Exams.... Page 22

Quote: Scatterbrained Floozy @ May 31 2009, 9:43 PM BST

Jeeeeez. I have to do a question on the Wife, a question on "The Winter's Tale", and a synoptic. Luckily we don't have to know about the rest of "The Canterbury Tales" much, if at all (that'll come next year at uni!), but I'd say the structure of the Wife's prologue in contrast to the tale is my favourite bit about the whole thing. She's just so conventionally trying to be unconventional imho.

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Ah, but do you think Chaucer is portraying her as an example of strong female woman who asserts herself, or is he portraying women as talking too much and feckless (she lies and contradicts herself throughout the tale)?

See, I know critics have a field day about this, but I definitely chop and change my ideas about her throughout. I think that the problem is is that her characterisation and her context are in direct contradiction to each other, as well as her persona and her creator gender-wise at least, and so it's completely impossible to pin-point her. I'm inclined to believe she's just embodying the many separate and expected traits of a woman in the Middle Ages, and that it doesn't necessarily matter which way you see her personally, because everyone will see it differently. She lies, cheats, contradicts herself, yes ("Deceite, weping, spining, God hath yive/To wommen kindely whil that they may live), but if she didn't, then she'd be just as damned by feminists nowadays for being a shrinking wallflower, all too keen to accept her assigned gender role despite her undeniable wider potential.

Quote: Scatterbrained Floozy @ May 31 2009, 9:56 PM BST

See, I know critics have a field day about this, but I definitely chop and change my ideas about her throughout. I think that the problem is is that her characterisation and her context are in direct contradiction to each other, as well as her persona and her creator gender-wise at least, and so it's completely impossible to pin-point her. I'm inclined to believe she's just embodying the many separate and expected traits of a woman in the Middle Ages, and that it doesn't necessarily matter which way you see her personally, because everyone will see it differently. She lies, cheats, contradicts herself, yes ("Deceite, weping, spining, God hath yive/To wommen kindely whil that they may live), but if she didn't, then she'd be just as damned by feminists nowadays for being a shrinking wallflower, all too keen to accept her assigned gender role despite her undeniable wider potential.

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It's a text that can give some good mileage in an exam. If I get a question tomorrow on feminism/gender roles, I'll be using it. I wish we had started this conversation earlier as I now have to get my stuff ready for tomorrow and get myself to bed.

TTFN

Quote: PhQnix @ May 31 2009, 8:22 PM BST

Well that was nostalgic. I don't see why you guys joked about me and Robyn at all.

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We weren't joking.

Quote: The Rook @ May 31 2009, 10:03 PM BST

It's a text that can give some good mileage in an exam. If I get a question tomorrow on feminism/gender roles, I'll be using it. I wish we had started this conversation earlier as I now have to get my stuff ready for tomorrow and get myself to bed.

TTFN

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Good luck if that means it's today! Or luck anyway, actually, though I'm sure you'll be brilliant.

Quote: Aaron @ May 31 2009, 10:25 PM BST

We weren't joking.

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Again, for you to be saying this!

Yeah!

Quote: Scatterbrained Floozy @ June 1 2009, 7:20 AM BST

Again, for you to be saying this!

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But I wasn't faced with constant accusations and constant denials or behaving quite so blatantly. YEAH!

Quote: Aaron @ June 1 2009, 12:33 PM BST

But I wasn't faced with constant accusations and constant denials or behaving quite so blatantly. YEAH!

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Fail.

Good luck to all in exams. They're buggers, but they have to be done.

All makes me nostalgic over my English A Level (an A grade in the days when an 'A' meant something - sorry!). I hope no-one has to study DH Lawrence's 'The Rainbow' thesedays. If I see the word "fecundity" it still makes me angry. A pile of pitifully-laboured metaphors calling itself a novel. (Of course I didn't write that at the time.)

I also had to study 'The Comedians', a play by Trevor Griffiths. A play about comedy that is momumentally unfunny. It's all about exploring the "truth" behind the laughter, you see? Maybe because it's so relentlessly set in the 1970s the stereotypical (racist, sexist, whimsical humour) routines of the comics are bound to be unfunny. (Just had the thought, 18 years after writing essays on it, that maybe Griffiths was deliberately showing them as unfunny...? Nah.) To me it just confirmed the old idea that if you start to analyse what's funny, you destroy it.

Hey! And I had to study 'Pride And Prejudice'... Jesus!

Quote: Tim Walker @ June 1 2009, 12:49 PM BST

All makes me nostalgic over my English A Level (an A grade in the days when an 'A' meant something - sorry!).

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Quote: PhQnix @ June 1 2009, 1:45 PM BST

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We didn't have computers to write our essays in those days. (Well, I had an Amstrad electronic typewriter - what was laughably called a word processor - Siralan nevers mentions he used to flog that piece of crap.) Every essay was written by hand. With a quill. A blunt quill. And we had to deliver them by hand, no emails. By hand. Walking there. And we didn't have shoes...

Good luck to any of you that has them, I'm glad I don't!

Quote: Tim Walker @ June 1 2009, 1:52 PM BST

We didn't have computers to write our essays in those days. (Well, I had an Amstrad electronic typewriter - what was laughably called a word processor - Siralan nevers mentions he used to flog that piece of crap.) Every essay was written by hand. With a quill. A blunt quill. And we had to deliver them by hand, no emails. By hand. Walking there. And we didn't have shoes...

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In fairness, we still handwrite most of our stuff... and I'd love a quill.

We don't get computers, and I work bloody hard, memorising 3,000 word essays even when we do get laptops in exams.

Quote: Tim Walker @ June 1 2009, 12:49 PM BST

Hey! And I had to study 'Pride And Prejudice'... Jesus!

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Did that at GCSE.

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