Narrative structure - Wednesday 21st sept

Year 13 Homework By Mr Sadgrove

English Homework set by Mr Sadgrove on Wednesday 13th Sept 2011

Date due: Wednesday 21st September 2011

Two pieces of homework that needs to be handed in:

1 - Bronte- collected poems - This was a sheet given by Mr Sadgrove in the lesson...

Questions: How do these extracts relate to the idea of the Gothic? What links can we draw between the poetry and Withering Heights?

2 - Write your own poem, expressing the views of the character just using the words within

the sheet given by Mr Sadgrove...

What did we learn?

Topic of the lesson: Elements of the Gothic

• Women= victims
• This idea of EXCESS
• Supernatural
• Terror and Horror
• Ambiguity
• Isolated settings
• Hero/villain
• Bynaric hero
• Violence

What is the narrative of Withering Heights?

FRAGMENTED NARRATIVE:

TWO NARRATORS: Lockwood and Nelly

Why is more than one narrator significant?

The whole action of Withering Heights is presented in the form of eyewitness narrations by people who have played some part in the narration they describe.

Song by KATE BUSH about Withering Heights

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTs-Wa9lB0Q

TASK: What is Kate emphasizing in this song? What aspects of the novel is she focusing on? Whether the Gothic/or love elements?

These are some of the answers that we came up with as a class in lesson:

- FAILED LOVE "...when i was going to lose the fight.." perhaps the "fight" refers to the conflict/dilemma between Catherine's heart and mind......

MIND: She chooses to love Linton for his status, and justifies herself throughout the novel

WHEREAS:

HEART: She loves Heathcliff deeply, her childhood mate who grew into her soul mate.. although she clearly dislikes him for how unclean and dirty he is.

Catherine see's Linton as superior to Heathcliff due to the reason that Linton comes from a high status family, whereas Heathcliff is an orphan.

In my personal opinion, I think perhaps Emily Bronte is emphasizing the social obstacles/barriers that existed at that time (A04), and how they destroyed the lives of many young women & men, with regards to deceiving them that REAL happiness can be achieved by how far you are up the social hierarchy or the amount of money you gain...

Which ultimately leads to the downfall of Catherine, as well as the other characters for marrying Linton for these reasons.

- REGRET: "...his side to put it right"

- supernatural elements

-she is reassuring herself

-passion

-EXCESS LOVE "let me grab your soul away"

These our some of the interpretations we came up with in class, please be free to post any other interpretations that you may have (A03)

Withering Heights can be interpreted either as a novel:

about a LOVE STORY, or either having some elements of the GOTHIC

GOTHIC : Withering Heights

- Settting- desolate area (Wuthering Heights)

- the idea of ghosts/supernatural

-violence/revenge- between Heathcliff and Linton

-excess with regards to the love Catherine has for Heathcliff

LOVE STORY: Withering Heights

- Jealousy

- Battle between the heart and the mind

- Different relationships that exist in the novel - Catherine and Heathcliff or Catherine and Linton and many others

- Dark side of 'love' that exists when love doesn't happen for the right reasons, if you get what i mean.. because clearly Catherine loves Linton for 'status', hence the wrong reasons.. whereas Heathcliff she loves him 'deeply, like true love', for who he is...

she even states she sees herself in Heathcliff (so they're similar) compared to Linton..

Defining TERROR and HORROR

Horror: is more to do with the physical fear, e.g- when you jump up if someone scares you for example

Terror: is more to do with the mental mind/ psychological fear.

BLURB TASK:

Mr Sadgrove gave us a sheet that consisted of three blurbs taken from three editions of Withering Heights

Some of the blurbs focused more on the GOTHIC ASPECTS of the novel whereas the other the FAILED LOVE aspects.

We were then set a task to write our own blurbs, however focusing more on the Gothic elements within this novel. This is my example:

Withering Heights, a fragmented narrative, explores the epic fatal failed love between Catherine and Heathcliff; that ultimately defines the destiny of the awaited doom of the other characters.

Revenge, obsession, and terror are key themes that bring this novel alive. Catherine's continuous struggle to determine her true soul mate, is faced with a battle between the heart and the mind. One one hand, there's Linton- a man with a high status, and on the other hand, there's Heathcliff- a man with a low status, the man that she truly loves. Will she choose Heathcliff or Linton?

THE GOTHIC ELEMENTS/ASPECTS I have mentioned in my blurb for example are the following:

1. Isolation
2. terror
3. revenge
4. obsession
5. awaited doom
6. epic fatal failed love
7. fragmented narrative- this causes terror within the readers, because we get confused..
8. this idea of ambiguity- like we don't know whether she's going to choose Linton or Heathcliff

EXAM INFORMATION: 2 hour exam

The exam is in January, whereas the coursework is in June

- We have to study 3 texts to study for the exam:

1- Withering Heights- Taught by Mr Sadgrove

2- Bloody Chambers - We have completed this study of the novel.

3- Macbeth - Taught by Ms Knight

SECTION A-We only write about ONE TEXT

SECTION B- We compare one Gothic element in all 3 texts

NOTE: We are assessed in all of the AO's in both sections

This exam is a closed book exam, therefore you have TO START MEMORIZING QUOTES from the 3 texts you have to study now!

Withering Heights- an Audio version for those who haven't read the book yet.

http://www.archive.org/details/wuthering_heights_rg_librivox

BYE, hope you guys enjoyed my blog :)

Really hoping I don't have to use this blog next year...

Good Luck

Should be revising but I wanted to take the time out to wish everyone except Shaun the best of luck for the exam on Monday. It's been a great year and I truly can't wait to begin the coursework with all you guys except Shaun. All of these posts have been great in helping me revise, except Shauns, and I love you Guys.

Reading the question

Reading the Question

In the lesson we took a look at English Literature Unit 3 June 2010’s exam paper, and focused on what the question is asking you do - as well as identify the key assessment objective (AO2, AO3 AND AO4).

We looked at a section A question for The Pardoners Tale;

• “In spite of the fact that both the Pardoner himself and the Tale are sinister, they are also comic.” Consider The Pardoner’s Tale in the light of this comment.

The AO2 focuses on the terms; "sinister" and "comic". Basically these two terms are the hint for what kind of A02 analysis you should be doing.

The phrase "Consider" and “In spite” focuses on AO3 in the sense that when you see these style of words you should recognise that it’s for you to start an argument. The “In spite” part hints that there are both sinister and comic elements in the Pardoner and Tale. The “consider” or another synonym of it suggests other interpretations of the comment.

Finally the A04 is a bit tricky, but from looking at past exam papers we deduced that it is usually a term that could have different meanings across a time period. For example the terms “comic” and “sinister” have a different meaning to Chaucer’s contemporary audience, compared to a post modern. For example sinister for Chaucer revolved around God, sin, Death and Afterlife; in fact all of these notions link to religion – thus hence we can deduce that “sinister” was a lot to do with religion. However, Carter who is surrounded by a post modern society could value sinister in criminals. Hence the element of “sinister” varies in different time periods.

This analysis is common to every question. You can do the same for all of them, so I recommend analysing two each for section A, and two for section B. I realise this blog is short, but this activity will help you be more specific when answering questions. The only way to be specific and detailed when answering questions is by first understanding what the question is exactly asking you to do. Eventually understanding what the question is asking us will become nature, with lots of practise.

Homely Gothic
We discussed how the Gothic in the Victorian time represented a longing for a more unified and spiritual way of life. The Gothic achieved this by the use of nostalgic ghost (for those drama monkeys that missed the lesson nostalgic means having a feeling of reminisce about something you once had. Like a car you once loved but then you get a new car but there is a feeling of something missing, maybe the clutch is not as good as the old one).
We read an article called ‘Homely Gothic’ this article discussed how in the industrial revolution there came about a movement to a more factual way of life where everything would happen for a reason. This meant that people started to find the answers to questions that religion could not answer in science. This time was close to the time of the book by Darwin ‘The Origin of Species’ which was published in 1859 this was the time when the phrase ‘death of religion arose’ as people where given the assurance that science provided. But this lead to a sense of disunity among the people that where left torn between the blind belief in religion or a factual scientific way of life. But people started to feel a certain void that once was filled by the believe in the supernatural and the unknown. The Gothic provided this by exploring feeling that there are things which are greater than us and don’t always happen in a result to a cause but because they just do. We then said how the Gothic was seen as an escape from this boring way of living where everything was black and white; this meant the Gothic took people on excursions beyond the everyday world.
We then read the bit on ‘Sins of The Father’ which dealt with how in the time of the Victorian society the home was seen as the last place where one could refuge from a sense of loss of unity. Bronte uses this as her setting where she shows the home is not as perfect as people thought it was, Bronte shows that instead of being a place where the heart is, she takes the view that it is the heart of where all pain and oppression begins. ‘Wuthering Heights’ goes against the idea of ‘The angel of the house’ where Catherine refuses to remain as this angelic creature but carries out escapades with Heathcliff.
We then had to do an essay thesis statement for the essay that was due on Monday. So if you haven’t done it yet and have been praying for the question; your prayers have been answered as hear it is:
How far do you agree ‘Wuthering Heights challenges social norms and is therefore a Gothic text?
We did a good example of how a good introduction and first paragraph should be like; it’s on learning recourses under Mr Sadgrove English.

Linguistics
In our lesson on Thursday we started by having to identify all the language feature that are found in Wuthering Heights, like symbols, motifs, semantics and themes. We then looked at the how the linguistics that are used in Wuthering Heights help to tell the story, and how a chain of sentences create this feeling of excitement which is followed by a sentence that kills the flow of joy all together.
We looked at the use of pronouns such as ‘I’ personal, but opinionated. We see this in the opening of the novel when Lockwood narrates his meeting with Mr Heathcliff and excessive use of the word I which shows the reader that Lockwood is a very opinionated character and also one that is very self –centred narrator. The use of ‘it’ is also found in the novel regarding Heathcliff “it looked intelligent”. ‘it’ is used as in regard to objects, this also creates the fear of the unknown which in the time of the British empire was a common fear due to the amount of nations that where colonised. We then focused on dynamic verbs and how they used to give the text an energetic feeling with the use of words such as “ran” creating movement in the text “she bounded before me” as Nelly narrates when she and Cathy go out on her sixteenth birthday. This is used to amplify the excitement and mood of the text.
Then we discussed the use of nouns which are used to give the text a sense of realness and believability. They are used so the reader can connect with the text and not feel like an outside observer. The dates “1801”, seasons and diary entrees also make the story more reliable. Sentence length also plays an important role in the novel. They are used after a long sentence that is complex and compound, the sentence normally leaves the reader with a question mark “It's a pity she could not be content” that is behind all the enjoyment there is always something that the character is worried about, which in the case of Cathy is her sick father. Semantic fields are also used in the novel with regards to many things. For example in regards to the Grange and the first description that we get of the place, words like carpet, crimson, shimmering and soft tapers gives the place a feeling of heaven on earth where all is well and happy, yet this not the case when we look at the following cluster of words which reveal the true nature of things at the Grange. Words like shrieking, weeping and “red-hot needles” gives the reader a completely different feel of the Grange which is more like hell the heaven.
After that we looked at a couple of extract that we were from Wuthering Heights and had to identify the linguistic feature that they had. We saw how they were dominated with the pronoun ‘I’ that is used by our narrators Lockwood and Nelly showing how opinionated they are. We also found semantic fields in regards to Heathcliff as Nelly narrates about him. Words such as degradation, black fire, depressed, roughness and stern show that Heathcliff as an evil character which is later described as “imp of Satan”.
And hear is the bit we all love... the home work. We have to an essay the question was “The mystery inherent in the story confers Wuthering Heights as a Gothic novel”. Discuss.
We wrote a sort of plan on what should be in the essay
• Fragmented narrative/nouns and time
• Ambiguous- TC WH oppositions blurred
• Life and death
• Parasitic- feeds on Victorian categorisation
• Gothic context- how the Gothic is more of a mode then a genre
• Thesis statement. Mysterious elements create uncertainty and fear making the novel of the Gothic mode