English Assignment

Submitted By-

Ishaan Khandelwal

SM0119024

Faculty in Charge
Aparajita Hazarika

National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam

(2019-2024)
 1. The Dystopian Novel

1.1 Introduction
Dystopian literature is a form of speculative fiction that began as a response to utopian
literature. A dystopia is an imagined community or society that is dehumanizing and
frightening. A dystopia is an antonym of a utopia, which is a perfect society.
 Dystopian literature can be seen as a tool to educate the younger generations and therefore
make them more responsive to political issues, and with the huge access to information
from social media for example, this may be likely.
The best dystopian texts take something that already exists in our society and intensifies its
effect or power. What if profit-motivated corporations directly controlled governments —
or became states themselves? What happens when religious extremists take control of
government and pass laws to control women? What are the dangers of putting people into
rigid social castes from which they have no hope of escaping?
Dystopian fiction can help us think about all these scenarios without actually having to live
through them. They can act as warnings, as suggestions for course correction. And they can
help us to have discussions about the world as it stands now. Connecting literature to the real
world is a great way to understand just what makes literature so important.

1.1 History of Dystopian Novel

The history of dystopian fiction begins with its polar opposite, utopian fiction: tales that
envision a better world and more perfect society. The word “utopia” itself first appeared as
the title of a fantasy novel by Sir Thomas More, the great writer, philosopher, statesman, and
Catholic martyr of sixteenth century England.
Erewhon  by Samuel Butler, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, Gloriana  by Lady
Florence Dixie, News from Nowhere by William Morris, and many others. These, in turn,
directly inspired the birth of the dystopian genre.
The first recorded use of the word “dystopia” comes from a political speech by John Stuart
Mill in 1868, who used the word to describe utopia's opposite: a place where attempts to
create an ideal society had gone badly awry. When we turn from politics to fiction, although
we can find dystopian elements in a number of early texts, dystopian fiction as a genre does
not begin until the nineteenth century, where it emerged in reaction to those utopian books so
beloved by Victorian readers. Distrustful of the bright, lofty visions conjured by Bellamy,
Morris, and the other uptopianists, writers such as Anna Bowman Dodd, Ignatius L.
Donnelly, Eugen Richter, and H.G. Wells published popular books in the opposite vein: dark,
satiric, cautionary tales of utopia-gone-wrong. Most of these writers are forgotten now --
except, of course, for the great H.G. Wells, for it was Wells who establish the dystopian
genre as literature with now-classic books like The Time Machine (1895) and When The
Sleeper Wakes (1899). The prolific Wells also wrote utopian novels -- such as A Utopian
Tale (1905) and Men Like Gods (1923) -- which had only mixed critical success and are
rarely read today. Aldous Huxley, in fact, disliked Men Like Gods so much that he sat down
to write a parody of it, producing his now-classic dystopian novel Brave New World (1932),
set in a futuristic land of consumerism and technology pushed to soulless extremes.

Although less well known than the novels of Huxley or Wells: We by Yevgeny Zamiatin
(1924) is another classic of early dystopian literature: a chilling tale set in a bleak totalitarian
society inspired by the author's experiences during the Russian Revolution of 1905.
Zamiatin's novel, in turn, profoundly affected a young English writer and journalist named
Arthur Eric Blair, who would go on to become the most widely read dystopian writer of all
time. We know him better under his pen name: George Orwell, author of the dystopian
masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-four (1945) – a book so terrifying, powerful, and prescient that
it's been embraced by readers of every generation since, despite the fact that the year 1984
has long since come and gone.

After Orwell , from the 1950s onward the dystopian genre grew exponentially, with a
dizzying number of excellent books found both on the mainstream literature shelves and on
the science fiction shelves.

In the 1980s and '90s, a new form of dystopian fiction emerged: tales written specifically for
young adult readers, adding younger protagonists and coming-of-age themes to a genre that
many teens had already embraced in its adult form.
 By the early years of the twenty-first century, Young Adult dystopian fiction was well on its
way to becoming the exceptional field that it is today, with a wide variety of authors
exploring dystopic themes in many, many different ways.

1.2 Characteristics of Dystopian Novel

The Dystopian Literature has five main characteristics:
1. Government Control

Government plays a big role in dystopian literature. Generally, there is either no

government or an oppressive ruling body. For example:

 In George Orwell’s 1984, the world is under complete government control. The

fictional dictator Big Brother enforces omnipresent surveillance over the people
living in the three inter-continental superstates remaining after a world war.

 The Hunger Games, a young adult trilogy by Suzanne Collins beginning in

2008, takes place in the fictional world Panem, a future nation on the ruins of
North America. Panem’s totalitarian government called The Capitol holds most
of the country’s wealth and controls the citizens. Each year, children from
Panem’s 12 districts are selected to participate in a televised death match called
the Hunger Games.

2. Technological Control

Advanced science and technology in dystopian works go beyond tools for improving
everyday life—technology is often depicted as a controlling, omnipresent force and is
often used as a fear-mongering tactic.

 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, written in 1932, explores the danger of
technology. The ruling World State uses powerful conditioning technologies to
control reproduction and citizens’ actions.
 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick takes place in a post-
apocalyptic San Francisco after a nuclear global war in 1992. This 1968 novel
 was the basis for the film The Blade Runner and explores the dangers of
advanced technology. There are android robots indistinguishable from humans,
and mass extinction has led to artificial animals.

3. Environmental Disaster

Dystopian novels are often set in places that are inhabitable, have been destroyed, or
are preparing for destruction.

 The Road by Cormac McCarthy, written in 2006, is a post-apocalyptic story

about a father and son venturing across the ruins of America after an extinction
event.
 The Maze Runner is a series by James Dashner chronicling the events of how
the dystopian world had been destroyed by massive solar flares and coronal
mass ejection. In the first book of the series, a group of teenage boys are stuck
in an imaginary place called The Glade and have to find their way of out its
ever-changing maze.

4. Survival

The oppressive powers and destruction in dystopian worlds often leave the inhabitants
to fend for themselves.

 The Running Man was written by Stephen King and first published under the
pseudonym Richard Bachman in 1982. Taking place in 2025, the novel is about
an impoverished man living under an oppressive government who competes on
a life-threatening game show in order to earn money to care for his family.
 Lord of the Flies by William Golding, written in 1954, is about a group of
schoolboys who are abandoned on a tropical island after their plane is shot
down during a fictional atomic war. Conflicts emerge between the boys as they
struggle to build a civilization and fight for survival.

5. Loss of Individualism
How should the needs of society as a whole compare to individual needs? Many
dystopian futures depict the dangers of conformity.

 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, written in 1953, follows a fireman whose job
is to burn books. Because of the censorship of books, this future society has
increased interest in technology and entertainment—and an inability to think
freely and creatively.
 The Giver by Lois Lowry is a 1993 young adult novel about a society that has
no pain because the community has all been converted to “Sameness.” The
story follows a 12-year-old boy who is selected to be the society’s Receiver of
Memory and will store the memories of the community before “Sameness” was
enacted.
 Conclusion

The word dystopia is an antonym of the word utopia i.e. a perfect society. The Dystopian
Literature is a speculative fiction through which a writer can present the actual or a darker
society that could be as frightening as one can imagine. The Dystopian Literature came
out as a result of Utopian literature; it has its history where some writers shifted from
utopian literature to dystopian literature while some of the writers tried to create a
fictional world which was opposite to what it was in Utopian Literature.
The Dystopian literature is also used to educate people about some political issues and some
sensitive issues without letting them face those issues. Even these days the dystopian
literature is liked by the youth these days and now the dystopian literature is not limited to
books, many films and web-series are being made with the dystopian storyline.
All in all, the dystopian literature could be used as a tool to present the defects in any part of
the society.
 2. Feminist Literary Theory

2.1 Introduction

Feminist Literary Theory is concerned with "the ways in which literature (and other
cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and
psychological oppression of women" (Tyson). This school of theory looks at how aspects
of our culture are inherently patriarchal and aims to expose misogyny in writing about
women, which can take explicit and implicit forms. This misogyny, Tyson reminds us,
can extend into diverse areas of our culture: "Perhaps the most chilling example...is found
in the world of modern medicine, where drugs prescribed for both sexes often have been
tested on male subjects only" .
Feminist Literary Theory is also concerned with less obvious forms of marginalization
such as the exclusion of women writers from the traditional literary canon: "...unless the
critical or historical point of view is feminist, there is a tendency to under-represent the
contribution of women writers"
Feminist Literary Theory has, in many ways, followed what some theorists call the three
waves of feminism: First Wave Feminism from late 1700s to early 1900s, Second Wave
Feminism from early 1960s to late 1970s and Third Wave Feminism from 1990s to
present.

2.2 Feminism
Feminism, the belief in social, economic, and political equality of the sexes.Although
largely originating in the West, feminism is manifested worldwide and is represented by
various institutions committed to activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.
Throughout most of Western history, women were confined to the domestic sphere, while
public life was reserved for men. In medieval Europe, women were denied the right to
own property, to study, or to participate in public life. At the end of the 19th century in
France, they were still compelled to cover their heads in public, and, in parts of Germany,
a husband still had the right to sell his wife. Even as late as the early 20th century,
women could neither vote nor hold elective office in Europe and in most of the United
States. Women were prevented from conducting business without a male representative,
be it father, brother, husband, legal agent, or even son. Married women could not exercise
control over their own children without the permission of their husbands. M oreover,
women had little or no access to education and were barred from most professions. In
some parts of the world, such restrictions on women continue today.

2.3 Literary Theory

A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different
lenses critics use to view and talk about art, literature, and even culture. These different
lenses allow critics to consider works of art based on certain assumptions within that
school of theory. The different lenses also allow critics to focus on particular aspects of a
work they consider important.
For example, if a critic is working with certain Marxist theories, s/he might focus on how
the characters in a story interact based on their economic situation. If a critic is working
with post-colonial theories, s/he might consider the same story but look at how characters
from colonial powers (Britain, France, and even America) treat characters from, say,
Africa or the Caribbean. Hopefully, after reading through and working with the resources
in this area of the OWL, literary theory will become a little easier to understand and use.

2.4 About Feminism Literary Theory

The term feminism can be used to describe a political, cultural or economic movement
aimed at establishing equal rights and legal protection for women. Feminism involves
political and sociological theories and philosophies concerned with issues of gender
difference, as well as a movement that advocates gender equality for women and
campaigns for women's rights and interests. Although the terms "feminism" and
"feminist" did not gain widespread use until the 1970s, they were already being used in
the public parlance much earlier; for instance, Katherine Hepburn speaks of the "feminist
movement" in the 1942 film Woman of the Year.

According to Maggie Humm and Rebecca Walker, the history of feminism can be
divided into three waves. The first feminist wave was in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, the second was in the 1960s and 1970s, and the third extends from
the 1990s to the present. Feminist theory emerged from these feminist movements. It is
manifest in a variety of disciplines such as feminist geography, feminist history and
feminist literary criticism.

Feminism has altered predominant perspectives in a wide range of areas within Western
society, ranging from culture to law. Feminist activists have campaigned for women's
legal rights (rights of contract, property rights, voting rights); for women's right to bodily
integrity and autonomy, for abortion rights, and for reproductive rights (including access
to contraception and quality prenatal care); for protection of women and girls from
domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape;for workplace rights, including maternity
leave and equal pay; against misogyny; and against other forms of gender-specific
discrimination against women.

During much of its history, most feminist movements and theories had leaders who were
predominantly middle-class white women from Western Europe and North America.
However, at least since Sojourner Truth's 1851 speech to American feminists, women of
other races have proposed alternative feminisms. This trend accelerated in the 1960s with
the Civil Rights movement in the United States and the collapse of European colonialism
in Africa, the Caribbean, parts of Latin America and Southeast Asia. Since that time,
women in former European colonies and the Third World have proposed "Post-colonial"
and "Third World" feminisms. Some Postcolonial Feminists, such as Chandra Talpade
Mohanty, are critical of Western feminism for being ethnocentric. Black feminists, such
as Angela Davis and Alice Walker, share this view.

2.5 History of Feminist Literary Theory

Feminists and scholars have divided the movement's history into three "waves". The first
wave refers mainly to women's suffrage movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries (mainly concerned with women's right to vote). The second wave refers to the
ideas and actions associated with the women's liberation movement beginning in the
1960s (which campaigned for legal and social rights for women). The third wave refers to
a continuation of, and a reaction to the perceived failures of, second-wave feminism,
beginning in the 1990s.

1. First Wave Feminism - late 1700s-early 1900's: writers like Mary Wollstonecraft
(A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) highlight the inequalities between the
sexes. Activists like Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull contribute to the
women's suffrage movement, which leads to National Universal Suffrage in 1920
with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment.

2. Second Wave Feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s: building on more equal working
conditions necessary in America during World War II, movements such as the
National Organization for Women (NOW), formed in 1966, cohere feminist political
activism. Writers like Simone de Beauvoir (Le Deuxième Sexe, 1949) and Elaine
Showalter established the groundwork for the dissemination of feminist theories
dove-tailed with the American Civil Rights movement.
3. Third Wave Feminism - early 1990s-present: resisting the perceived essentialist
(over generalized, over simplified) ideologies and a white, heterosexual, middle class
focus of second wave feminism, third wave feminism borrows from post-structural
and contemporary gender and race theories (see below) to expand on marginalized
populations' experiences. Writers like Alice Walker work to "...reconcile it with the
concerns of the black community, the survival and wholeness of her people, men and
women both, and for the promotion of dialog and community as well as for the
valorization of women and of all the varieties of work women perform".
 Conclusion

Feminist Literary Theory is concerned with the ways in which literature reinforce or
undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women.
Feminist Literary Theory has, in many ways, followed what some theorists call the three
waves of feminism: First wave feminism in the late 1700s-early 1900's that highlighted the
inequalities between the sexes. Second wave feminism - early 1960s-late 1970s focused
building on more equal working conditions. Third wave feminism - early 1990s-present is on
resisting the perceived essentialist (over generalized, over simplified) ideologies.
The Feminist Literary Theory shows the struggle of females, it shows how they changed their
place in the society once they were not even considered the part of the society and now they
have became an essential part of the society in every sector, though their struggle is still
going on but they have proved that every person in the society irrespective of its gender is
important.