Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw

Arms And The Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw, whose title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin: Arma virumque cano ("Arms and the man I sing").

Summary:

The play begins in the bedroom of Raina Petkoff in a Bulgarian town in 1885, during the Serbo-Bulgarian War. As the play opens, Catherine Petkoff and her daughter, Raina, have just heard that the Bulgarians have scored a tremendous victory in a cavalry charge led by Raina's fiancé, Major Sergius Saranoff, who is in the same regiment as Raina's father, Major Paul Petkoff. Raina is so impressed with the noble deeds of her fiancé that she fears that she might never be able to live up to his nobility. At this very moment, the maid, Louka, rushes in with the news that the Serbs are being chased through the streets and that it is necessary to lock up the house and all of the windows. Raina promises to do so later, and Louka leaves. But as Raina is reading in bed, shots are heard, there is a noise at the balcony window, and a bedraggled enemy soldier with a gun appears and threatens to kill her if she makes a sound. After the soldier and Raina exchange some words, Louka calls from outside the door; she says that several soldiers want to search the house and investigate a report that an enemy Serbian soldier was seen climbing her balcony. When Raina hears the news, she turns to the soldier. He says that he is prepared to die, but he certainly plans to kill a few Bulgarian soldiers in her bedroom before he dies. Thus, Raina impetuously decides to hide him. The soldiers investigate, find no one, and leave. Raina then calls the man out from hiding; she nervously and absentmindedly sits on his gun, but she learns that it is not loaded; the soldier carries no cartridges. He explains that instead of carrying bullets, he always carries chocolates into battle. Furthermore, he is not an enemy; he is a Swiss, a professional soldier hired by Serbia. Raina gives him the last of her chocolate creams, which he devours, maintaining that she has indeed saved his life. Now that the Bulgarian soldiers are gone, Raina wants the "chocolate cream soldier" (as she calls him) to climb back down the drainpipe, but he refuses to; whereas he could climb up, he hasn't the strength to climb down. When Raina goes after her mother to help, the "chocolate cream soldier" crawls into Raina's bed and falls instantly asleep. In fact, when they re-enter, he is sleeping so soundly that they cannot awaken him.

Act II begins four months later in the garden of Major Petkoff's house. The middle-aged servant Nicola is lecturing Louka on the importance of having proper respect for the upper class, but Louka has too independent a soul to ever be a "proper" servant. She has higher plans for herself than to marry someone like Nicola, who, she insists, has the "soul of a servant." Major Petkoff arrives home from the war, and his wife Catherine greets him with two bits of information: she suggests that Bulgaria should have annexed Serbia, and she tells him that she has had an electric bell installed in the library. Major Sergius Saranoff, Raina's fiancé and leader of the successful cavalry charge, arrives, and in the course of discussing the end of the war, he and Major Petkoff recount the now-famous story of how a Swiss soldier escaped by climbing up a balcony and into the bedroom of a noble Bulgarian woman. The women are shocked that such a crude story would be told in front of them. When the Petkoffs go into the house, Raina and Sergius discuss their love for one another, and Raina romantically declares that the two of them have found a "higher love."

When Raina goes to get her hat so that they can go for a walk, Louka comes in, and Sergius asks if she knows how tiring it is to be involved with a "higher love." Then he immediately tries to embrace the attractive maid. Since he is being so blatantly familiar, Louka declares that Miss Raina is no better than she; Raina, she says, has been having an affair while Sergius was away, but she refuses to tell Sergius who Raina's lover is, even though Sergius accidently bruises Louka's arm while trying to wrest a confession from her. When he apologizes, Louka insists that he kiss her arm, but Sergius refuses and, at that moment, Raina re-enters. Sergius is then called away, and Catherine enters. The two ladies discuss how incensed they both are that Sergius related the tale about the escaping soldier. Raina, however, doesn't care if Sergius hears about it; she is tired of his stiff propriety. At that moment, Louka announces the presence of a Swiss officer with a carpetbag, calling for the lady of the house. His name is Captain Bluntschli. Instantly, they both know he is the "chocolate cream soldier" who is returning the Major's old coat that they disguised him in. As they make rapid, desperate plans to send him away, Major Petkoff hails Bluntschli and greets him warmly as the person who aided them in the final negotiations of the war; the old Major insists that Bluntschli must their houseguest until he has to return to Switzerland.

Act III begins shortly after lunch and takes place in the library. Captain Bluntschli is attending to a large amount of confusing paperwork in a very efficient manner, while Sergius and Major Petkoff merely observe. Major Petkoff complains about a favorite old coat being lost, but at that moment Catherine rings the new library bell, sends Nicola after the coat, and astounds the Major by thus retrieving his lost coat. When Raina and Bluntschli are left alone, she compliments him on his looking so handsome now that he is washed and brushed. Then she assumes a high and noble tone and chides him concerning certain stories which he has told and the fact that she has had to lie for him. Bluntschli laughs at her "noble attitude" and says that he is pleased with her demeanor. Raina is amused; she says that Bluntschli is the first person to ever see through her pretensions, but she is perplexed that he didn't feel into the pockets of the old coat which she lent him; she had placed a photo of herself there with the inscription "To my Chocolate Cream Soldier." At this moment, a telegram is brought to Bluntschli relating the death of his father and the necessity of his coming home immediately to make arrangements for the six hotels that he has inherited. As Raina and Bluntschli leave the room, Louka comes in wearing her sleeve in a ridiculous fashion so that her bruise will be obvious. Sergius enters and asks if he can cure it now with a kiss. Louka questions his true bravery; she wonders if he has the courage to marry a woman who is socially beneath him, even if he loved the woman. Sergius asserts that he would, but he is now engaged to a girl so noble that all such talk is absurd. Louka then lets him know that Bluntschli is his rival and that Raina will marry the Swiss soldier. Sergius is incensed. He sees Bluntschli and immediately challenges him to a duel; then he retracts when Raina comes in and accuses him of making love to Louka merely to spy on her and Bluntschli. As they are arguing, Bluntschli asks for Louka, who has been eavesdropping at the door. She is brought in, Sergius apologizes to her, kisses her hand, and thus they become engaged. Bluntschli asks permission to become a suitor for Raina's hand, and when he lists all of the possessions which he has (200 horses, 9600 pairs of sheets, ten thousand knives and forks, etc.), permission for the marriage is granted, and Bluntschli says that he will return in two weeks to marry Raina. Succumbing with pleasure, Raina gives a loving smile to her "chocolate cream soldier."

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Lajja: Shame by Taslima Nasrin

Lajja: Shame is the story of the Dutta family; Suranjan Dutta, a Bengali Hindu, lives in Dhaka with his father Sudhamoy, mother Kironmoyee, and sister Nilanjana. To Suranjan, Bangladesh is his motherland; he was born here, got educated here, and made friends here. In spite of millions of Hindus from Bangladesh going away to India in search of peace and safety, the Duttas are unwavering in their decision to stay back regardless of all the odds. They stayed here through the partition in 1947, through the Independence struggle in 1971, and even when Bangladesh became an Islamic state in 1978.

When the Babri Masjid is demolished in Ayodhya, India on 6th December, 1992, the ripples are felt in Bangladesh too. This incident takes a communal turn due to the vested interests of the communalists and religious extremists, and leads to mass genocide and religious persecution of the Hindus, and in turn, causing a mass exodus of Hindus into India. But again, the men of the Dutta household decide to stay back despite the persistent requests of the women. Will they stay safe this time? Or will they become prey to the communal elements? Will their motherland treat them as her children? Or will she drink their blood?

Though ‘Lajja’ is the story of the Duttas, they are reverted to the background, and the newspaper reports and eye-witness accounts, with facts and figures about the number of people killed, temples destroyed, properties looted and women raped, becomes the theme of the book. This inter-mingling of numerous statistical data with a fictional plot is done with such subtleness and so seamlessly that it becomes a part of the story. The data is not just parroted in the book; it comes as a dialogue from anxious Bengalis living in fear of their lives, and this is what adds life to these numbers; it makes you realise the enormity and graveness of the situation, and sympathise with the victims.


In the introduction to this fiercely felt political novel of Bangladesh (which was a black market bestseller in India), Nasrin cites the opinions of certain friendly Bengali critics who said that it was ""no work of literature. . . an important testament [that] still fell short."" American readers may agree. Set in Bangladesh in 1992, just after the destruction of the 450-year-old Babri Mosque, in India, by Hindu fundamentalists, Nasrin's fevered plot revolves around a Hindu family and its struggles in the face of retaliatory Muslim fanaticism. The main characters are an idealistic veteran of the Liberation War, his wife and his children, a disaffected intellectual son and a 21-year-old daughter who is abducted by Muslim street toughs. But the story hardly belongs to these imaginary characters, since Nasrin peppers their tribulations with her own polemics and reportage and, in the guise of conversation, introduces page-long litanies of the horrors suffered by real-life Bengali Hindus: thousands of women raped, countless property destroyed, children burned alive. Herself a Muslim, Nasrin has been called an agent for Indian Hindu fundamentalists and has been charged with ""hurting the religious feelings of the people."" Since a fatwa was issued against her, she has gone into hiding in Europe. The criminal cases against her are still pending in Bangladesh. 

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Persuasion by Jane Austen

Persuasion is Jane Austen's last completed novel. She began work on it in the summer of 1815 and completed it by the summer of 1816. The work was published with Northanger Abbey posthumously in December of 1817, six months after Austen’s death in July.

Summary:

Persuasion opens with a brief history of the Elliot family as recorded in Sir Walter Elliot's favorite book, The Baronetcy. We learn that the Elliots are a respected, titled, landowning family. Lady Elliot, Sir Walter's wife died fourtee n years ago and left him with three daughters: Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary. Both Elizabeth and Anne are single, but Mary, the youngest is married to a wealthy man named Charles Musgrove; they live close by. Sir Walter, who lavishly overspend s, has brought the family into great debt. When Lady Russell, a trusted family advisor, suggests that the Elliots reduce their spending, Sir Walter is horrified. He is exceedingly vain and cannot bear to imagine life without his usual comforts. But wi th no other option, the Elliots decide they must relocate to a house in Bath where their expenses will be more manageable. They intend to rent the family estate, Kellynch Hall. Order The Great Indian Novel By Shashi Tharoor

They soon find excellent tenants to rent their home; Admiral and Mrs. Croft are wealthy and well-mannered Navy people who have a model marriage. Sir Walter is relieved that the Admiral is a good-looking man. Though Sir Walter dislikes that the Navy br ings "men of obscure birth into undue distinction," he is satisfied with Admiral and Mrs. Croft as tenants for his home. Anne Elliot, the middle daughter, is also excited to meet the Crofts; Mrs. Croft is the sister of the man Anne loves. Eight years ago, she was engaged to be married to Captain Frederick Wentworth, but Lady Russell persuaded her that Captain Wentworth was not of high enough consequence, and Anne called off the engagement. With the Crofts at Kellynch, Anne hopes to see Captain Wentwor th again.

Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and Mrs. Clay (a widowed, somewhat lower-class friend of the family) leave for Bath. Anne goes to stay with her sister Mary at Uppercross Cottage for a period of two months. Mary complains often and Anne patiently listens to her sister's worries. At Uppercross, Anne finds the Musgrove family absolutely delightful. Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove have three grown children: Charles (Mary's husband), Henrietta, and Louisa. Anne marvels at the bustling nature of the household and the Musgroves' clear affection for their children. Soon news comes that Captain Wentworth has returned from sea and is staying with his sister at Kellynch. Captain Wentworth makes friends with Mr. Musgrove, and he becomes a daily visitor at Uppercross. A nne is at first anxious to see him again after such a long time, but his actions toward her are merely detached and polite. He seems more smitten with Henrietta and Louisa Musgrove. Anne resigns herself to the idea that she has lost Captain Wentworth's lo ve forever.

Captain Wentworth proposes that they all take a trip to Lyme to go visit his friends the Harvilles. While they are there, a good-looking gentleman takes notice of Anne; they later discover that this man is Mr. Elliot, Anne's cousin and Sir Walter' s heir to Kellynch. The group decides to go for a morning walk on the beach. Louisa Musgrove has a bad fall and is knocked unconscious. Anne keeps a level head and does all she can to care for Louisa. The doctor determines that Louisa will recover, but sh e will have to remain in Lyme for several months. Captain Wentworth blames himself for Louisa's fall and tries to help the Musgrove family. Anne returns to Uppercross to help Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove care for their younger children. After a few weeks, she le aves to stay with Lady Russell.

After Christmas, Lady Russell and Anne decide that they must rejoin the rest of the Elliot family in Bath, much to Anne's dismay. Sir Walter and Elizabeth care little about her, but they are glad to have her come to Bath. In Bath, she is formally introduc ed to her cousin Mr. Elliot, who has made peace with his once estranged uncle, Sir Walter. Though she questions Mr. Elliot's motives for his sudden apology, she accepts him as a pleasing gentleman. Mr. Elliot is extraordinarily appreciative of Anne, and i t is soon apparent that he seeks to make her his wife. While in Bath, Anne becomes reacquainted with an old school friend, Mrs. Smith, who has recently been widowed and fallen on hard times. From Mrs. Smith, Anne learns about Mr. Elliot's hidden past; she finds out that he has mistreated Mrs. Smith and that he plans to marry Anne to ensure that he becomes the sole heir of the Kellynch baronetcy. Mr. Elliot fears that Sir Walter will marry Mrs. Clay, have a son, and thereby deprive him of his title. He plots to ensure that he will remain Sir Walter's heir. Anne is appalled to hear this news. Order You Are Trending In My Dream By Ravindar Singh Now.

The Crofts arrive in Bath with news of two engagements; Henrietta will marry her cousin Charles Hayter, and Louisa will marry Captain Benwick, a man she met at Lyme while she was convalescing. Anne is overjoyed that Captain Wentworth is not promis ed to Louisa and is free once again. Captain Wentworth soon arrives in Bath. He is now a much richer man than he was eight years ago and Sir Walter reluctantly admits him into their social circle. Wentworth grows jealous because he believes Anne is attach ed to her cousin Mr. Elliot. Yet he writes Anne a love letter in which is pours describes his true, constant, and undying love for her. Anne is thrilled and they become engaged. Mr. Elliot is shocked that his plan to marry Anne has been foiled. He and Mrs . Clay leave Bath; it is rumored that they are together. There is no longer any danger that Sir Walter will marry beneath his station. Sir Walter and Lady Russell give their approval for the marriage between Anne and Captain Wentworth.

Jane Austen's lesbianism is as fictional as Pride and Prejudice.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a hack in search of a headline cannot resist conjoining Jane Austen’s name with the word “lesbian”. And so it proved this week when TV historian Lucy Worsley’s no-shit-Sherlock assertion that the Pride and Prejudice author never had sex with a man, then morphed into news stories that she had, instead, had sex with women.


It is no wonder that Claire Tomalin, Worsley’s fellow biographer of England’s Jane, laughed and called the claim “absolute bollocks” and a “tired old nag” when I asked what she thought, for it is just the latest obsession with Austen’s sex life. This time, it springs from a passage in Worsley’s new book, Jane Austen At Home: A Biography, in which she argues that there was a greater chance that the author had sex with a woman than a man. But does that mean Worsley believes she had sex with women (or “lesbian sex”, as it has been breathlessly reported by national newspapers)? Well, no. Worsley’s point about Austen’s virginal status, made at the Hay festival on Saturday, was a tongue-in-cheek rhetorical point to emphasise that, for 18th-century middle-class “spinsters” like Austen, the sexual freedom enjoyed by single women at either end of the social scale – be they aristocrats or paupers – were off limits.

You only have to read Austen novels to know this. From unwed Bennet sister Lydia running off with wicked Mr Wickham in Pride and Prejudice to Willoughby’s seduction of Colonel Brandon’s 15-year-old ward in Sense and Sensibility, it is clear that sex outside marriage meant ruination for the middle-class woman. Adding the fact that Georgian contraception was as reliable as the rhythm method and chaperones kept single women tightly superintended, any opportunity for Austen to have sex would have been as undesirable as it was unlikely.

Worsley acknowledges this in her book. “Did Jane ever have lesbian sex?” she asks in a much-misquoted passage. “Here the stakes would have been much lower. Yes, it was frowned on by society. But this was an age where women very often shared beds, and Jane herself frequently records sleeping with a female friend.” And, she admits, at a time when many did not believe sex between women was possible, the “door of possibility may remain ajar”. But read on, because that particular door was only open “by the very tiniest crack, and only in the absence of evidence either way”.

Of course we have heard this before, hence Tomalin’s calling it “absolute bollocks”. The most notorious claim about Austen’s sexuality came in 1995, when Terry Castle, professor of English at Stanford University in California, published an essay called Was Jane Austen Gay? in the London Review of Books. She not only argued that the novelist was a lesbian – but that she was at it with her sister, Cassandra. In a review of Jane Austen’s Letters, edited by Deirdre Le Faye, Castle wrote: “The conventions of 19th-century female sociability and body intimacy may have provided the necessary screen behind which both women acted out unconscious narcissistic or homoerotic imperatives.” Pride and Prejudice Only At ₹88 Order Now!!


May have, could have, would have. It amounts to the same thing: without a shred of evidence about what Austen got up to between the sheets (and the conservative wing of the Janeites are equally vehement that she never had an impure thought), it is all pure speculation. Social historian Amanda Vickery, who has made several documentaries about the writer, nails the issue behind this obsession: it says more about us than her. “The modern idea of a lesbian woman is anachronistic,” she says. “There was no understanding of the terms homosexual and lesbian that would mirror contemporary understandings.”

Even when Georgian women were gay, the phallocentric understanding of sexual intimacy meant sex between them was inconceivable. She quotes Lord Meadowbank at an 1811 trial in which two schoolmistresses were cleared of homosexuality because “the crime here alleged has no existence”. “Their private parts were not so framed as to penetrate each other, and without penetration the venereal orgasm could not possibly follow,” thundered his lordship.

In an age where sex is the standard currency with which to sell everything from celebrity careers to craft beer, attempts to sex up Austen are inevitable. But is there more to our interest than that? Austen scholar Bharat Tandon of the University of East Anglia thinks so: look to the text, he says, and the complexity of Austen’s fictional female relationships, like Emma Woodhouse’s obsession with beautiful Harriet Smith in Emma. “It’s a question of how you interpret those friendships. It is hard to unpick those moments where Emma’s interest in Harriet is because she is something to accessorise from those moments where it is somehow erotically proprietorial,” says Tandon, who edited the Harvard edition of the novel.

But none of that means Tandon believes Austen was projecting Sapphic urges. We simply do not know. We are unlikely ever to know. And it does not matter. For what this issue reveals more than anything, aside from our solipsistic readings of classic literature, is the genius of Austen and her ability to portray the ambivalence and complexity of human relationships, which is why she is read with a passion 200 years after her death.

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Vampire Literature Genre: Timeline And History

Blood-thirsty killers, seductive romantics, brooding misfits: there's a vampire for every personality type. Vampire literature has been popular for centuries, but the genre has evolved over that time. This lesson will review some of the most significant examples of vampire literature and explain how they have contributed to the changing interpretations of vampires over time.

The Vampire as a Literary Character: 

Typically, vampires are dead people who emerge from their graves or coffins at night to suck the blood of living humans. However, there are many variations of this basic idea. Some authors alter characteristics of vampires, such as by permitting them to come out during the day, or to feed on the blood of animals instead of humans. Other authors explore vampire psychology. Instead of portraying them as monstrous, evil, and hell-bent on one thing (blood!), they imagine that vampires can be complex characters, with emotions, desires, and troubles resembling our own.


Early Vampires: 

Tales of gruesome vampire-like figures are found in folklore throughout the world. However, the first widespread written accounts of vampires are early eighteenth-century newspaper articles. These reported that the Serbians Petar Blagojevich and Arnold Paole rose from their graves to attack victims. According to the reports, their corpses were exhumed and examined after these alleged attacks, and found to have not decomposed. Both were then stabbed with wooden stakes. You can see classic vampire imagery (the ''undead'' appearance, the wooden stakes) in these reports, which inspired literature like the German poem The Vampire (1748) by Heinrich August Ossenfelder. The first English text to mention vampires by name is probably Robert Southey's long poem Thalaba the Destroyer (1801). The descriptions of vampires in these early works are largely based on folkloric accounts, and are inconsistent. For example, it's not always clear if their vampires are supernatural creatures, or just deranged humans.

Classic Vampires

''The Vampyre''

In the nineteenth century, vampire traits became standardized, as classics of gothic literature were written. The first major English vampire story is John William Polidori's ''The Vampyre'' (1819).
Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus

Varney the Vampire: 

Another popular nineteenth century story is James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest's Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood (1845-1847).

Dracula:  
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), one of the most important and well-known vampire novels, also explores the idea of a more human-like vampire.

Modern Vampires

Following on the popularity of Dracula, numerous vampire movies emerged in the twentieth century, including the silent classic Nosferatu (1922), and the 1931 Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi. Vampires are also the subject of television series in more recent times, from Dark Shadows (1960s and 1970s), to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1990s and 2000s) and The Vampire Diaries (2009-present).