However if the responder were to read Fay Weldon’s Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen, the connections between the two would shape and then reshape the responder’s understanding of both texts. The two texts are connected most obviously through Weldon’s commentary and analysis of Austen’s writing and social and historical context. However the two texts are also connected through their didactic purpose, examination of values, use of epistles and their female author’s status and feminist messages. Whilst all of these connections do enrich each text, it is to a limited extent as both texts also work in isolation. Aunt Fay writes to her niece Alice in the hope of teaching her about Austen and her writing and what better way to do that than by direct reference to Austen’s most successful text, Pride and Prejudice?
For example, in the paragraph about strong characters, Miss Ariadne Oliver is listed last. Interestingly, Miss Ariadne Oliver is considered to be Agatha Christie’s alter ego. Miss Oliver is a prime example of how Agatha Christie expresses her own views on social issues through the actions of her characters. The author claims that “setting” is what makes her novels interesting. However, when the author claims that “nostalgia for past times” is what makes her novels enduring, I felt that it was an irony.
Lopez-Navarro British Lit. 2322 4 October 2012 The Role of Women in Two Tales If you study several literary works across the centuries, you will note women’s roles have differed. The legendary work Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as the Wife of Bath’s Tale, include female characters with very distinct roles. Even though the women do not portray significant characters in these works, they do serve to create intense interest. The knight’s tale, an alliterative romance and one of the better-known Arthurian stories, and the wife’s tale, the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, give insight into the specific roles of women in the late Middle Ages.
New York: W. W. Norton &, 2005. 541-558. Print. The author of this work tries to prove that Hawthorne can be viewed as a feminist because of his writing of The Scarlet Letter and many other works. He brings examples from the novel to prove that some of the statements and major themes that Hawthorne puts out are actually ranging towards more feminist than not.
BRIAR ROSE-JANE YOLEN Yolen has created an ingenious story of great significance in Briar Rose. Aside from the novel itself being a fictional text, the book stresses the intrinsic importance of fairy tales to the responder. The resilience and power of these tales are emphasised as is the significance of true stories form the past. It is through the examination of the allegorical story told by Gemma and the characterisation used by Yolen that the concept of the hero and heroine is explored. Yolen has enabled her readers to understand the value of the past for the present and to witness both the true horrors as well as the acts of courage in her novel Briar Rose.
Question: A reading of Letters to Alice changes the modern responder’s understanding of Pride and Prejudice. Discuss with reference to both texts. Fay Weldon’s Letters to Alice on First reading Jane Austen, through the didactic literary form of an epistolic novel, serves to encourage a heightened understanding of the values and contemporary issues of Jane Austen’s cultural context. In doing so, it inspires the modern responder to adopt more holistic appreciation for the plight of the characters and the values inherent in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Through the inclusion of relevant contextual information from Austen’s time and didactic assertions of the fictional character Aunt Fay, Weldon implores the responder to accept her opinions on the values and issues of Austen’s context.
In general, however, Jill has proven herself a talented writer. From the very first paragraph, the essay has a pleasing variety of sentence types ranging from short and punchy to long and complex. The language is playful and engaging, and Jill has done an admirable job painting a rich portrait of Susan Lewis in a few short paragraphs. Every sentence and paragraph adds important details to the essay, and the reader never gets the sense that Jill is wasting space with a bunch of unnecessary fluff. This is important, for with the new 500-word limit on Common Application essays, there's no room for wasted words.
A Changing Woman The Victorian Era was a time of many contradictions, including the role of a woman in society. Prior to the Victorian Era, a woman’s place was considered to be at home. However, this thought began to change once Victorian feminism began to emerge. Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, is commonly referred to when talking about vampires and other dark aspects of literature. It is also surprisingly an excellent reference for the emergence of feminism.
In presenting her heroine's path to poetic and personal maturity, Ms. Browning not only explored the Victorian relation between gender and genre, but she also created a female literary tradition that alluded to her predecessors. Her work draws upon novels written by women, such as Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847), where the female protagonist's status as an orphan with a cruel aunt, proposal by St. John River, and Rochester's blindness appearing in both pieces. Another contribution to female tradition is the use of gynocentric, rather than andocentric, imagery. Barrett Browning's poem substitutes female, rather than male, types from the Old Testament, and even when describing men, uses female mythical figures for her analogies. These images and comparisons, that are driven by the poem's most serious concerns, represent an important imaginative achievement in themselves for the time.
Hawthorne’s fabrication of Hester gives the reader an indication of Hawthorne’s opinion on the female gender. “Hawthorne’s pro-woman novel retains its value to feminist literature for its depiction of circumscribed female lives” (Snodgrass). Hawthorne is sympathetic to Hester and shows her strong and ambitious side throughout the novel. He creates this likeable character by analyzing her psyche, picking out specific traits in order to engage the reader, and giving her ambitious actions to carry out in order to show the reader her full potential. Hester Prynne is the wife of a man named Chilingworth, who has sent Hester to live in a village near Boston.