GRE Literature in English (REA) (6 page)

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

 

An ardent feminist and political activist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is best remembered for her short story
The Yellow Wallpaper
, which tells the story of a young writer who, after the birth of her first child, is forbidden by her physician husband to see the baby or to write because of her “nervousness.” Confined to an attic room, without the release of writing which she repeatedly craves, the woman begins to believe she sees a woman trapped behind the intricate pattern of the wallpaper in her room, and quickly spirals into complete madness.

Perkins Gilman's novel,
Herland
, tells the story of a utopic world of women, in which they live in harmony with each other and their environment. The present patriarchal system of the world is implicitly criticized through this alternative vision and the narration of the story by a male visitor who contrasts this utopian world with the one from which he comes.

 

 

THOMAS HARDY

 

Hardy's best-known novels are
Jude the Obscure
and
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
, both of which elicited stinging negative reviews upon their publication in the 1890s.
Jude the Obscure
centers around the life of Jude Fawley and his intellectual ambition to study at a prestigious university. He marries the barmaid Arabella, then falls in love and lives with his unconventional cousin, Sue Bridehead. After the tragic death of their children, Sue leaves him to return to her husband and the church, and Jude goes back to Arabella and dies an early death.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles
tells the story of a poor girl whose father is descended from the D'Urbervilles. She is seduced by Alec D'Urberville, and the product of this seduction dies soon after birth. Tess becomes a dairymaid and falls in love with Angel Clare. On their marriage night, Tess confesses her history to him, and although he too has had past sexual experience, he hypocritically leaves Tess. Tess and her family are again thrown into poverty, and to alleviate her family's suffering, Tess becomes Alec's mistress once again. Angel Clare repents his behavior and returns from abroad to find Tess and Alec living together. Tess goes mad and stabs Alec to death. After being briefly reunited with Angel, Tess is arrested, tried, and hanged.

 

 

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

 

Shaw was a freethinker, feminist, socialist, and vegetarian whose more than 50 plays dealt with social issues of his day. His more famous plays include
Arms and the Man, Man and Superman, Major Barbara
, and
Pygmalion.
Shaw's witty plays concentrate on the conflict between thought and belief.

 

 

JOSEPH CONRAD

 

Conrad was born in Ukraine of Polish parents; he became a British citizen when he was about thirty. He published his first novel in English, his third language, when he was 38. Conrad had been a sailor for twenty years, and most of his novels and short stories are set at sea. Conrad's most widely taught novel is
Heart of Darkness
, which concerns itself with the inhumanity and corruptibility of man in telling the story of the British ivory trade in Africa. Marlowe, the narrator, relates his experience in Africa to his fellow sailors and gives his listeners a portrait of the agent Kurtz, who has degenerated during his reign of absolute power over the village in Africa.

The Secret Agent
of this title is Verloc, who runs a pornographic magazine shop as a cover for his spying for the British government on the ineffectual anarchists of London. In an attempt to discredit the anarchists, Verloc inadvertently causes the death of his wife's brother, Stevie. Winnie, who had only married Verloc in order to secure the future of her brother and her mother, is overcome with grief and anger and stabs Verloc to death, and eventually commits suicide.

 

 

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

 

An Irish nationalist poet, Yeats' poems are short enough that you should read through his most well-known poems, such as “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” “Who Goes With Fergus,” “The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland,” “The Wild Swans at Coole,” “Easter 1916,” “The Second Coming,” “A Prayer for My Daughter,” “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Leda and the Swan,” and “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop.”

 

 

E. M. FORSTER

 

Forster's most famous novels are
A Room With A View, Howard's End, A Passage to India, and Maurice. Howard's End
tells the story of the clash between lifestyles: the Schlegel siblings care for music, literature, and conversation, while the Wilcox family values the business world and practicality. The interactions between the two families take place in Howard's End, the ancestral home of the gentle and dignified Mrs. Wilcox.
A Passage To India
concerns itself with society in India under British rule. The protagonist is Dr. Aziz, a Muslim doctor who pursues relationships with the British until the racist assumptions of the British cause a crisis in relations between the communities.
A Room With A View
portrays the experiences of English tourists in Italy. Forster wrote Maurice circa 1913 but arranged that it be published posthumously because of the homosexual content.

 

 

VIRGINIA WOOLF

 

Woolf is considered one of the foremost Modernist writers because of her innovative, experimental style and her involvement in the literary world; she not only wrote important novels but also wrote literary criticism and essays, and, along with her husband, founded the Hogarth Press.

The most well-known of Virginia Woolf's novels is
Mrs. Dalloway
, which portrays a day in the life of a society woman. As Clarissa Dalloway spends the day preparing for a party she is giving that evening, she repeatedly recalls moments of her past, rendering for the reader a story of female development. Clarissa focuses on the romantic friendships she had with Sally Seton and Peter Walsh and her ultimate decision to sublimate her feelings for Sally and to refuse Peter's marriage proposal in favor of a union with the safe and sedate Richard Dalloway. Other characters include the Dalloways' daughter, Elizabeth; Elizabeth's tutor, Miss Kilman; and Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked veteran of the World War and his Italian wife, Rezia. Woolf's innovative use of interior monologue and stream-of-consciousness technique in the telling of the story has made it a classic of Modernist writing.

To the Lighthouse
(1927) portrays the Ramsays (Mrs. Ramsay is maternal while Mr. Ramsay is self-centered), their children, and their guests. The novel is divided into three parts, the first part describes a vacation during which Mr. Ramsay prevents the group of his family and friends from taking a desired trip to the lighthouse. The second part reports the death of Mrs. Ramsay and also the death of one of the sons in the war. The last part of the novel describes the arrival of some of the original guests and the trip made to the lighthouse by Mr. Ramsay and some of the children. An important character is the guest Lily Briscoe, who illustrates the struggles of female artists and the problems of same-sex desire in her frustrated attempts to paint and to express her love for Mrs. Ramsay.

The novel
Orlando
is styled as a biography and tells the story of Orlando's life, which spans several centuries and two genders. Woolf considered an androgynous mind to be ideal, and this idea is played out when Orlando changes sex yet remains essentially the same person.

Also well known is Woolf's essay
A Room of One's Own,
in which she argues that women need financial independence and a workspace (a room of one's own) in order to become writers. Woolf details the disadvantages that have kept women from becoming writers in the past and honors the women in history who managed to become successful writers despite these disadvantages.

 

 

JAMES JOYCE

 

The most famous novel of this famed Irish Modernist is
Ulysses,
which centers on one day in the life of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. The novel is set in Dublin and employs stream-of-consciousness technique as well as many other experiments in language in the telling of the story. Stephen Dedalus is also the protagonist
in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
which is an autobiographical work telling the story of Stephen's development into a young intellectual.
Dubliners
is a collection of short stories, and
Finnegan's Wake
tells the story of a Dublin barkeeper, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, through the representation of his thoughts during one night of sleep.

 

 

D. H. LAWRENCE

 

Lawrence's major novels are
Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow, Women in Love,
and
Lady Chatterly's Lover. Sons and Lovers
tells the story of the working-class Morel family in a coalmining village.
The Rainbow
tells the story of the Brangwen family, the passionate marriage of the parents and the development of the children, especially Ursula. Ursula has an intimate relationship with a female teacher which ends with the teacher's marriage. Ursula decides to earn her living as a teacher and enrolls in college. She then has a passionate relationship with a man which she eventually breaks off. The stories of the Brangwen daughters Ursula and Gudrun are the focus of
Women in Love.
In
Women in Love,
Ursula is established as a teacher at the grammar school while Gudrun completes her own studies and has an affair with Gerald. Gudrun and Gerald's relationship is destructive, and Ursula's boyfriend offers to have an intimate relationship with Gerald, but Gerald declines. Ursula and Birkin marry and grow increasingly closer while Gudrun becomes involved with a sculptor and Gerald lays down in the snow and dies.
Lady Chatterly's Lover
concerns itself with a woman who leaves her husband for her lover. The writing is sexually explicit and was not published in England until 1960. As a whole, Lawrence's work portrays the mystical and cyclical qualities of sexual relationships against a backdrop of industrialism. Because of the content, Lawrence's works were repeatedly charged with obscenity by the authorities.

 

 

T. S. ELIOT

 

Eliot's most famous poem is “The Waste Land,” which conveys the feeling of postwar society. Also well known is the humorous poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Eliot is considered one of the foremost Modernist writers; you should familiarize yourself with these two poems for the GRE Literature in English. Eliot was also a well-known and influential literary critic—it is a good idea to skim through some of his essays to become familiar with his opinionated and erudite scholarship.

 

 

SAMUEL BECKETT

 

Beckett is known for his innovative novels and stage plays. His best-known work is
Waiting for Godot
—it is a good idea to read this over. It will give you a taste for his style and, more importantly, introduce you to some of his recurring themes, namely a bleak outlook on existence and a predilection for writing dramas about the failure of anything to ever really take place.

 

 

W. H. AUDEN

 

Auden is one of the most gifted poetic stylists of this century. His poems evince a technical virtuosity that is rare among modern writers. Look at a few of his better-known poems to get a sense of his style and diction: “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” “Musée des Beaux Arts,” and “In Praise of Limestone.”

 

 

DYLAN THOMAS

 

Thomas, a Welshman, is best known for two works: “Fern Hill” and “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.” You should read both of these poems carefully and pay attention to his Romantic and rhetorical style.

 

 

LANGSTON HUGHES

 

Hughes wrote poetry, novels, essays, and plays about the African-American experience. His most famous poem is “Harlem,” in which he wonders aloud about what happens to a dream (and the dreamer) when a dream remains unfulfilled.

 

 

GWENDOLYN BROOKS

 

Gwendolyn Brooks, a prolific poet, is closely associated with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s-1970s, especially in Chicago, her hometown. Brooks' style varies widely; she writes in both traditional forms and free verse, both dramatic and narrative poetry. The subject matter of her poems also varies widely; two of her most famous poems are “The Mother,” about abortion, and “Gay Chaps at the Bar.”