question_answer

How far is it right to say that the print culture was responsible for the French revolution? Explain.

Or

Analyse the role and involvement of women in the readership and authorship of novels in India.

Answer:

Following are the arguments which were given in support of the above statement:

(i) Print popularised the ideas of enlightened thinkers like Voltaire and Rousseau and those who read these books, started questioning everything and developed critical and rational thinking. These thinkers attacked the sacred authority of the Church and despotic power of the State.

(ii) All existing values, norms and institutions, which were never questioned earlier, were revalued through debates and discussions by the public in print.

(iii) By 1780s there was an outpour of literature that mocked royalty and criticised their morality. The existing social order was criticised. Through cartoons and caricatures, they made people aware that while common people were going through tremendous hardship, the monarchy remained absorbed in merry-making and did not care about sufferings of common people. This ultimately led to the growth of a hostile felling against the monarchy.

(iv) Print culture created a new environment of debate and dialogue. New Ideas of social revolution were born.

(v) The writing propagated the view that everything should be judge through the application of reason and rationality. In spite of these strong arguments, no one can claim that these were the only reasons for the outbreak of the French Revolution.

Or

Women were singled out and advised to stay away from immoral influence of novels as they were seen as easily corruptible?. Old women listened with fascination to popular Tamil novels. But women did not remain mere readers of stories written by men, they also began to write novels.  In some languages the early creations of women were poems, essays or autobiographical pieces. Stories of love showed women who could choose or refuse their partners and relationships lives. Some women authors also wrote about women who changed the world of both men and women. Rokeya Hossein, a reformer, wrote a fantasy in SOCIAL SCIENCE called ?Sultana?s Dream? showing a world in which women take the place of men.

Men became suspicious of women writing novels or reading them. In the south, women and girls were often discouraged from reading novels.