Social changes in Britain which led to an increase in women readers.

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Social changes in Britain that led to an increase in women readers:

(i)The most exciting element of the novel was the involvement of women. The eighteenth century saw the middle classes become more prosperous.

(ii)Women got more leisure to read as well as write novels. And novels began exploring the world of women – their emotions and identities, their experiences and problems.

(iii)Many novels were about domestic life – a theme about which women were allowed to speak with authority. They drew upon their experience, wrote about family life and earned public recognition.

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Actions of Robinson Crusoe:

(i)Shipwrecked on an island, Crusoe treats coloured people not as human beings equal to him, but as inferior creatures.

(ii)He rescues a ‘native’ and makes him his slave.

(iii)He does not ask for his name but arrogantly gives him the name Friday. 

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 The changes in technology and society:

(i)Technological improvements in printing brought down the price of books and innovations in marketing led to expanded sales.

(ii)In the nineteenth century, Europe entered the industrial age. Factories came up, business profits increased and the economy grew. 

(iii)The growth of industry was accompanied by an economic philosophy which celebrated the pursuit of profit and undervalued the lives of workers.

(iv)The vast majority of readers of the novel lived in the city. The novel created in them a feeling of connection with the fate of rural communities.

(v)The novel uses the vernacular, the language that is spoken by common people. By coming closer to the different spoken languages of the people, the novel produces the sense of a shared world between diverse people in a nation

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Leading novelists of the nineteenth century wrote for a cause. Colonial rulers regarded the contemporary culture of India as inferior. On the other hand, Indian novelists wrote to develop a modern literature of the country that could produce a sense of national belonging and cultural equality with their colonial masters.

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After 1740, the readership of novels began to include poorer people:

(i)Technological improvements in printing brought down the price of books and innovations in marketing led to expanded sales.

(ii)In France, publishers found that they could make super profits by hiring out novels by the hour. The novel was one of the first mass-produced items to be sold. There were several reasons for its popularity.


(iii)The worlds created by novels were absorbing and believable, and seemingly real. While reading novels, the reader was transported to another person’s world, and began looking at life as it was experienced by the characters of the novel.

(iv)Besides, novels allowed individuals the pleasure of reading in private, as well as the joy of publicly reading or discussing stories with friends or relatives.

(v)In rural areas people would collect to hear one of them reading a novel aloud, often becoming deeply involved in the lives of the characters.