Monday 11 June 2012

Sunday 10 June 2012

Last moments..!

Hello Y13

I hope you've had a bit of a break in amongst the fervent revision.

I will be in Rm 10 tomorrow for the afternoon if anyone fancies popping in for a little gothic chat. Feel free to bring essays to share.

I would like you to come in on the 18th for a final revision (there is a Gen Stu exam at this time). I would really appreciate if you could let me know whether you intend to come to this; it will be our last time together so I hope ALL of you can make it. Just leave your initials in the comments please.

There will be cake!

Ms :)

Monday 28 May 2012

Sunday 27 May 2012

Monday 28th

Dear Y13
Ms Eve will not now be in for tomorrow's lesson. Sorry.
I'll leave your lesson on the blog - you can do it as a class or individually. YOU MUST leave your response in the comments section so I can have a look at where you are. Leave your initials with the comments.
Post will be there by lunchtime tomorrow at the very latest.
I am around the week after half term and we will have a final lesson together on the 18th June 1-3pm. Gothic cakes and tapas a must!
Best wishes,
Ms Caldwell

Saturday 28 April 2012

A Sexual Journey

Dear Y13

Only five weeks left together...

So, it is time to really focus on some high-quality work.

You need to ensure that find out about the references in the text. Remember, your question for the three texts will be more thematic and this will help.

Here's Monday's lesson:


Do let me know if you have any questions.

Ms 

Saturday 21 April 2012

The Bloody Chamber

Ensure you have read The Bloody Chamber (the main story) before Monday's lesson.
Best wishes,
Ms 

Sunday 1 April 2012

Coursework

Thanks to those that have adhered to Friday's deadline for your coursework. You are a delight. (IC and JD need to check their email though. If you read this and can contact them, please could you get them to check their email?)
If you haven't sent me your work, I need you to do so urgently. Please save me the effort of having to come to your house and get it...
Ms 

Saturday 24 March 2012

Coursework


 

Firstly, if you've given me your essay, go and make yourself a cup of tea and save yourself the trauma of reading this post. Well done you.You will have your essay back soon if you have not already.
Too many of you haven't and, without wanting to alarm you, you are limiting your ability to have decent feedback on your essays. Actually -- I do want you to be alarmed.  This is YOUR A Level.
I am limited by the boundaries of time. So are you. I am teaching all week and for the first week of the holidays. The deadline for me to have these completed with annotation for the exam board in two weeks. This is my deadline not yours. Yours needs to be in well before this. When do you anticipate that I will mark your work? you can see by the posts on this blog that 1500 to 1800 words were due on 5th March. THE 5th MARCH.
If someone has made an error I may email them over the holiday, but this is for minor corrections not full draft help.
You have had plenty of time to get this coursework in to me, including time in lessons. I have a professional responsibility and requirements put forward by my faculty that mean essays need to be in now.
You are not the only students or people in my life and I have responsibilities elsewhere.
Someone best bring an enormous cake on Monday.


Saturday 3 March 2012

Nearly there!

Right Y13 - just so we are all very clear...
On Monday I expect

  • your first full draft of you comparative coursework This should be between 1500 - 1800 words. This will allow me to have a look at it and then you to make final amendments over the next week. Bring an electronic copy to our lesson on Monday
  • your final draft of your Marxist or Feminist essay if you haven't already given me that. If you don't do this i will use the essay that I have from you as your final draft.
We're on the final straight now. I need these in so they can be moderated before the Easter holidays. We also need to move on to the exam - hurrah!

Also, don't forget to use this blog to help you. The homeworks you have had have been building towards this point. For example, AO4 AO4 AO4.

Also, Y13 PCE is coming up. 

Best wishes,
Ms 

Thursday 16 February 2012

Holiday Musings...


Dear Y13

Right, you should be well in to your first draft of your comparative coursework by now. Remember, this is independent study so the onus is on you to study independently.

I am expecting your first drafts or your comparative coursework on Monday.

One thing I think it is worth stating is that this is your final coursework and you should draw on everything you have learnt across this A Level to do well.
You need to ensure that you incorporate your learning into your coursework. It should include narrative voice, genre, language analysis, feminism as well as how the context impacts upon reader understanding. A wealth of knowledge!

The narrative voice in novels changed towards the end of the nineteenth century. The essay by Henry James, ‘The Art of Fiction’ signalled a change in the moralistic premise of Victorian novel and a move away from audience sensationalism to art. The challenges to convention reflect the social change at the end of the nineteenth century, and the transgression in the concept of identity, gender and the reality of moral literature. This is further evident in the theatre of the late nineteenth century. For example, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) and Henrik Ibsen’s The Doll’s House (1889) question Victorian notions of earnestness, gender and the reality of happy endings.

In Jane Eyre, Brontë also uses romanticism and the Gothic to emphasise the introspectiveness of Jane. In chapter 26 Brontë uses a blend of these genres:
‘Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman- almost a bride, was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm has whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses’ (Brontë)
The description of landscape to represent feeling and emotion, in this case pathetic fallacy, is typically associated with romantic poets. The iced ‘ripe apples’ connote her ‘ripe’ sexuality and fertility ceasing now her marriage has not happened. The crushed roses are significant as a stock article associated with love. The repetition of ice, particularly the ‘untrodden snow’ connotes the emotional coldness of her solitary journey. These evocative metaphors forefront descriptions the readership would have associated with the Romantic poets Coleridge, Wordsworth and Byron.  The ‘desolate’ and barren imagery are located in the gothic.  Also, by addressing herself in the third person Brontë creates a confusion of identity that shifts from the security found in a first person narrative. Furthermore, she has reverted from woman to child. This indicates a confusion of identity and also suggests the lack of autonomy women have when unmarried and fatherless. Brontë combines genres to not only to create imagery associated with Jane’s emotional state, but also to make a social comment about women.

Although there is a blurring of genres, one of the most pervasive genres in Jane Eyre is the gothic. Brontë skilfully uses gothic techniques so that the readers know we are in Jane’s emotional world. The gothic is evident in the description of landscapes and the imprisonment in the red room at the end of Chapter one. She describes herself as ‘out of herself’ (Chapter 2, pg 6) and the description of the room places the reader in the gothic as Jane tells the reader her story of torment at her incarceration. The mood of the ‘revolted slave’ was still bracing her with ‘bitter vigour’ (Brontë, pg 9) and she has some sort of mental breakdown. The gothic is sustained as she awakes to see a ‘terrible red glare, crossed with thick black bars’ (chapt 3, pg 13).  Brontë uses the gothic again to portray the incarceration of the Creole, Bertha Mason or Antoinette. The images are strong and animalistic:
‘a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly on all fours; it snatched growled like some strange, wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face. ‘ (Chapter 26, pg 308)
Jane’s meeting is loaded with animalistic imagery and a contrast to the pale and small Jane. The dehumanising of Bertha/Antoinette (I'll say Bertha because that's how Jane would have known her) and Jane’s later references to her as a ‘demon’ and a ‘vampyre’ locate this description in the gothic. The use of the gothic here and in Jane’s ordeal in the red room link Jane and Bertha on a psychological level and signify Jane’s struggle with self-control and rebellion of the ‘revolted slave’ that frequently burns inside her: Bertha is the dark side of Jane. Fin de siècle novels such as The Awakening, Dracula and Heart of Darkness show the fear of the miscegenation and reverse colonialism, but this clearly shows that fear of the racial ‘other’ was evident much earlier in the century and Brontë’s use of the gothic heightens the fear of the dark Bertha, whilst simultaneously highlighting the plight of the social incarceration of women in nineteenth-century society. Unable to justly represent the plight of women because of the social constraints upon her Brontë had to create a double. By the end of the nineteenth-century it is unnecessary for there to be a symbolic doubling as it has been recognised that the ‘mad rebellious woman and the sane dutiful woman were really inhabitants of the same body.’

Jane is significant and vital to our understanding of Antoinette. It was her treatment by Bronte that moved Jean Rys to write her prequel. Why?

BTW, if anyone's still reading, please look at this. It is actually one of the best things I have ever seen!

Happy holiday!
Ms :)

Monday 23 January 2012

Presentation of Women

A find...

Just found this, which will be useful for many. Make sure you reference it. If you find other stuff like this, help each other out and leave links in the comments box.

Saturday 21 January 2012

Comparative Coursework

Hello Y13

Just to let you know where we are...

We've had a bit of a funny start to the year as people have been out in exams or revising. We have read The Yellow Wallpaper in lesson time. You can read this here. You need to read this before Thursday's lesson next week.

We really need to get on with the comparative coursework now. In Monday's lesson, we'll look at WSS from a feminist perspective. It is essential that you bring your text and would be useful if you brought your Critical Anthology.

You must also have your coursework for me. This is now overdue. Thanks to the people who have already sent this to me.

Let me know if you have any problems.

Best wishes,
Ms Caldwell