SOCIAL MILIEUIN VIKRAM SETH’S NOVEL A SUITABLE BOY

Abstract

Abstract

The social environment, social context, socio- cultural context or milieu refers to the immediate physical and social setting in which people live or in which something happens or develops. It includes the culture that the individual was educated or lives in and the people and institutions with whom they interact. Social realism is exact replication of social reality in all its details. It is a mode of writing that observes complete fidelity or pure faithfulness to the observed objective world. It documents topography, social customs, political happenings, local habits of life and festivals as well as rituals. It describes characters in all their perceived appearance and narrates their experiences in a linear logical sequence. It recounts events exactly as they are constructed as happening along with rational causes and perceived effects. Social realism is like a moving photograph of a changing world, a photograph unlike a painting which is made up of subjective impressions. Social realism cannot escape subjectivity because even the selection of detail is the choice of an author and reflects the understanding by an individual’s subjectivity, but it strives to remain true to the material substance of a physical world rather than internal states of mind.