English Literature Notes

Physical Description The stage direction describes Helena as being of the same age as Alison, of medium height, and carefully dressed. When she is first introduced to us, she is busy preparing tea for the inmates of the house where she is staying as a guest. She is feeling perfectly at home and is assisting Alison in household work. She has a rather judicial expression of alertness on her face, but when this expression softens, she looks very attractive. She possesses a sense of matriarchal authority and she behaves as if she were a gracious representative of some visiting monarch. Actually, she belongs to the middle class which feels perfectly secure in its basic rights. Most men would be anxious to please and to impress a woman of this kind. Even from other young women, like Alison, she receives her due respect and admiration Jimmy is, however, absolutely impervious to both her strength and dignity. Helena’s Prolonged Stay at the Porters’ Flat Helena had come to stay with the Porters...

Physical Description Alison is described by the author as “the most elusive personality”, that is, one who is difficult to understand. She looks quite elegant in the red shirt which she is wearing (when she is ironing the clothes) and which actually is Jimmy’s. She is approximately the same age as Jimmy and Cliff. (In other words, she is about twenty-five.) By contrast with the men, her beauty appears to be more striking than it really is. She is tall, slim, and dark. The bones of her face are long and delicate. She has eyes which are large and deep. The Difference between her  Outlook upon Life and Jimmy’s Outlook In almost every respect, Alison offers a contrast to Jimmy. She comes from the middle-class, while Jimmy belongs to the working class. As a believer in the middle-class morality she kept herself a virgin till the time of her marriage, but the discovery of her virginity by Jimmy, when he married her, proved to be not only surprising to him but actually annoying. As Alison...

Jimmy is the “ angry young man ” of the play, usually found spouting tirades against the complacency of the British upper classes, and especially against his wife Alison and then his lover Helena. Born working class but highly educated, like his friend and roommate Cliff, but has an ambivalent relationship with his educated status, seeing himself mostly as a working class man and yet frustrated that his education can do nothing to affect his class status. “He is a disconcerting mixture of sincerity and cheerful malice, of tenderness and freebooting cruelty.” Jimmy “alienates the sensitive and insensitive alike,” and his “blistering honesty, or apparent honesty…makes few friends.” Jimmy is a frustrated character, railing against his feelings of alienation and uselessness in post-war England. Physical Appearance and Habits Jimmy Porter, who may be regarded as the hero of the play, has been described by the author as a tall, thin young man about twenty-five. He is a disturbing mixture of ...

Undoubtedly Sheridan’s purpose in writing “The Rivals” was to entertain the audience by making them laugh and not by making them shed tears. “The Rivals” was written as a comedy pure and simple. Though there are certainly a few sentimental scenes in this play yet they are regarded as a parody of sentimentality. The scenes between Falkland and Julia are satire on the sentimental comedy which was in fashion in those days and against which Sheridan revolted.  A brief examination of these sentimental scenes would clearly reveal that Sheridan’s intention was to poke fun at the sentimental comedy of the time. We find both Faulkland and Julia absurd. The true character of Faulkland is indicated to us by Absolute’s description of him as the “most teasing, captious, incorrigible lover”. Faulkland’s own description of his state of mind about his beloved Julia also makes him appear absurd. He says that every hour is an occasion for him to feel alarmed on Julia’s account. If it rains, he feels...

Melaprop. Lydia Languish’s aunt and guardian, Mrs. Malaprop is a self-important and pretentious woman of around fifty, and the comedic heroine of the play. Her speech is garbled by malapropisms (ridiculous misuses of words), as she tries to use sophisticated language, the meaning of which she does not understand, making for some of the play’s funniest moments. She lectures Lydia on obedience and proper behavior for a young lady, claiming that it is Lydia’s duty to marry someone her elders choose for her. Meanwhile, Mrs. Malaprop herself has fallen in love with Sir Lucius O’Trigger, with whom she is corresponding under the pen name Delia. Unfortunately, Sir Lucius actually has no interest in Mrs. Malaprop, but has been led by the wily maid Lucy to believe that Delia is Lydia’s pen name. The "Malaprop" is an infrequent but important character type within this collection of plays. The figures that fall into this group are characterized by their consistent misuse of vocabulary: t...

Being a typical comedy of intrigue in the Restoration era, Sheridan’s play, The Rival is entitled on that light.  The crux of the entire plot surrounds the rivalry of various characters for winning their prizes. Although a casual look on the title throws a comic colour, but in essence the title is purely satirical. On the part of husbands in general who doubt their mistresses of unknown rivals and the girls who found pleasure in surrounding themselves in contending rivals, the title creates an inherent satire. There are a few critics who argue that the title Rival does not carry a very preciserelevance. It is often suggested that by this to title Sheridan was referring to the pseudo-rivalry of Captain Jack Absolute and Ensign Beverley. Captain Absolute has to assume the personality of a poor sub-lieutenant to tickle the humour of Lydia Lnguish, the romantic heroine, who is a lady of peculiar taste of eloping someone poor like Ensign, deserting all her fortune. But her aunt Mrs. Mal...