AO4 - helpful information for TYW and TBC

Are doing The Yellow Wallpaper or The Bloody Chamber?  Read this presentation, then find examples of gothic elements and features from your text.  Post the gothic elements and your examples from your text to your blog.

The gothic from engmisskp 

Sylvia Plath - useful links and information

Here are some useful links to information about Sylvia Plath, as well as her collection of poetry, Ariel.

Most of these links will be helpful for AO3 purposes (context and influences on the author and text), as well as AO4 (how her texts have been influenced by their genre).

Click here to read an interview with Plath, conducted in 1962.  This will be useful to find out about her view on writing, what has influenced her writing, and could be used to generate a coursework question.  

Click here to read a blog post about whether Plath can be considered a so called 'feminist author'.  NOTE: this is useful for learning more about Plath, but do not use it for criticism in your essay as it is not a published/authentic source.

Click here to read an analysis of Plath's poem Ariel - the title poem of her collection.  You may find this useful to inform your AO2 and analysis (language, form and structure).

REMEMBER: you must reference all sources you have used to influence your own argument and essay.

All of these links can also be found in the 'useful links' list.

The Snow Child

Read The Snow Child.  Type up your responses to the following questions.  Post to your blog.

1. In what ways does the tale allude to (link to) other stories or fairy tales?  Name them.  
2. How does this story link to the other stories in The Bloody Chamber collection?
3. The girl melts at the end.  Why do you think this is the case?  What do you think Carter could be trying to communicate?
4. What do you think it means when the Countess says "It bites!" at the end?  What is "it"?

The lit chart may help.

This week's lessons

You need to read/reread The Erl-King, by Angela Carter, then answer the following questions on the text (type up and post the answers to your blog):

1. How is the Erl-King presented? (Analyse the quotations on the worksheet to answer this question).
2. How is the narrator presented? (Analyse the quotations on the worksheet to answer this question).
3. How does Carter use symbols in this narrative?
4. How does Carter use allusion (inter-textual references) to tell the story?
5. ‘The Erl-King’ is the most innovative and experimental of the narratives. (Use the worksheet to answer this question).
6. How does ‘The Erl-King’ connect to other ‘TBC’ narratives?

THEN:

Use your notes and what you have learned to write a short essay, answering this question:

‘The Erl-King represents the very essence of man: selfish, unthinking, innocent and destructive.’ How far do you agree?

Focus on AO1, AO3 and AO5 (feminism) in your response.

The key terms will help you.

BEFORE YOU WRITE YOUR MINI ESSAY: plan.

Key terms for your essays and feminist analysis questions

Access to some key terms that you will find useful for your essays: click here.

Look up the definitions of the terms you don't know.

Feminist analysis questions (from your worksheet called 'gender - some ideas'):

1. What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine (active, powerful) and feminine (passive, marginalized) and how do the characters support these traditional roles? 

2. What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters who question the masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those elements/characters?

3. What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit traits of both? 

4. How does the author present the text? Is it a traditional narrative? Is it secure and forceful? Or is it more hesitant or even collaborative?

5. What are the politics (ideological agendas) of the work and how are those politics revealed in...the work's thematic content or portrayals of its characters?

6. What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of the work?

7. How does the literary text illustrate the problems of cultural gender expectations and "identity"?

Example essay. Work to do.

Read the question.  What did they have to do?

Read the introduction.  What do you notice?  Highlight what is good about it.

Read the rest of the essay.  Highlight where they have 'hit' the following:

AO2 – Explore how the writer gets his/her ideas across. How do they use language devices, structural devices, written form.

AO3 – Explore the contexts that influence the text: biographical, setting, cultural, social: attitudes to gender, race, social class, morality, religion.

AO4 – Show you understand that a text is influenced by its genre: poetry, prose, gothic, romance, realist, bildungsroman, romance, thriller, pastoral etc.

AO5 – Explore different critical interpretations: Feminist, Marxist.  

WWW?  Leave a comment

EBI?  Leave a comment.

Use the mark scheme to give it a mark.

Creating a question; having a go.

Click here to read the Prezi on how to create a question.

Post 2-3 possible questions to your blog, clearly indicating the question that you prefer.

Make sure it is clear which text you will be writing about.

Independent Reading

Read a critical essay from the 'critical essays' folder, that is relevant to your coursework.  Do the following:

• Write down any questions you have about the essay.  Find out the answers as far as possible, using the internet;
• Reduce what you have read to 5 sentences.  Then reduce each sentence to 5 words. Then  reduce the 5 words to one key idea/word;
• Write a 100-150 word summary of what you have read.

Post the essay title and author, as well as your responses to the above bullet points to your blog, so I can mark it.

How to read critical essays

• Print the critical essay below;
• Read it, and highlight anything that adds to your understanding as you go.  Underline anything you do not understand;
•  Follow the bullet points at the end of the document; 
• Post this essay to your blog, along with your answers to the bullet points.   

Overall Analysis of the Courtship of Mr Lyon and the Tiger’s Bride

Next steps

Click to read the Prezi

Set up a blog

Read these instructions carefully.


You need to complete the following tasks:

1.Set up a blog using Blogger. You'll need a Google account for this. The address needs to be    yournameluttlit1516.blogspot.com

2.Add the following gadgets to your blog, as a minimum (in the 'layout' section on the blog set up page):

• labels 
• blog list 
• link to my teaching blog (also follow my teaching blog)

3.Set up accounts in the following:

• Scribd - used to embed text documents
• Slideshare - used to embed powerpoint. (This may be blocked in college,you can create the account at home)
• Flickr - used to embed image galleries and slideshows
• Dropbox - useful for saving files 

Text List. Feminism.

Prose:
Any short story from The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter.

The Bloody Chamber (short story) by Angela Carter

The Courtship of Mr Lyon (short story) by Angela Carter

The Tiger’s Bride (short story) by Angela Carter

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Poetry:

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti

The World’s Wife (collection) by Carol Ann Duffy
Ariel (collection) by Sylvia Plath

The Lady of Shalott by Alfred Lord Tennyson

If you have any other text you particularly wish to explore, please speak to me about your idea, first.

Next:

• Think about which text you might like to explore (remember, you have to explore some poems for one essay, and a prose text for the other, so this may affect your choice);
• Read it, if you haven't already.

Links to purchasing/securing texts:


The Yellow Wallpaper
Goblin Market
The World's Wife
Ariel
The Lady of Shalott


You have Angela Carter's stories already.

What is a feminist? What is feminism?

What is a feminist?

Excerpt from the British Library website: 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘a feminist’ simply as ‘An advocate or supporter of the rights and equality of women’. Yet the term ‘feminist’ has always been contentious. This is partly because it connotes militancy and an ‘anti-men’ stance, but also because it has come to be associated with elite groups of women.

The first recorded use of the word ‘feminist’ in English is from 1852, when a conservative (indeed, pro-slavery) American magazine, the Debow's Review, used it as an insult: ‘Our attention has happened to fall upon Mrs. E.O. Smith, who is, we are informed, among the most moderate of the feminist reformers!’ The term, however, soon gained international currency in the 19th-century women’s rights movements – French féministe (1872, used as an adjective), Catalan feminista (c. 1910), Spanish feminista (1902), Portuguese feminista (1909) and Italian femminista (1897) are all early examples.

Some women hesitate to identify themselves as feminists, despite having a commitment to equal rights in principle. The Fawcett Society’s ongoing t-shirt campaign ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ (featuring, among others, comedian Bill Bailey, physicist Brian Cox and artist Tracey Emin) is an attempt to strip the word of its narrow connotations and remind people that the actual meaning of feminism is a commitment to equal rights, opportunities and choices for people of all genders. At the same time, there is no doubt that the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM), which this website and oral history document and celebrate, was a radical expression of long-standing campaigns for equal pay, parliamentary representation and the like. The WLM tried to bring a deeper analysis and a new lifestyle with it.

See more, by clicking here.

The three waves of feminism.

Short summaries of each wave.

The first wave:


First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early 20th century throughout the world, particularly in the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States. It focused on legal issues, primarily on gaining women's suffrage (the right to vote).


The first organised movement for English feminism was the Langham Place Circle of the 1850s.  The group campaigned for many women's causes, including improved female rights in employment, and education. It also pursued women's property rights through its Married Women's Property Committee. In 1854, Bodichon published her Brief Summary of the Laws of England concerning Women, which was used by the Social Science Association after it was formed in 1857 to push for the passage of the Married Women's Property Act 1882.   This allowed women to own property in their own right, for the first time.


In 1918 Marie Stopes published the very influential Married Love, in which she advocated gender equality in marriage and the importance of women's sexual desire.


Many feminist writers and women's rights activists argued that it was not equality to men which they needed but a recognition of what women need to fulfill their potential of their own natures, not only within the aspect of work but society and home life too. Virginia Woolf produced her essay A Room of One's Own based on the ideas of women as writers and characters in fiction. Woolf said that a woman must have money and a room of her own to be able to write.


The second wave:

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 third wave:


Third-wave feminism refers to several diverse strains of feminist activity and study, whose exact boundaries in the history of feminism are a subject of debate, but are generally marked as beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to the present. The movement arose partially as a response to the perceived failures of and backlash against initiatives and movements created by second-wave feminism during the 1960s, '70s, and '80s.  Third wave feminism acknowledges the perception that women are of "many colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and cultural backgrounds". Subscribers of third-wave feminism claim that second-wave feminism was based more around the experiences of white, middle-class women and was not a proper representation of all women. This wave of feminism expands the topic of feminism to include a diverse group of women with a diverse set of identities. 


Third Wave feminists have broadened their goals, focusing on ideas like queer theory, and abolishing gender role expectations and stereotypes. Unlike the determined position of second wave feminists about women in pornography, sex work, and prostitution,  third-wave feminists were rather ambiguous and divided about these themes.

Wikipedia

For more information about the three waves of feminism, and about the emergence of a new, fourth wave, read this short article.