FEMININE VOICES IN WOMEN NOVELISTS’ WRITING

1. FEMININE VOICES IN WOMENNOVELISTS’ WRITING Conducător ştiinţific: Conf. univ. dr. IRINA TOMA Autor: Prof. MIHAELA-SORINA DOAMNA Şcoala: ŞCOALA ‘DIACONU CORESI’ Localitatea: FIENI

2. ARGUMENT Why literature?Any literary work comes into existence only through the interaction between the reader and the text. Why teaching literature?There are at least three main reasons for the teaching of literature: the cultural model, the language model and the personal growth model. Why Victorian literature?This period represents a transition between the writers of the Romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century. The 19thcentury is often regarded as a high point in British literature (as well as in other European countries). Why Victorian writers? (More particularly women novelists?)These writers are considered the most significant of the period and they had something to say about a number of important issues such as: the relations between men and women, parents and children, the treatment of women and children, the realization of selfhood, love and marriage, the nature of true love, the power of love. Why Feminine Voices?Victorians were concerned with four controversial issues: evolution, industrialism, Great Britain’s identity as an imperial power and ‘The Woman Question’. In the debates about the Woman Question, voices came into print that had not been heard before. Not only did women novelists play a major role in shaping the terms of the debates but also women from working classes found opportunities to describe the conditions of their lives.

3. INTRODUCTION: REASONS FOR ENJOYING LITERATURE WITHIN THE CLASSROOMS • 2.VIEW ON PRE-VICTORIAN AND VICTORIAN AGE – GENERAL BACKGROUND AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT WITH STRESS UPON WOMEN NOVELISTS OF THE AGE • Social hierarchy and rights, employment, clothing, moral values, education, religion • Woman’s condition • 3. THE TRADITION OF WOMEN NOVELISTS: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte – life, source and work

4. 4. FEMININE VOICES • ELIZABETH BENNET (PRIDE AND PREJUDICE 1813) – discovered herself in her loss of pride and prejudice • JANE EYRE (JANE EYRE 1847) - The independent and successful woman of the 19th century • CATHERINE EARNSHAW (WUTHERING HEIGHTS 1847) - Two faces of love

5. 5. METHODOLOGICAL APPLICATION (ON DIFFERENT LEVELS OF STUDY) Literature(n.)= 1. written works, esp. those whose value lies in beauty of language or in emotional effect; 2. the realm of letters; 3. the writings of a country or period; 4. literary production; 5. colloq. printed matter, leaflets, etc; 6. the material in print on a particular subject (from Latinlitteratura) Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press 2004, p 473 • Literature is a very versatile subject and is generally considered one of the most difficult subjects to teach. There is no right or wrong way to teach a Literature class; the job of the professor is not to teach the student, it is to lead the student.

6. Teaching literature not only improves reading fluency through the expansion of vocabulary, but also increases students' reading comprehension skills. Comprehension skills not only include retelling main events, but also include the ability to identify the author's choice or words, central themes, character development, symbolism, irony, etc.  • Literary texts can provide rich linguistic input, effective stimuli for students to express themselves in other languages and a potential source of learner motivation. • There is no point in the idea of a separation of literature from language since literature is language and language can indeed be literary. • ◊ Why use literature in class? • authentic material • it encourages interaction • it expands language awareness • it educates the whole person • motivating

7. There are at least four main reasons which lead a language teacher to use literature in the classroom:1. Valuable Authentic Material - in a classroom context, learners are exposed to actual language samples of real life / real life-like settings. They become familiar with many different linguistic forms, communicative functions and meanings.2. Cultural Enrichment - literary works, such as novels, plays, short stories, etc facilitate understanding how communication takes place in that country. A reader can discover the way of the characters, the way literary works see the world outside (i.e. their thoughts, feelings, customs, traditions, possessions; what they buy, believe in, fear, enjoy; how they speak and behave in different settings). 3. Language Enrichment - Literature provides learners with a wide range of individual lexical or syntactic items. Students become familiar with many features of the written language. Thus, they improve their communicative and cultural competence in the authentic richness, naturalness of the authentic texts.4. Personal Involvement - Once the student reads a literary text, s/he begins to inhabit the text. S/He is drawn into the text. The student becomes enthusiastic to find out what happens, s/he feels close to certain characters and shares their emotional responses.

8. ◊ Teaching Literature in an optional course:The purpose of • this optional course is to provide readers with a guide to understanding, • enjoying and studying women novelists and some of their works by giving them • easy access to information about the work. The following elements are • contained in each part: Introduction / Plot – Summary / Characters / Themes/ • Style / Historical Context / Critical Overview / Topics for Further Study / • Compare and Contrast • Evaluation : group/individual projects / oral presentation / essay writing • scene/portrait/setting sketching / script writing / PPT • ◊ Lesson plans 1- 4 • Characters in Pride and Prejudice; • Introducing Jane Eyre – An Unlikely Victorian Heroine; • Who’s Who? Who’s Where? and Who’s in Charge? – Wuthering Heights; • The Status of Women in Pride and Prejudice.

9. ◊ CONCLUSIONS Although women novelists wrote in the way that society expected them to, their work, which was admired for its wit and intelligence, greatly improved the reputation of female authoresses. Their realistic characters and social commentary also helped lay the foundations for the modern novel. And although they are far from feminists, the heroines point towards the future by being lively and independent. The issue of what women achieved through the mediation of writing is not at all ambiguous, but extremely clear and simple as it was obtained only by presenting experience as a whole because ‘the middle class woman began to write’. Literary texts offer a rich source of linguistic input and can help learners to practise the four skills - speaking, listening, reading and writing - in addition to exemplifying grammatical structures and presenting new vocabulary. Literature can help learners to develop their understanding of other cultures, awareness of ‘difference' and to develop tolerance and understanding. Literature can open horizons of possibility, allowing students to question, interpret, connect, and explore. To sum up, literature provides students with an incomparably rich source of authentic material over a wide range of registers.

10. SOURCES • PRIMARY SOURCES • Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice, Longman Penguin Readers 1998 • Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre, Longman Penguin Readers 1999 • Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Longman Penguin Readers 2003 SECONDARY SOURCES • Auerbach, Emily, Searching for Jane Austen, Univ. of Wisconsin, 2006 • Blain, Virginia, Isobel Grundy and Patricia Clements, The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1990. viii-ix • Daiches, David, A Critical History Of English Literature, volumes I-IV, Secker & Warburg, London 1965 • Lewes, George Henry, The Novels of Jane Austen, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 1859 • Samson, George, The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, London, 1993 • Toma, Irina, Victorian Contrasts, Ed UPG Ploiesti 2006 • Zirra, Ioana, Contributions of the British 19th Century – the Victorian Age – to the History of Literature and Ideas, Ed Univ. Bucuresti 2003 • Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class 1963 • Vizental, Adriana, Strategies of Teaching and Testing English as a Foreign Language, Polirom 2007