REMEMBER THAT YOU HAVE A VOCABULARY TEST ON TUESDAY.
VOCABULARY WORDS ARE LISTED AT THE END OF THE BLOG
Portrait of Virginia Woolf (1881-1942) taken by the celebrated photographer George Charles Beresford in1902.
In your notebooks, write two complete sentences that describe the portrait? What do you note about the woman, beyond her obvious physical characteristics?
The following is an excerpt taken from this week's New Yorker magazine that describes the photo. Let's compare how a critic described the portrait.
(The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was an artistic and literary group in the mid to late 19th century, who thought art should express genuine ideas, so relied on great, natural detail.)
Beresford had the author sitting and looking away from the camera. He was obviously inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites.
Perhaps, what with the strong and abundant hair tied loosely in a bun, and the jaw running in an uninterrupted arc from the careful chin to the over-attentive ear, it was his sitter’s profile that brought to mind those Victorian painters. It’s the first of these pictures that was to be the most successful. In it she is looking away, as if a private thought had caught her attention. There is determination in the neck. The open shell of the ear is unusually large, tensing the rim. It hints at the great danger of listening, as if acknowledging that ears cannot choose not to hear what is directed at them. More than most, she would have known the danger of that, the lasting stain of language. She seems to be concerned with this, trying to accept the vulnerability. Her cheek, occupying the central space in the photograph, seems full with utterance. Those shut lips are concealing an ocean of words. What Beresford managed to capture is depth and its promise; an instinctive devotion to reality, to what Woolf was to later call “the white light of truth.”
class handout below....this will be collected at the end of the unit and graded as 4 days participation.
NAME___________________________________
Title: A Room of One's Own
Author: Virginia Woolf
* A
Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
This is a five day classroom participation assignment. Do not
lose. You are responsible for all material.
In this
unit, we will engage with Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, building skills
for close reading and analysis of non-fiction. We will approach this informational
text by analyzing the author’s use of evidence and rhetoric to support her
point of view.
We will
consider what would have happened to a woman of Shakespeare’s genius during
Shakespeare’s time. Woolf poses a hypothetical sister of Shakespeare and uses
both specific and more general forms of argument to make the case that the
absence of great female writers from this period is an effect of the social
pressures brought to bear and the opportunities denied them.
What I am
going to ask you to do:
*Read closely for textual details
*Annotate texts to support your
comprehension and analysis
*Engage in productive evidence-based
conversations about
the text, specifically the central
ideas.
*Determine the meaning of unknown
vocabulary
*Provide
an objective summary of the text
*Write original evidence-based claims
*Generate and respond to questions in a
scholarly
discourse.
Some
background information:
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer and one of the
foremost modernists of the twentieth century. A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia
Woolf, which was published1929. This essay was based on a series of
lectures she delivered at two women's colleges. In the essay, she employs a
fictional narrator, who explores women as both writers and characters of
fiction. The essay is generally
seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and
figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.
Text
questions / responses annotations
|
Be that as it may, I could not help thinking,
as I looked at the works
of Shakespeare on the shelf, that the bishop
was right at least in this;
it would
have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to
have
written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. Let me
imagine, since facts are so hard to come by,
what would have happened
had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted
sister, called Judith, let us
say. Shakespeare himself went, very
probably,--his mother was an
heiress--to the grammar school, where he may
have learnt Latin--Ovid,
Virgil and Horace--and the elements of grammar
and logic. He was, it is
well
known, a wild boy who poached rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and
had,
rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the
neighbourhood,
who bore him a child rather quicker than was right. That
escapade
sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a
taste
for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door.
Very
soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and
lived at
the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody,
practicing
his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets,
and even
getting access to the palace of the queen. Meanwhile his
extraordinarily
gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was
as adventurous, as
imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But
she was not sent to school.
She had no chance of learning grammar and
logic, let alone of reading
Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now
and then, one of her
brother's perhaps, and read a few pages. But then
her parents came in and told
her to mend the stockings or mind the stew
and not moon about with books
and papers. They would have spoken sharply
but kindly, for they were
substantial people who knew the conditions of
life for a woman and loved
their daughter--indeed, more likely than not
she was the apple of her
father's eye. Perhaps she scribbled some pages
up in an apple loft on the
sly but was careful to hide them or set fire
to them. Soon, however, before she was
out of her teens, she was to be
betrothed to the son of a
neighbouring wool-stapler. She cried out that
marriage was hateful to her,
and for that she was severely beaten by her
father. Then he ceased to scold her.
He begged her instead not to hurt
him, not to shame him in this
matter of her marriage. He would give her a
chain of beads or a fine
petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his
eyes. How could she disobey
him? How could she break his heart? The force
of her own gift alone drove
her to it. She made up a small parcel of her
belongings, let herself down
by a rope one summer's night and took the
road to London. She was not
seventeen. The birds that sang in the hedge
were not more musical than
she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift
like her brother's, for the
tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for
the theatre. She stood at the
stage door; she wanted to act, she said.
Men laughed in her face. The
manager--a fat, looselipped man--guffawed.
He bellowed something about
poodles dancing and women acting--no woman,
he said, could possibly be an
actress. He hinted--you can imagine what.
She could get no training in
her craft. Could she even seek her dinner
in a tavern or roam the
streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for
fiction and lusted to feed
abundantly upon the lives of men and women
and the study of their ways.
At last--for she was very young, oddly like
Shakespeare the poet in her
face, with the same grey eyes and rounded
brows--at last Nick Greene
the actor-manager took pity on her; she found
herself with child by that
gentleman and so--who shall measure the heat
and violence of the poet's
heart when caught and tangled in a woman's
body?--killed herself one
winter's night and lies buried at some
cross-roads where the
omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and
Castle.
That, more or less, is how
the story would run, I think, if a woman in
Shakespeare's day had had
Shakespeare's genius. But for my part, I agree
with the
deceased bishop, if such he was--it is unthinkable that any
woman in
Shakespeare's day should have had Shakespeare's genius. For
genius
like Shakespeare's is not born among labouring, uneducated,
servile
people. It was not born in England among the Saxons and the
Britons.
It is not born to-day among the working classes. How, then,
could it
have been born among women whose work began, according to
Professor
Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, who
were
forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power of
law and
custom? Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it
must
have existed among the working classes. Now and again an Emily
Brontë
or a Robert Burns blazes out and proves its presence. But
certainly
it never got itself on to paper. When,
however, one reads of
a witch being
ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman
selling
herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I
think we
are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some
mute and
inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains
out on
the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the
torture
that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess
that
Anon, who wrote so many poems without singing them, was often a
woman.
It was a woman Edward Fitzgerald, I think, suggested who made the
ballads
and the folk-songs, crooning them to her children, beguiling her
spinning
with them, or the length of the winter's night.
This may be true or it may be false--who can
say?--but what is true in
it, so it seemed to me, reviewing the story of
Shakespeare's sister as I
had made it, is that any woman born with a
great gift in the sixteenth
century would certainly have gone crazed, shot
herself, or ended her
days in some lonely cottage outside the village,
half witch, half
wizard, feared and mocked at. For it needs
little skill in psychology
to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had
tried to use her gift for
poetry would have been so thwarted and
hindered by other people, so
tortured and pulled asunder by her own
contrary instincts, that she must
have lost her health and sanity to a
certainty. No girl could have
walked
to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the
presence
of actor-managers without doing herself a violence and
suffering
an anguish which may have been irrational--for chastity may be
a fetish
invented by certain societies for unknown reasons--but were
none the
less inevitable. Chastity had then, it
has even now, a
religious importance in a woman's life, and
has so wrapped itself round
with nerves and instincts that to cut it free
and bring it to the light
of day demands courage of the rarest. To have
lived a free life in
London in the six teenth century would have
meant for a woman who was
poet and playwright a nervous stress and
dilemma which might well have
killed her. Had she survived, whatever she had
written would have been
twisted and deformed, issuing from a strained
and morbid imagination.
And undoubtedly, I thought, looking at the
shelf where there are no
plays by women, her work would have gone
unsigned. That refuge she would
have sought certainly. It was the relic of the
sense of chastity that
dictated anonymity to women even so late as
the nineteenth century.
Currer Bell, George Eliot, George Sand, all
the victims of inner strife
as their writings prove, sought ineffectively
to veil themselves by
using the name of a man. Thus they did homage
to the convention, which
if not implanted by the other sex was
liberally encouraged by them (the
chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of,
said Pericles, himself a
much-talked-of man) that publicity in women is
detestable. Anonymity
runs in their blood
|
1. Paraphrase the bolded
  it…Shakespeare.
2.Look at the sentence that begins with “Let me imagine, since
the facts are so hard to come by.”
What does Woolf need to imagine?
3 Reread “He was…a wild boy to remained at home”
What escapade sent Shakespeare “to seek his fortune in London?”
(use text)
What is the meaning of the word escapade from this sentence?
What experiences did
Shakespeare have in London?
What word choices does Woof make to explain Shakespeare’s
lifestyle?
What word does Woolf use to contrast the experience of
Shakespeare’s sister?
What is the attitude Judith’s parents take toward her education
and how does it contrast with their attitude toward Shakespeare’s?
What was Judith “careful to hid” or “set fire to”?
What is the meaning of betrothed?
Describe the involvement of Judith and William Shakespeare’s
parents in each of their young lives.
What does Woolf mean by, “The force of her gift alone drove her
to it.”
How does Judith’s experience of trying to get in the theater
contrast with her brother?
(text)
How does Woolf characterize the theatre manager?
What does Woolf mean by “he hinted-you can imagine what”?
IMPORTANT: How do Woolf’s characterization of Nick Green, her
father, and the theatre manager relate a central idea of the text?
What finally is she driven to do? Why does she commit this act?
Woolf states that it is “unthinkable that any woman in
Shakespeare’s day should have had Shakespeare’s genius.” Compare this to the
assertion to the claims she made about Judith in the previous paragraph.
In addition to women, what other groups does Woolf suggest lack
literary genius?
Look at the word “servile”. What words near it give a clue to
its meaning?
What is Woolf’s point of view about why genius rarely exists
among women?
What rhetorical device is Woolf using when she asks< “How
then could it have been born among women…by their parents and held to it by
all the power of law and custom?”
What does Woolf suggest is the connection between: “A woman
possessed by devils” and “a suppressed poet?”
Explain what might make “some mute and inglorious Jane Austen”
feel or act “crazed.”
What is the connotation of the word “torture”? What is the
effect of Woolf’s use of the word “torture” to describe a woman’s experience
of being gifted?
What is the impact of Woolf’s question, “who can say?”
What does Woolf claim is true in theory she has told?
What similarities do you see in the following:
“so thwarted and hindered by”
and “ so tortured and pulled asunder by”
Define asunder from context clues.
·
Challenge question
What is the impact of Woolf’s use of “contrary” to describe a
“gifted girl’s” instincts?
What prevents Judith from pursuing her dream?
Look at this sentence:
“No girl could have
walkd…but were none the less inevitable.”
What language does Woolf use to emphasize the fact that she is
using Judith to represent all women?
What concept makes the anguish of a gifted woman “irrational”
and “inevitable,” according to Woolf?
What role does chastity play in Elizabethan times?
What does Woolf suggest happens to a gifted woman in Elizabethan
times?
If she had managed to write, under what name would she have
written and why?
What does Woolf suggest are he possible outcomes of inner
strife?
Woolf notes that gifted women sought to “veil themselves”. What
associations does the word veil connote for Woolf?
To what convention does using the name of a man pay “homage”?
|
Why does Woolf use the these words:
impossible,
 completely, entirely?
What does this tell you about the late 16th
century in England? Make a broader connection, as well.
Thoughts?
Thoughts?
Why? More than just because she is female.
Why?
What does this word connote for you?
How did their circumstances differ?
What does this imply about Judith’s character?
What words point you to this understanding?
Can you note any 21st century
parallels?
How does the use of the words “caught” and
“tangled” in this phrase create meaning and add beauty to the text: who shall
measure the heat and violence…tangled in a woman’s body”?
Why is she contradicting herself?
Note any contemporary parallels?
How does Woolf refine her point of view in
this portion of the text? What rhetorical device is she using?
What is the “it” referring to?
What is she accomplishing in using this
rhetorical device?
Note
that Jane Austin and the Bronte sisters were famous female writers of the
early 19th century. Robert Burns is considered Scotland’s greatest
poet. (Auld Lang Syne). All these authors were born in circumstances that
Woolf identifies as presenting obstacles towards their development and
recognition as writers.
Anon
means anonymous or unnamed. What does Woof mean that “Anon” was often a
woman?
How does
it support her claim about women in the age of Shakespeare?
·
Note: this is a rhetorical device known as
parallel construction.
·
Challenge question
What is the impact of Woolf’s use of “contrary” to describe a
“gifted girl’s” instincts?
Why use
parallel structure?
Emphasize through repetition suffering
Highlight the coming together of internal
and external pressures
What
happened to Ophelia?
What
happens to a woman who has a voice? Think about “My Last Duchess”
Pseudonyms:
Charlotte
Bronte: Currer Bell
Mary Ann
Evans: George Eliot
Aurore
Dupin: George Sand
Compare
to contemporary associations.
When
Woolfe suggests that “anonymity runs in their blood,” what does she imply has
happened to the convention that women should remain anonymous?
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A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf vocabulary
Test on Tuesday, November18
1. heiress (noun)- a woman who inherits
or will inherit considerable wealth
2. escapade (noun)- a reckless adventure
or wild prank
3. patriarchy – (noun)a system of society or government in
which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.
4. agog (adjective)- highly excited by
eagerness, curiosity, anticipation
5. betrothed- (adjective)- engaged to be
married
6. to duck (verb)- plunged or dipped in
water
7. to dash (verb)- to strike or smash
violently, especially to break into pieces
8. Anon (noun)- anonymous
9. rhetoric (noun) –techniques that
writers and speakers use to create meaning, enhance a text or to persuade
others to agree with a particular point of view
10.
to guffaw (verb)- to laugh crudely
11.
to thwart (verb)- prevent from accomplishing a
purpose
12.
morbid
(adjective)- unwholesomely gloomy, sensitive in the extreme
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