies.  He believes that a person should remain chaste in his or her beloved’s memory. When the vicar fails to pay his annual rent to Squire Thornhill and is put in prison, he regularly delivers sermons to the fellow prisoners. He tells them that the suffering on this world is only a preparation for the joy in the next world.  

The priest is a man of principle. He doesn’t want to compromise his ideology for anything. He argues vehemently with Mr. Wilmot against remarriage fully knowing that he is a polygamist. Even one of his relative warns him that the argument will affect his son’s marriage. But Dr.Primrose angrily cries that he will not “relinquish the cause of truth”.  Similarly, when he is in prison, he boldly attacks the criminal laws that they punish only the weak and not the corrupt. He criticises that these laws are inefficient to reform the sinners. He remains unshaken even during times of calamities.

Though Dr.Primrose usually has a sweet, benevolent temper, he does not possess much worldly wisdom. He is often deceived by the appearances and behavior of those around him.  He often misjudges his family’s supposed friends and neighbours. He has a poor opinion about Mr.Burchell. He discourages Mr. Burchell’s love for Sophia thinking that he is morally weak.  Later, it is only Mr. Burchell, (the disguised Sir William Thornhill) who rescues Dr.Primrose from all his sufferings and sorrows. However, despite all his faults, he is affectionate, faithful, loving, patient, and essentially good-natured.

            Dr. Charles Primrose, the vicar, can be compared to  Job in the Bible, who suffers and suffers but never loses faith, and whose continued devotion is ultimately rewarded by God.

SMALL SCALE REFLECTIONS ON A GREAT HOUSE

                                    A.K.Ramanujan

            A.K.Ramanujan is a well known Indian poet writing in English.  He has a rare capacity to bring to life even the smallest details of his subject.  This is obviously revealed in his poem Small Scale Reflections on a Great House. The poem is nostalgic in tone about a great house in which the poet spent his childhood

            The poet begins the poem humorously by stating that things that entered his grand parents’ house never went out.  Lame cows that entered the house were provided with shelter and gifted with a name.  Library books once borrowed from libraries never found their way back.  They remained only to serve as breeding homes for insects and worms. Dishes that belonged to the neighbours for distributing sweets were never returned.  Servants once employed, never left the house. Gramophones continued to remain there. On a distressing note, the poet says that diseases like epilepsy that once entered the blood continued to haunt the generations to come. Sons-in law who came to the house were asked to stay back to check accounts or to teach arithmetic to the nieces of the family. Women who came as wives of some male members never left the house.

            The poet then goes on to say that something that went out of the house did find their way back.  Bales of cotton carried to some textile mills returned processed as packets of cloth to be worn on special occasions by the members of the family. Letters posted by the members of the family found their way back as the postmen failed to locate the precise address. Ideas that originated in the house conveyed to outsiders returned to the house as gossip. The daughters who got married returned back home as widows. Sons of the house who had run away returned as fathers as their wives had given birth to boys.

            The poet ends the poem by saying that one thing that left the house never returned back. i.e. life.  A member of the family who ran away from the house never came back alive. A nephew who had left the house to join army had been killed in the border and only his corpse was brought home.

            Thus A.K.Ramanujan describes the people, things and events associated with the great house.