Contents

Write a note on the Regional novel.

Give a brief account of the development of Regional novel in English.

The regional novel is a writing in which the setting or local colour, plays an unusually important part. In almost all narratives there is setting of some kind but in many of them it could as well have been somewhere else. Regional literature deals with the distinctive atmosphere, people, problems, customs and expressions of one particular community or district. It shows a market tendency to frankness and realism. Some examples of regional novels are – Hardy’s Wessex novels, Barrie’s Scottish kailyard novels, Bennet’s Five Towns series and Shela Kaye-Smith’s Sussex novels. In the 19th and the 20th centuries the regional novel flowered abundantly. It received a fresh impetus from a certain historical situation and flourished numerically more than ever before.

The golden age of the English regional novel is from 1800 to 1940. It developed in the works of Maris Edgeworth, Charlotte Bronte, Emile Bronte, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. Maria Edgeworth is the first of the great regional novelists of England. The region she discovered was Ireland. In her novel she made a quite new use of the national element. Another great English regional novels is Bronte’s “Shirley”. The scene of “Shirley” is the cloth district of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights is superbly regional. The pictures of the West Riding moors in all their moods are magnificent literature and magnificent regionalism. Mrs. Gaskell wrote regional novels about industrial Lancashire-Mary Barton and North and South.

George Eliot’s first four novels are regional. Their setting is the midland countries where she sent her childhood and youth. The scene of “Adam Bede” is set in Staffordshire and Derbyshire. “The Millon the Floss” is a Lincolnshire novel. In “Silas Marner” the scene is Warwickshire. The scene of “Felix Halt” and “Middle March is laid in imaginary midland town. Thomas Hardy has made a remarkable contribution to regional fiction. Hardy has written fourteen novel and two or three volumes of short stories. They are localized in Wessex, six, south west countries of England, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall.

Every variety of this diverse landscape is portrayed in Hardy’s novels. He has painted the rocky coast in A Pair of Blue Eyes.” He has depicted the farmland and undulating downs in “Far From the Madding Crowd”. He has portrayed the Wild Heath in “The Returen of the Native”. He has drawn the moods and orchards in “The Woodlanders.” In “Tess of D’urbervilles” We observe the rich fertile dairy values where the rustic cows stand knee-deep in the lush pastures.

Arnold Bennet, wrote his regional novel “A Man From the North” (1898). He is the most completely regional novelist. E.C. Booth write “The Cliff End” in 1908 and “Fondie” (1916). Mary webb wrote “Gone to Earth” (1917), “The House in Drome Forest and “Precious Bane” (1924), “In Show over Elden” (1920) and “The Comely Lass” (1923), a similarly poetized vision of his native soil is revealed by Thomas Moult. Shila Kaye-Smith has put the life of the borders of Kent and Sussex in a series of sincere and well constructed fictions. “The Tram Ding Methodist”, “Sussex Grose “and” Foanna Golden”, “The End of the House of A Lord’ (1924) describes the decay of an old Sussex aristocracy. In all Miss Holme’s novels especially in, “The lonely plough” (1914) we see the peculiar geographical conditions. Francis Brelt Young wrote “The Iron Age” (1916), “The Black Diamond” and “White Ladies”. He seemed to begin a saga of the midland iron and steel industry.

Critics say that the regional novel is too local. It is not sufficient universal in its reference. It is too preoccupied with what George Eliot calls “Vulgar details.’ But regional novel has merits also. It is brilliant illumination of English landscape. It shows a detailed faithfulness. It is esentialy democartic.