Coursework Focus: AO1. Splicing up your life? Sort it out!

Using a comma when you should be using a full stop?  This is called comma splicing.  You need to stop doing it to get the best AO1 marks! Click here to sort it out with our handy guide.

Coursework focus TYW: getting AO3 (context) embedded in your essay

Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper in 1892.  She was concerned with political and social inequality in general. 

In 1898 (6 years after the publication of The Yellow Wallpaper), she published a study called "Women and Economics: a study of the economic relation between men and women as a factor in social evolution".  In this, she argued that financial independence for women could only benefit society as a whole.  This was a radical viewpoint in America in the 19th Century. 

Below is the preface from her study:

PREFACE

This book is written to offer a simple and natural explanation of one of the most common and most perplexing problems of human life,–a problem which presents itself to almost every individual for practical solution, and which demands the most serious attention of the moralist, the physician, and the sociologist–
To show how some of the worst evils under which we suffer, evils long supposed to be inherent and ineradicable in our natures, are but the result of certain arbitrary conditions of our own adoption, and how, by removing those conditions, we may remove the evil resultant–
To point out how far we have already gone in the path of improvement, and how irresistibly the social forces of to-day are compelling us further, even without our knowledge and against our violent opposition,–an advance which may be greatly quickened by our recognition and assistance–
To reach in especial the thinking women of to-day, and urge upon them a new sense, not only of their social responsibility as individuals, but of their measureless racial importance as makers of men.
It is hoped also that the theory advanced will prove sufficiently suggestive to give rise to such further study and discussion as shall prove its error or establish its truth.

For further critical quotations (AO5) that hint at the context of The Yellow Wallpaper and Victorian literature, (AO3)  click here, or the image of the Gilman quotation, above.

Coursework focus TBC: getting AO3 (context) embedded in your essay.

"During this time" does not count as hitting AO3 in your essay.

You need to be specific, and clear.

If you are writing about The Bloody Chamber, it was published in 1979, thus Carter was writing during the second wave of feminism.

The second wave of feminism:

Second-wave feminism is a period of feminist activity that first began in the early 1960s in the United States, and eventually spread throughout the Western world and beyond. In the United States, the movement lasted through the early 1980s. It later became a worldwide movement that was strong in Europe. 

Whereas first-wave feminism focused mainly on suffrage and overturning legal obstacles to gender equality (i.e., voting rights, property rights), second-wave feminism broadened the debate to a wide range of issues: sexuality, family, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities. At a time when mainstream women were making job gains in the professions, the military, the media, and sports, second-wave feminism also drew attention to domestic violence and marital rape issues; establishment of rape crisis and battered women's shelters; and changes in custody and divorce law. 

The political became personal. It was society's expected behaviours of gender roles that was questioned.  Rather than focusing on 'big' political issues, such as women getting the vote, this wave of feminism highlighted the inequality of everyday life for women.  

Carter: 

Carter questions the stereotypical gender roles and plays with the reader's expectations of gender, too.  Her writing reflects the context in the way that she questions the "latent content" of traditional fairy tales, and the characters' gender roles within them.  She is questioning and transforming readers' understanding of well-known stories that have been told for centuries, by challenging and experimenting with expected character traits.  Her characters are not fixed in their gender roles, but fluid. Just as Carter rewrites or recreates elements of previously accepted stories and the gender roles within them, gender roles were being questioned and rewritten in the wider context, too.   

Contemporary Views. Leo Africanus.

Click here to access an extract from The History and Description of Africa (1600) translated by John Pory.

1. Print the extract
2. Read the extract from the subheading "What Vices The Foresaid Africans Are Subject Unto" to the end
3. Underline/highlight any racial stereotypes that you can find (these can be new stereotypes, or ones we have already covered)
4.  How do you think this extract might have influenced Shakespeare when writing the play Othello? Consider the parallels between the extract, and the character of Othello himself.
5. Bring the annotated copy of the extract, with your responses to the above questions, to the lesson.

Othello - pre-reading activities

Use the internet to research the following things about the play Othello (post findings to your blog):

1. Where and when is the play set?
2. When was the play written?
3. Who are the main characters?
4. What are the settings of the play? (i.e where do the scenes take place?)

On the right hand side of this blog, there is a list of links that are useful when studying Classical Tragedy and Othello.  Use the clips and links to find out the following (post your notes, thoughts and findings to your blog):

1. What are some of the issues with representations of race in Othello? 
2. What can you find out about Othello as a character?
3. What can you find out about Iago as a character?
4. What can you find out about the relationship between Iago and Othello?
5. What can you find out about the women in Othello?

Research for Classical Tragedy, or Aristotle's theory of tragedy

In the lessons this week, you are going to produce an information sheet about Classical Tragedy (Aristotle's theory of tragedy).  It needs to be logically and clearly presented, as well as detailed.  i.e imagine that you are going to use it to teach someone all about Classical Tragedy.

It needs to contain answers to the following questions:

1. What is the definition of Classical Tragedy?
2. Where and when did the concept of Classical Tragedy originate?
3. What are some of the earliest examples of classical tragedies, and when were they written?
4. Who was Aristotle, what was he known for, and when was he alive?
5. When did Aristotle write his study of tragedy, entitled Poetics?
6. What, according to Aristotle, is the aim of tragedy?
7. What are the 6 component parts of tragedy, according to Aristotle? List them in order of importance.
8. According to Aristotle, what makes a good tragic structure, or tragic plot?
9. What is the role of the tragic hero in Aristotle's theory of tragedy, and how important is the tragic hero in Classical Tragedy?
10. Define the following elements/ingredients of Classical Tragedy:
1. Hamartia
2. Tragic flaw
3. Hubris
4. Peripeteia
5. Anagnorisis (recognition)
6. Catharsis

The following websites will help you to answer these questions; click to access the sites:

SparkNotes on Aristotle and Poetics

Cliffsnotes on Aristotle and Poetics

Quizlet on dramatic elements of tragedy

NOTE: you may need to use some other websites to help you to answer the questions.

Fairytale tropes and motifs (useful for Carter AO4)

Damsel in distress

Beastly male

Faraway castles/isolated settings

The evil matriarch (e.g. wicked stepmother/queens)

Handsome prince

The big bad wolf

The innocent heroine

Happy endings

A knight in shining armour

Heroine usually forms positive relationships with animals

Stereotypical female roles:

1. Dutiful daughter
2. Carer/nurturing woman
3. Sexually promiscuous
4. Mad bad and dangerous

"Such stereotypes included the woman...as an immoral and dangerous seductress, the woman as eternally dissatisfied shrew, the woman as cute but essentially helpless, the woman as unworldly, self-sacrificing angel and so on" (Taken from Literary Theory: The Basics by H Bertens p29 of the Critical Anthology)