ON LOVE

 

WORKSHEET

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, JANE AUSTEN AND PROTOFEMINISM

Protofeminism is a concept that anticipates modern feminism in eras when the feminist concept as such was still unknown. So we can correctly say that Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen were protofeminist writers.

SOCIAL ISSUES IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN - THE WOMAN QUESTION

"Conventionality is not morality"
(Charlotte Bronte , Preface to the second edition of "Jane Eyre")

Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre - 2011

(see also THE WOMAN QUESTION  ppt in the widget box on the right  

We already discussed "The Woman Question" studying Jane Austen's novels. Unfortunately, things hadn't changed in time and Victorian women still had to bear a subordinate social role.

Queen Victoria, "the mother of the nation", personified 19th century middle-class femininity and domesticity perfectly. Supported by her beloved husband Albert and surrounded by her nine children, she presented a kind of femininity which was centred on the family, motherhood and respectability.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS BY EMILY BRONTE

Emily Bronte was a clergyman’s daughter. She grew up in a remote part of England. She didn’t like to travel. When she left home she became ill. She never married and she died at the age of 30 having published her only novel and some poetry. It was one of the most shocking novel in English literature. When it was first published 1847, it created a firestorm of protest. It was called one of the most repellent book ever published. One critic said it should be burnt. The protest only settle down when the second edition came out and the author was revealed to be the daughter of a parson from west-Yorkshire. How had a parson’s daughter created such a threat to civilized society as Heathcliff, a   hero driven by sexual passion and vengeance and instead of a proper Victorian heroine she gave the world a married woman who runs around on the moor in her nightgown with her lover. The reading public was shocked. Shocked. But the novel has never been out of print and has had many film/ TV adaptations:  WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

MY STUDENTS GIVE THEIR LESSONS: JANE EYRE

Federica, Valeria e Veronica read Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre in the summer and prepared a very interesting lesson  about the author and the novel.

They presented their points and analysis with power point slides that you can download from the widget_box on the right (Jane Eyre 2012) and they also proposed us a scene from the latest movie adaptation of the story with Michael Fassbender as Mr Rochester and Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre. 

They said they liked reading this novel  and I hope they will also like studying Victorian literature from January on.

For now, in our lessons,  we are working on the different genres of fiction between the end of 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century (Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Walter Scott)

Tomorrow we'll work on Pride and Prejudice. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that ..." a teacher fond of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and great classic literature is having and will have great fun.

 Will her students ever share her passion?