Wednesday, November 15 graphic organizer for "A Room of One's Own"

Learning Targets: 

-I can identify and define any unfamiliar words by drawing on  
  a range of strategies.

-I can read and annotate texts for comprehension. 

-I can identify and explain appropriate textual evidence.

Essential Question: How are gender roles reflected in the imagined life of Judith Shakespeare?

Coming up: tomorrow you will be working in class on commonly misused words. 

In class: vocabulary quiz / another copy below; graphic organizer on Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own"
           New vocabulary: class handout / copy below..QUIZ ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 29.

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?