My Science School

Jane Eyre is a novel by English writer Charlotte Brontë, published under the pen name "Currer Bell", on 16 October 1847, by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York.

The book contains elements of social criticism with a strong sense of Christian morality at its core, and it is considered by many to be ahead of its time because of Jane's individualistic character and how the novel approaches the topics of class, sexuality, religion, and feminism. It, along with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, is one of the most famous romance novels of all time.

At Lowood Institution, a school for poor and orphaned girls, Jane soon finds that life is harsh. She attempts to fit in and befriends an older girl, Helen Burns. During a class session, her new friend is criticised for her poor stance and dirty nails, and receives a lashing as a result. Later, Jane tells Helen that she could not have borne such public humiliation, but Helen philosophically tells her that it would be her duty to do so. Jane then tells Helen how badly she has been treated by Mrs. Reed, but Helen tells her that she would be far happier if she did not bear grudges. In due course, Mr. Brocklehurst visits the school. While Jane is trying to make herself look inconspicuous, she accidentally drops her slate, thereby drawing attention to herself. She is then forced to stand on a stool, and is branded a sinner and a liar. Later, Miss Temple, the caring superintendent, facilitates Jane's self-defence and publicly clears her of any wrongdoing. Helen and Miss Temple are Jane's two main role models who positively guide her development, despite the harsh treatment she has received from many others.

The 80 pupils at Lowood are subjected to cold rooms, poor meals, and thin clothing. Many students fall ill when a typhus epidemic strikes; Helen dies of consumption in Jane's arms. When Mr. Brocklehurst's maltreatment of the students is discovered, several benefactors erect a new building and install a sympathetic management committee to moderate Mr. Brocklehurst's harsh rule. Conditions at the school then improve dramatically.

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The Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters is a special institute founded and led by Professor Charles Xavier to train young mutants in controlling their powers and help foster a friendly human-mutant relationship.

Sometime between the late 1700s and early 1900s, a large Neoclassic mansion was constructed on the land near Breakstone Lake just outside of Salem Center, New York. The estate was inherited by Brian Xavier and he lived there with his wife, Sharon and their son, Charles, until Brian's untimely, accidental death. Charles Xavier was born and raised in the mansion. After Brian's death, Sharon married his once colleague, Dr. Kurt Marko. Marko and his son, Cain lived at the mansion thereafter. Sharon died not long after the marriage, and the ownership of the estate passed on to Charles. Charles is the tenth generation Xavier to own the mansion.

After graduating Oxford University, being drafted in the Korean War, and battling the Shadow King in Cairo, Egypt, Xavier decided to devote his life to protecting humanity from evil mutants and safeguarding innocent mutants from human oppression, believing that both could peacefully coexist. Xavier worked with fellow mutation expert, Dr. Karl Lykos, as well as Dr. Moira MacTaggert, and they began discussing the idea of founding a school for mutants. Before recruiting his first students, a mysterious man calling himself "Cable" arrived at the mansion. In exchange for teaching him about the present, Cable aided Xavier in equipping the mansion with advanced technology.

Professor Xavier's first student was the 11-year-old Jean Grey, who had been traumatized when she telepathically experienced the emotions of a dying friend. Later Xavier met Fred Duncan from F.B.I., who introduced him to a young Scott Summers. Scott soon into the mansion and, over the following months, Xavier recruited other students including Bobby Drake, Warren Worthington III and Hank McCoy. Together they formed the original X-Men.

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Miss Trunchbull is the "formidable female" headmistress of Crunchem Hall Primary School, attended by Matilda Wormwood and her friends. A former Olympic hammer-thrower with a hatred of children, Roald Dahl describes her as "a gigantic holy terror, a fierce tyrranical monster who frightened the life out of pupils and teachers alike."

Agatha Trunchbull's parents presumably died when she was young, then she was adopted by Mrs. Honey's parents, explaining how they're half siblings. After finishing high school, Thunchbull would compete in the 1972 Summer Olympics , she became famous for often using the hammer throw.

After her stepsister died, the Trunchbull was called in to look after her niece while Jennifer's father, Magnus Honey, was away at work, though unknown to her stepbrother-in-law, she was actually cruel to his daughter behind his back. When Jennifer was five, her father died. The police concluded that Magnus had killed himself, though it is very possible that the Trunchbull had murdered him so she could inherit his house and money. 

Several years later, Miss Trunchbull became the authoritarian principal (headmistress in the book) of Crunchem Hall. This was also the school where her niece taught at.

Agatha Trunchbull is malicious, pompous, wicked, haughty, dangerous, brutal, egotistical, sadistic, psychopathic, heartless, and cruel. Besides a passionate hate for children, she’s also power-crazed and greedy, trying to maintain a position of power in any way she can. She’s also an abusive sadist who sees violence as the best way when it comes to disciplining children and kept a vicious, makeshift torture chamber (which she called the Chokey) in her office.

In the film, she shows incredible degrees of hyper-paranoia, as she was terrified when Matilda raided her house and also mortified when she saw the portrait of Magnus, a man she probably murdered to inherit the estate, take the place of her own portrait over the fireplace.

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Swami and Friends is the first of a series of novels written by R. K. Narayan (1906–2001), English language novelist from India. The novel, the first book Narayan wrote, is set in British India in a fictional town called Malgudi. The second and third books in the trilogy are The Bachelor of Arts and The English Teacher.

The story revolves around a ten year old school boy named Swaminathan and his friends. Throughout the novel he is called as Swami. All the events take place in Malgudi, A fictional town. Swami wakes up a bit late on a Monday morning. His father takes him strictly and scolds him for not completing his homework. Swami rushes through his homework and then he goes to School. He is studying in Albert Mission School.

Swami and Friends is the first novel written by R. K. Narayan. It was published through the intervention of a friend and neighbour ("Kittu" Purna) who was studying at Oxford. Through him, Graham Greene came into contact with Narayan's work, became especially interested in it and took it upon himself to place the book with a reputable English publisher (Hamish Hamilton). Graham Greene was responsible for the title Swami and Friends, changing it from Narayan's Swami, the Tate, suggesting that it would have the advantage of having some resemblance to Rudyard Kipling's Stalky & Co..

Greene arranged the details of the contract and remained closely involved until the novel was published. Narayan's indebtedness to Greene is inscribed on the front endpaper of a copy of Swami and Friends Narayan presented to Greene: "But for you, Swami should be in the bottom of Thames now".

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Malory Towers is a series of six novels by English children's author Enid Blyton. The series is based on a girls' boarding school that Blyton's daughter attended, Benenden School, which relocated during the war to the Cornish seaside. The series follows the protagonist, Darrell Rivers, on her adventures and experiences in boarding school. Darrell Rivers' name was inspired by that of Blyton's second husband, Kenneth Darrell Waters.

Darrell Rivers is the main character of the first six books. She is hot-tempered and this causes her many problems, but she learns to control it as she goes up the school, and she is also a very responsible, hard-working girl. She is very popular with her form, as is her best friend Sally Hope. When she gets into the upper school she becomes head-girl of the fourth form, games captain in the fifth and finally, in sixth form, Head Girl of the school. As she gets older at Malory Towers she begins to realise her talent for writing and goes on to be a writer. She is very well known in the school and was looked up to by all the smaller children in her time as Head Girl.

The school has four towers that are four storeys high. The kitchen, dining hall and common rooms are on the ground floor, dormitories are on the first and second floors, teachers' rooms and storage are on the top floor.

The school forms a square with a courtyard in the middle. The sides of the school are three storeys high. Between the west and the north towers there are the classrooms. Between the north and east towers are the 'san' and the headmistress's rooms. Between the east and south towers are the entrance, gym, assembly hall, labs and art room. Between the south and west tower are the mistress's rooms.

The school also has a rose garden, stables, tennis courts, sports pitches and an outside, natural swimming pool.

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Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, often shortened to Hogwarts, was the British wizarding school, located in the Scottish Highlands. It accepted magical students from Great Britain and Ireland for enrolment. It was a state-owned school, funded by the Ministry of Magic.

The school's motto was Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus (Draco Dormiens Nvnqvam Titillandvs), which, translated from Latin, means "Never tickle a sleeping dragon".

The school had numerous charms and spells on and around it that made it impossible for a Muggle to see it as the school; rather, they saw only ruins and several warnings of danger. Witches and wizards could not Apparate or Disapparate in Hogwarts grounds, except for when the Headmaster lifted the enchantment, whether only in certain areas or for the entire campus, so as to make the school less vulnerable when it served the headmaster to allow Apparition. Electricity and electronic devices were not found at Hogwarts. Due to the high levels of magic, Muggle substitutes for magic, such as computers, radar and electricity, "went haywire" around Hogwarts. Radios, however, were an exception as they were not powered by electricity, but by magic.

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Do you believe in werewolves? Well, some people strongly believe they are werewolves. Clinical lycanthropy is a rare mental disorder in which the patient believes that he/she is a wolf. They "believe" that they are transforming or have transformed into a wolf. They don't physically transform into one, of course!

One Dutch scientist set out to find out how prevalent the condition is. He found that since 1850, there have been 56 original case descriptions of people who believed they were metamorphosing into an animal. Patients have delusions of seeing themselves as the animal when they look at their reflection in the mirror and some even develop craving for the food of that animal. But some scientists think that it is an unusual manifestation of another disorder such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

A mental disorder in which a person believes himself to be a bovine is called Boanthropy. Bovinae is a biological classification which includes cow, ox, buffalo and bison. Patients with boanthropy try to lead their life like a bovine - walking, eating and mooing like an ox or cow. They develop a taste for grass and hay. This condition is also rare.

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The great Babylonian poem was composed nearly 4 millennia ago in ancient Mesopotamia.

What makes it special?

Written in the Akkadian and Summerian languages used by the people of lower Mesopotamian, “The Epic of Gilgamesh” is a series of poems and tales dating back to 2100 B.C., but the most complete version was written around the 12th century B.C. by the Babylonians. No one knows who is the original writer of the story of Gilgamesh or if it was written by a group of authors.

The mythical poem is centred around the tale of King Gilgamesh, whose mother is the clever goddess Ninsun, a cow. Gilgamesh is a tyrant who rules the city of Uruk. The villagers complain to the gods and they create a man called in Enikdu to restrain him. But Gilgamesh and Enikdu end up becoming friends. The two ravage a forest, cut down Cedar trees and kill the forest guardian. Eventually, Enikdu dies. After his friend’s death, the Gilgamesh humbled and relies is the consequences of his barbaric actions.

The Sumerian civilisation first developed writing around 5000 years ago. Scribes wrote on clay tablets in a script known as cuneiform. People even worshipped a god of writing called Nabu. His symbols were the stylus and clay tablet.

How it was discovered

In 1845, Austen Henry Layard from the UK discovered parts of clay tablets with some writing on it, on his way to site Ceylon. Some of these tablets contained the story of Gilgamesh. But these were not the original tablets. They were copies of the text commissioned by King Ashurbanipal, who was the fan of the Gilgamesh. The king had preserved the tablets in a library. However, the library burnt down after Ashurbanipal’s empire fell, but the clay tablets remained buried under the ruins.

Work in progress

Although Layard discovered the tablets, no one knew how to read it. It was George Smith who deciphered it first in 1872 while working in the British Museum. Over the years, more tablets were recovered from different sites including the Iraqi city of Mosul. Interestingly, the text continues to grow and evolve with new findings. That’s why “The Epic of Gilgamesh” is still considered to be a work in progress. It may take years before we get to have a complete version of the epic.

 

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Two genres, contemporary and fantasy, have always remained popular among young adults. But what happens when you have books that are both or neither. You might be looking at a work of magical realism

Magical realism is a genre of literature that depicts the real world as having an undercurrent of magic. A combination of fantasy and realism, it explores reality in an imaginative way. while suggesting a deeper meaning.

The world of magical realism is grounded in the real world, but fantastical elements are considered to be normal there. One of the attractions of the genre is that it blurs the line between reality and fantasy. For instance, the presence of dead characters in Toni Morrison's Beloved, fluidity of time in Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time", and telepathy in Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children."

How it started

Magical realism developed as a reaction to the realism movement of the 19th Century. The term "magischer realismus." which translates to "magic realism." was first used in 1925 by German art critic Franz Roh. And, it gained popularity among Latin American writers, who explored it further.

Magic realism vs. fantasy How does it differ from fantasy novels and fairy tales? Unlike fantasy novels, authors in the magical realism genre present the incredible as normal, every-day life. These novels are based in a realistic setting and present the magical events as ordinary Occurrences.

Example

A classic example is "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" by Salman Rushdie, who is one of the prominent authors of magical realism in English literature. The novel brings together real-world elements and features of magic or the supernatural

The city of Alifbay in which Haroun lives is described as a sad city because the people there are so depressed, they have forgotten the city's actual name. Similarly, the moon is called Kahani and it's almost entirely covered in warm water. This water. Rushdie writes, is "Story Water, its colourful and Haroun can see steam rising from it. Do you see the magical realism employed here?

 

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Whether it is “Harry Potter” or “Percy Jackson and the Olympians”, book series have their own unique charm. Waiting eagerly for the next instalment in the series, speculating what lies in store for your favourite characters, and binge reading all the books at once are some of the joys associated with reading a series. But did you know that serialised novels were precursors to book series? Or that Charles Dickens is credited for popularising serialised novels? “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club” (popularly known as “The Pickwick Papers”) was published in instalments over 19 issues from March 1836 to October 1837.

Dickens wrote most of “The Pickwick papers” under the pseudonym Boz, It follows an elderly gentleman named Samuel Pickwick as he journeys around the British countryside. It was through this work that Dickens established his characteristic writing style, which was marked by humour and exaggerated characters. He also highlighted the shortcomings of Victorian society.

Buoyed by the success of “The Pickwick Papers”, Dickens serialised all his work, including classics such as “Great Expectations” and “Little Dorrit”, Soon, scores of other notable Victorian novelists joined the craze,

Today, however, book series are more popular than serialised novels. From “The Lord of the Rings” to “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “Harry Potter”, book series are turned into franchises with spin-offs, films and merchandising.

 

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About Lady Xu Mu

Lady Xu Mu was born to Wan, Count Zhao of Wey and his wife Xuan Jiang, with the clan name Ji. When she was older, she married Duke Mu of the neighbouring State of Xu and became known as Lady Xu Mu. She wasn’t particularly thrilled about the marriage since she saw Xu as a weak State that wouldn’t protect her homeland in times of need. But persuaded by the rich gifts of the Duke of Xu, per parents decided that he would be her husband. With that agreement forged, Xu Mu left her beloved homeland.

Her longing for home was expressed in the poems she wrote during her times in Xu. “Bamboo Pole” and “Spring Water” spoke of how much she missed home. These were the only two works of hers from that time that survived.

Her uncle, who took over Wey after her father, was an incompetent ruler who drained the coffers with his affinity for pet cranes. In fact, it is said he gave his pet cranes important places in his court. In 660 BS, when the northern Di nomads invaded Wey, the State was left defenceless and the capital was burnt and pillaged. After her uncle was killed, her brother took over the throne and he too died soon after. During this time, she realised it as her duty to help her homeland and drove on a chariot towards Wey, requesting help and supplies from neighbouring States. The Xu courtiers stopped her and persuaded her tp return to Xu. It was at this time she wrote “Speeding Chariot”, a scathing critique of bureaucracy.

The poem had a strong response, especially from the neighbouring Qi statesmen, who rode to Wey and solved its crisis. The State shifted its capital elsewhere and survived for another 400 years, thanks to its daughter Lady Xu Mu. Her poems were praised by her contemporaries and carried down the Wey State through generations.

Excerpt

Poetry was an art from that many cultivated women were trained to write, and when she moved to her husband’s kingdom, Xu wrote “Bamboo Pole”, solved in nostalgia for her home.

With a long and slender bamboo

I fished by the shores of Qi;

Can’t help thinking of the river

And the land so far from me.

On the left, the fountain gushes,

On the right, the river flaws.

Far away the girl has travelled.

From parents, brothers and home.

 Did you know?

When Xu Mu’s homeland was under siege, she approached her husband for help and asked him to send his forces. He refused and so she left Xu to go towards her homeland in search of help. Many called her rash and meddlesome but she was also appreciated for her strong and capable leadership during hardship.

 

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About Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was born in London to a comfortable family but soon her father, who was a bully and abusive, diminished the family’s wealth through a series of bad business choices. When her mother passed away in 1780, Marry moved out of her home to earn her own living.

She was angry that her brother was allowed to receive formal education but she wasn’t. So she began to educate herself and dedicated her life to writing and speaking for women’s rights.

Along with her sister and her friend Fanny, Mary established a small school for girls, and from her teaching experience came her first piece of writing – a pamphlet called “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters” (1787). When her friend passed away, the school went through some financial struggle, and Mary had to move on.

For some time, she worked as a governess for a family in Ireland but soon discovered that domestic work was not something she liked doing. Three years later, she returned to London and began to work as a translator and literary advisor for a radical publisher called Joseph Johnson. In this capacity, she entered the intellectual circles in London and became known as a radical thinker.

She published “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” in 1792, where she argued passionately for women’s equality and laid down the doctrines of the feminist movement that followed many years later. It lamented on women’s position in society as adornments at home and described society as rearing ‘gentle, domestic brutes’. This book made her both famous and infamous in her own time.

In 1792, she moved to Paris and began to write critically against the violence taking place in the early stages of revolution. She met Captain Gilbert Imlay in the English circles there and had a daughter with him. They soon separated, and a few years later, she met an old friend of Joseph Johnson, political writer-novelist William Godwin, in whom she found an intellectual companion. Both William and Mary abhorred marriage but eventually did tie the knot. Soon after, Mary gave birth to her second daughter. She died a few days later due to complications in childbirth.

 

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Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo were the joint winners of the Booker Prize 2019. The judges broke the rules of the award to declare a tie for the first time in 30 years. The pair spilt up the prize money equally. Evaristo is the first black woman to win the Booker.

The chair of judges, Peter Florence, emerged after more than five hours with the jury to reveal that the group of five had been unable to pick a single winner from their shortlist of six. Instead, despite being told repeatedly by the prize’s literary director, Gaby Wood, that they were not allowed to split the £50,000 award, they chose two novels: Atwood’s The Testaments, a follow-up to her dystopian The Handmaid’s Tale, and Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, which is told in the voices of 12 different characters, mostly black women.

Evaristo’s win makes her the first black woman to win the Booker since it began in 1969 and the first black British author. At 79, Atwood becomes the prize’s oldest winner. The Canadian author previously won the Booker in 2000 for The Blind Assassin; she becomes the fourth author to have won the prize twice.

 

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The Nobel Prize was postponed in 2018 in light of a scandal that exposed harassment, infighting and conflicts of interest among the 18-members of the Swedish Academy, founded in 1786. In 2019, two literature prizes were announced. Polish author Olga, Tokarczuk for 2018 and Peter Handke for 2019.

"The present decision was arrived at in view of the currently diminished academy and the reduced public confidence in the Academy," the academy's press release read.

The group's permanent secretary, Anders Olsson, said: "We find it necessary to commit time to recovering public confidence in the academy before the next laureate can be announced."

He added that the cultural institution also made the decision to delay the 2018 award "out of respect for previous and future literature laureates, the Nobel Foundation and the general public."

The academy said it intended to bestow the 2018 literature award in 2019.

 

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Mona Lisa is known for her inscrutable smile, but there’s another Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece which is equally intriguing. The Salvator Mundi is the world’s most expensive artwork. In 2017, it was sold for a record $450m at auction by Christie’s in New York. After that, the location of the painting was kept secret. Many people speculated about its location, but were unable to find it. On June 2019, Artnet, an art industry news service disclosed the mysterious hideout of the painting. According to the news service, the 500-year-old painting was being kept on Prince Mohammed’s yacht, Serene!

The fact that Salvator Mundi was the last work by da Vinci in private hands therefore makes it an extremely enticing prospect for any private collector looking to own a serious piece of art history.

There’s been some debate in the art world as to whether the da Vinci painting is really by the master himself. Some think it’s a fake, whilst some think that extensive restoration work on the painting interferes with the ability to attribute it to da Vinci. Christie’s say that scholars agree that is authentic and its finding in 2005 is “the greatest artistic rediscovery of the 20th century.”

 

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