Hello!
This is the start of what I hope will be a useful resource for you this year. I plan to post once per week on topics that relate to, extend and explore themes and ideas that we discuss in class or which we don't have time for in class. It will be most useful to you, I think, if you check in regularly, and make a commitment to responding to each post and to comments made by others. (Please make sure your username somehow identifies who you are! Comments from anonymous or unidentifiable contributors will be removed.)
It's a private blog, so you won't find it in a Google search. Make sure you bookmark it somehow. You can also subscribe by email using the link on the right, so you'll get an email alert each time a new post is published.
I will try to make sure that each post has at least one discussion question, so that you have something to comment on, which will give you practice at articulating ideas in written form - a crucial skill for all of the assessment in Literature. I encourage you to try out language, vocabulary and ideas here, where it doesn't 'count', so that you can hear back from others about what's on track and what needs some amendment before you write the assessment tasks.
If you find useful sites that you think others in the class will benefit from, please contribute them, too - remember, we're a team, all trying to pull together to get the best possible aggregate score, to benefit each individual's score.
Today's discussion questions:
1. What are Fowles' major concerns in "The French Lieutenant's Woman", and why do you think so?
2. What do you see as the most significant moments in the story, and why did you choose them?
So, get thinking and writing. DON'T feel that you need the 'right' answers - there are no such things in this subject. You just need to be able to defend your ideas with evidence from the text.
-Ms Batch
I have not yet finished the book so I cannot answer these questions with certainty that this is what I will still feel by the end of the novel but I believe that Fowles’s biggest concerns in The French Lieutenant’s Woman is the Victorian Society’s inability to take control of their own lives and perhaps create a new way of living. The majority of society tend to fear change as it doesn’t conform to the rules of their current way of living and personally, they may feel that by being one of the first to take a step towards change they will be rejected by society for not conforming.
ReplyDeleteThis fear is shown through the treatment of Sarah by the rest of society. She is considered an outcast and unworthy because she decided to live life in a way that pleased her and not those around her. Becoming an outcast was actually Sarah’s own idea to free herself of having to conform to the ways of society which she considered to be irrational, however, the rest of society believed it was their doing that made her an outcast leaving the judgements made by them still relevant.
The idea that people in the Victorian era only wanted to be wealthy and have a powerful status definitely influenced their way of living and their actions towards other. The upper class citizens did their best to appear superior over those of a lower class and even in moments when these feelings of superiority or inferiority were hidden, they were still present. These two ideas can be linked through one character - Mrs. Poulteney - who accepted those of a lower class to work for her as servants in order to gain status as a charitable woman in society and to gain more respect.
Fowles included these issues as they were heavily present in the Victorian era and even though our world has come along way since both the Victorian era and his own, they can still be proven to be present in today’s society and potentially, in future generations as well.
- Claire.