For Wednesday: Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapters 40-46

Remember, there are no more questions for groups to answer (your in-class writing last time satisfied that requirement). Instead, we'll examine a specific passage in class on Wednesday to get us started, so be sure to read up to or close to Chapter 46. Pay close attention to the chapter between Willougby and Elinor. Very interesting stuff here! :) 

For Monday: Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapters 28-39 (or Vol.3, Chapter 3)

Keep reading and try to race through the next 100 pages or so. I won't give you any questions for Thanksgiving Break, but instead, we'll have an in-class writing based on these chapters when you come back to class (so don't worry about the questions for your group--these will count for whatever groups haven't gone yet). 

Enjoy the break! 

For Monday: Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapters 20-27 (or to Vol. 2, Chapter 5)

The "Chaucer" group should answer two of the following:

Q1: In sizing up her rival, Elinor judges Lucy Steele as “naturally clever...but her powers had received no aid from education, she was ignorant and illiterate” (122). Is this the sour grapes of thwarted hopes, or does Lucy Steele represent the eighteenth-century woman without sense or sensibility? What “clues” does Elinor unearth to support her reading of Lucy?

Q2: How does Colonel Brandon emerge as a character of sensibility in these chapters?  How is Austen trying to make him more appealing to us as a possible romantic interest for Marianne (or for Elinor?), and why can’t Marianne appreciate this? Has love simply blinded her to the attractions of other men, or does it point to a greater flaw in her character?

Q3: In William Deresiewicz’s book, A Jane Austen Education, he writes, “For Austen, before you can fall in love with someone else, you have to come to know yourself.  In other words, you have to grow up.  Love isn’t going to magically transform you, make you into a better or even a different person...it can only work with what you already are” (220). How does this apply to Marianne specifically?  In what ways does she not know herself, or expect to be transformed by love?  How does this account for her tremendous disappointment in London?

Q4: How does society respond to the Marianne/Willoughby affair?  Does the extended family (Lady Middleton, Miss Jennings, the Palmers) become more full of ‘feeling’ here, or do they remain a largely comic or satirical backdrop?  Is Marianne or Willoughby more censured for their behavior?  What does this say about the ‘way of the world’  in Austen’s day?

Exam #2: Creative License

The 90's Movie, Clueless, which is based on Austen's Emma (1816)

Sometimes we get fooled by the appearance of older literature—its language, spellings, references, and names—so that we mistakenly assume it’s a museum piece with no relevance to the modern world. However, the ideas and characters in these works are truly timeless, offering a commentary about our thoughts, voices, and actions. Footnotes can help us translate the more difficult bits, and talking about it in class can further elucidate the denser passages. But what do we do for those readers who won’t read footnotes or can’t take a class? How do we show them that the work still ‘reads’ like something written today?

For this take-home exam assignment, I want you to choose a short passage from one of our recent works: The Contract, The Blazing World, The School for Scandal, or Sense and Sensibility. A passage should be no more than a page or two, or any self-contained moment in a book or play (not an entire scene, but part of a scene—a brief interaction between two characters, etc.). Then I want you to write a modernized version of this scene using modern characters, language, and setting. You don’t have to translate it word for word, but give the general sense of the passage and the ideas by translating it into our world. Try to make it look and sound modern, even though if we squint, we can still see Cavendish, Sheridan, or Austen behind it.

FOR EXAMPLE, I might choose a short passage from the argument between Sir Peter Teazle and Lady Teazle in The School for Scandal. I would change their names to modern names, put them in a modern location (a city, town, coffee bar, etc.) and have them give a similar argument, but with more modern-sounding language and references. It might sound something like this:

FRANK: Damn it, Rachel, I’m still your husband, aren’t I? Doesn’t that mean something? All your #metoo nonsense is just a way to erase the very role of men, isn’t it?

RACHEL: Oh, so you want to control me? Well, if that’s what you wanted you should have adopted me instead of having whatever you call this mid-life crisis of yours. Nice skinny jeans, by the way. (Act 2, Scene 1, p.206)

In other words, just have fun with a short passage and make the language sound modern even though the ideas and characters are fundamentally the same. This should only be 2-3 pages long double spaced, so don’t do too much. Just enough to help us imagine how the entire thing would sound like. Be sure to identify the passage before or after your translation.

DUE MONDAY, DECEMBER 3^rd IN CLASS! Maybe we can even read a few of them… [hint, hint] J

Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapters 13-19

The "Anonymous" group should answer two of the following:

Q1:How does Austen critique and satirize the state of marriage, whether in actual married couples (ex: Mr. & Mrs. Palmer) or in young women striving to become married themselves (ex: Lucy Steele, in later chapters)?  As an unmarried woman of a somewhat Romantic bent, what fears and biases about the union does Austen seem to have?  

Q2: In Chapter 16, Marianne rhapsodizes about the natural world, including the sublimity of autumn. Elinor archly responds, "It is not every one...who has your passion for dead leaves." Marianna responds, "No; my feelings are not often shared, nor often understood. But sometimes they are" (87). Do you think the narrator is continuing to mock Marianne's pretensions here--in other words, is she too full of sensibility? Or is Elinor simply too inclined to have her grow up? 

Q3: Related somewhat to the above, how does Marianne misread her sister throughout the book (so far)? Where does she mistake sensibility for sense? And why might Marianne not realize that sensibility takes different forms (as with Colonel Brandon, too)?

Q4:According to Elinor (and in the eyes of society), how does Marianne and Willoughby's relationship transgress what is socially permissible? Since he has not declared his intentions for her (though everyone assumes he has), how might a specific action of his be mistaken--or how might it compromise her (or her family) in the future? Or is Elinor just being too conservative and eighteenth-century in her tastes?

For Wednedsay: Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapters 1-12

The "Austen" group should answer two of the following:

Q1: How does the opening chapters dramatize the late eighteenth-century debate of sense vs. sensibility—or reason vs. emotion?  What view does Austen (or the narrator) seem to take on the subject?  Cite a specific passage in support of your reading.

Q2: Read Chapter 2 carefully: what is Mrs. John Dashwood trying to convince her husband to see about their financial situation? Why does he let himself be convinced against his father’s wishes? Why does the language—and the sentiments—of this chapter sound like an echo of The School for Scandal?

Q3: Unlike many conventional romances or novels, Austen’s men are rarely romanticized—and never bare-chested hunks. In describing Edward Ferrars, she writes, “[he] was not recommended to their good opinion by any particular graces of person or address.  He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing” (17).  Why would she risk making Elinor’s love interest—and a little later, Colonel Brandon—so unappealing?

Q4: How does the book offer the same kind of social and class satire that we’ve already seen in Tom Jones and The School for Scandal? Since our sympathies are with the Dashwood sisters, how is Austen critiquing her society through them? What makes these women “bastards,” so to speak, in their society (like Tom Jones)?

For Wednesday: Sheridan, The School for Scandal, Acts 3 & 4

How much easier scandal would have been with the Internet!

 The “Shakespeare” group should answer two of the following:

Q1: In his attempt to seduce Lady Teazle, Joseph Surface claims that “ ‘Tis this very conscious innocence that is of the greatest prejudice to you. What is it that makes you negligent of forms and careless of the world’s opinion? Why, the consciousness of your innocence. What makes you impatient of Sir Peter’s temper and outrageous at his suspicions? Why, the consciousness of your own innocence” (4.3). What does he mean by this, and why is this a ‘truth’ in the logic of eighteenth-century English society?

Q2: Sir Peter continually proclaims Joseph Surface as “a man of sentiment…there is nothing in the world so noble as a man of sentiment” (4.3). The Oxford English Dictionary defines this as (among other definitions), “What one feels with regard to something; mental attitude (of approval or disapproval, etc.); an opinion or view as to what is right or agreeable.” How does Joseph seem to embody this quality, and by extension, why does Charles not embody it?

Q3: Lady Teazle is a little like The Wife of Bath in her eagerness to fight and uphold her opinions in marriage. However, she seems less admirable than Chaucer’s heroine, and even Sir Peter proclaims of her that “I believe you capable of anything that’s bad” (3.1). If you were portraying her as an actress, how would you play her: as a social-climbing flirt who seeks to usurp Lady Sneerwell from her throne? Or a young girl hopelessly out of her depth who is simply trying to keep her head above water, and is ‘acting’ rather than ‘being’?

Q4: In Act 4, Charles sells all of his family’s portraits “wholesale,” most of them for extremely modest sums to pay off his debts. Why would this scene be extremely funny—but shocking!—for audiences of the time, and does it confirm his degradation or offer hope of his humanity? Do we read it differently today, do you think?