British Literature from 1800, "The Mythmakers"

The Paper #1 assignment is below, though it's not due until February 14th. Below that is the revised class schedule, since I made more room for Northanger Abbey . This will change slightly if we have a snow day on Wednesday, but everything will simply move down and I might cut a day on Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights . I'll give you a hard copy of the paper assignment on Wednesday as well.  Paper #1: The Sleep of Reason  “Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing; where every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay every thing open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?” ( Northanger Abbey, Chapter 24). According to Henry Tilney in the above passage, the horrors of Gothic fiction cannot possibly exist in the “real world,” muc...

Answer TWO of the following for Monday's class:  Q1: Chapter 14 is a delightful discussion of books and taste, in which narrator readily admits that “It was no effort to Catherine to believe that Henry Tilney could never be wrong.  His manner might sometimes surprize, but his meaning must always be just” (109).  How are we supposed to read their budding romance in these chapters?  Is it truly a match of equals? Or is Austen wary of having a man explain everything to a 'lesser' woman?  Q2: How does Catherine continue to mistake fiction with reality, and allow her aesthetic views to color her personal decisions and beliefs?  In other words, how does she expect life to ‘read’ like a novel, and how does Austen satirize her views in doing so? Q3: In Chapter 13, Catherine's brother scolds her by saying, "I did not think you had been so obstinate, Catherine...you were not used to be so hard to persuade; you once were the kindest, best-tempered of...

From the 2007 adaptation of Northanger Abbey (we might watch a clip later) NOTE: Northanger Abbey was probably Austen's first true novel, though she started it around the same time she started Sense and Sensibility. However, it was originally called Susan and was written in the form of letters. She sent this novel to a publisher around 1803 and never got a response. She later had to pay to get the manuscript returned to her, even though the publisher still refused to publish it. Since much time had passed, she thoroughly revised the book and re-titled it, but never published it--death got in the way. Her brother published it and her last book, Persuasion , together in 1819.  Answer TWO of the following: Q1: How does the narrator defend and/or satirize novel reading throughout the opening chapters of Northanger Abbey ?  Consider that novels in the late 18 th century had become primarily the domain of women, chiefly works of a Gothic/romantic nature su...

Be sure to finish Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman for Monday's class, and instead of questions, I'll give you a brief in-class response when you get to class. As long as you've finished the book (or gotten close) you'll easily be able to answer the question. Just make sure to bring your book!  ALSO, we'll be starting Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey soon, so make sure to secure a copy. Below is the handout I gave out in class in case you missed or lost it. It's just some supplementary material about Wollstonecraft from a very recent biography of Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Mary Shelley, that we have available to check out in our library!  Mary Wollstonecraft (1757-1797) Major Works: Mary (1787); A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792); Letters from Denmark , Sweden , and Norway (1796); Maria, or the Wrongs of Women (1798) “Women’s lack of book learning, far from being a disadvantage, freed them to be closer to Nature. To Mary, a female...

Read the next few chapters and don't worry about understanding every little detail; try to focus on small passages and the ideas you can understand. Remember, too, that this novella is Wollstonecraft's attempt to show people the world they refuse to look at--the plight of unhappily married women and impoverished servants who have no recourse to justice. She wants us to feel their pain and despair even at the expense of writing a balanced, logical story. Also, since she never finished it, she never had time to clean the story up and make it read a bit smoother, as she would have done. So take it with a grain of salt as an important historical work that influenced many writers to come, even if it's not a beach read. Answer TWO of the following: Q1: One of the most powerful lines in the story, and perhaps the most autobiographical one, is when Maria exclaims, "Why was I not born a man, or why was I born at all?" (105). While this might sound melodramatic, why ...

From Dore's London: A Pilgrimage (1872) For Wednesday, be sure to read at least the first five chapters of Maria: Or, the Wrongs of Woman, which is the second story in the collection (you can skip "Mary," which is similar but a bit shorter). The following questions are designed to help you get into the material and consider some of the big themes and ideas in the work. Answer TWO of the four questions and bring them to class on Wednesday. You can either write by hand or type your answers out.  You'll get full credit for the questions as long as you (a) turn them in on time, and (b) give me an honest, and thoughtful response. I won't give you credit for one-sentence responses or very vague responses that don't show you read the book. Remember, you don't need to understand the work 100% to answer the questions. Just "think out loud" and try to work through the question on paper. Writing about literature helps you understand it much more than...

Welcome to British Literature from 1800, "Gothic Women"! This course will examine the development of British literature through three key periods: Romanticism, the Victorian Age, and Modernism/Post-Colonialism through many of the women who shaped the discourse. All too often, women writers, though they were extremely prolific and influential, are written out of the story of British literature in favor of the male authors they often worked with and inspired. Reading their works together shows a different perspective to the growth of several key genres in British literature, such as the novel and short stories, and helps us appreciate how their works challenged what it meant to be British, as well as female, during these revolutionary times.  To quote the ground-breaking writer, Mary Wollstonecraft, “I come round to my old argument: if woman be allowed to have an immortal soul, she must have, as the employment of life, an understanding to improve. And when, to render the pres...