Literature Mirrors its society
Human personification and attitude towards life is related with its time and age. Human moral values are changing according to time and age. What was valuable in two hundred years back, is now neglected, what will be neglected in two hundred years is the center of attraction now.
Joint family was worshiped by generation before the last generation. But nowadays joint family is considered as foolish system. Society accepts the individual selfishness. Tradition and culture are keep changing along with time and age. Both language and civilization are not the exception from changing.
Everything is changing without giving trace for the deserted. How a youth can know about his grandfather’s life style. How to know about tradition, civilization, and moral values of our ancestors. No museum is portraying the life style of past generations.
But, literature portrays everything. Literature is a mirror of its time of creation. The characters depicted in the literature are the sample pieces of real human beings of its time. To get the unique features and common manners of a society at a particular time, going through the characters and society depicted by the literature of the time is enough.
The character and theme for the literature are taken from the real life characters and society of its time.
If you want to know about sixteenth century, study the sixteenth century literature. Do you like to know the impact of British rule in India or India’s attitude towards British rule. Study the literature of particular time.
In the world history, we can not find such a rapid changes in eighteenth and nineteenth century, in other centuries. Those two countries is a period of transition.
Literature of these two countries clearly revealed everything. The joint family system began to loss its value. A new class of people, called middle class are emerged in great number. They are mostly hypocritic.
Literature at the time of two world wars showed the complete denigration of old tradition and morals.
The novels like ‘Mrs.Dalloway, The spire,The Anglo-Saxen Attitude’Â are tool to get the clear picture of psychological changes in people.
Works of T.S.Eliot, Bernard Shaw show the corroded pattern of their society. American literature gives the reason for their domestic failure, disappearance of family system, no value for love and religion.
If we go through the literature from the very beginning to current, We can find out the unnecessary changes in the role of human in society, in the name of development.