How did novels present modernity in their vision?
Answer:
- Social novelists often created heroes and heroines with ideal qualities, whom their readers could admire and imitate.
- The characters in the novels show how to be modern without rejecting tradition; how to accept ideas coming from the west without losing one’s identity.
- Chandu Menon portrayed Indulekha as a woman of breathtaking beauty, high intellectual abilities, artistic talent and with an education in English and Sanskrit.
- Madhavan, the hero of the novel was a member of the newly English-educated class of Nayars from the university of Madras. He was also a Sanskrit scholar. He dressed in western clothes but had kept a long tuft of hair, according to the Nayar f’ustom.
- Characters like Indulekha and Madhavan showed readers how Indian and foreign lifestyle could be brought together in an ideal combination.