English 226

Survey of Literature by Women

Professor Ann Putnam

Fall 2004

Wyatt 341

X3407 X3235

Office Hours: MWF 10-11:00 & by appointment

TEXTS:

THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF LITERATURE BY WOMEN, ed. Gubar & Gilbert

FRANKENSTEIN Shelley, Smith, ed.

BELOVED Toni Morrison

REFUGE Williams

HOUSEKEEPING, Robinson

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

1-Class Attendance (after three absences, grade will be seriously affected. Please see me if there for some reason you cannot attend class. I will take roll every day. Since this is not a lecture class, your attendance and particpation in this course is essential for its success. And for yours.)

2-Participation in:

class discussions

participation as discussion leader

two panels

collaborative class journal

response to Reading Journal

3-three short papers (3-5 pages): close readings of two works of your choice; film review

4-mid-term

5-final exam

6-Reading Journal

GOALS:

After setting up some initial terms and contexts, we will follow a chronology which traces the development of women's literature from the Medieval and Renaissance Periods up to the present. Sometimes we'll read works which seem to speak to each other from across the expanse of decades or even centuries, though chronology will be the main way we'll organize our readings.

Several of the issues we'll address include:

1-What are the canonical issues which come from a study of women's literature? What about the idea of the canon in general and the Norton Text in particular? Why has it come under such criticism? Why is there no Longman's or Norton's Anthology of Literature by Men? What works by women have been discovered or reclaimed over the years? What happens to a developing literary tradition when key works have been lost or devalued? For this we will examine both "The Awakening"and "Life in the Iron Mills,"to name two.

2-Are there significant differences in women's literature which we can characterize? Is women's literature different from literature by men in some essential way? If so how? What exactly is women's literature? We will begin by looking at Virginia Woolf'A Room of One's Own.

3-How have women been characterized through the ages in works written by men? Why have such concepts or images as the gaze, the mirror, silences, the blank page, a room of one's own, the monster, the madwoman in the attic become gathering metaphors we encounter again and again in literature by women? For this, the introductdory sections of the Norton will be particularly helpful.

4-Are there certain forms of literature which women in particular seem to be drawn to? Here I am thinking of the predominance of confessional poetry, autobiography, diaries, journals in past centuries, and the predominant role women have come to assume in the development of the modern short story, and its renaissance in recent years.

5-What has it been like through the ages to be both a woman and an artist? What has it cost women to follow their creative urgings? Why have they agonized over this? And why have they so often thought of their writing as something monstrous, perverted, abnormal, something to be hidden and composed anonymously and in private?

What obstacles have women writers faced throughout history? What forces work against them and what strategies do they often employ to make their voices heard? How have women found the voice to write? What has changed? What has remained the same?

We will examine what Emily Dickinson meant when she said, "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant,"by looking at the strategies women writers have employed through the ages. We will contrast the strategies of outright rebellion; disguises and masks; apology and deference; and transposition.

6-Finally, why does motherhood seem so problematic for so many women in these works? What do they say about the competing demands of a woman's commitment to her children and to her work in the world?

Participation
This is a discussion-centered course, so you will need to come to class each day prepared to discuss the ideas the reading suggests to you. So please come to class each day with a question/or comment on the day's assigned reading To this end, I will encourage you to get together with other class members to talk about the reading, exchange ideas, read each others' drafts outside of class.

Journal

Here you'll create a typed page of freewriting for each reading. Don't worry about mechanics or grammar, but do give a thoughtful response for each day's reading. Please don't merely summarize the reading but reflect on it, what it suggests to you, how it connects to our culture today. Begin to pay close attention to depiction of gender in the mediaãnewspapers, t.v. film. How does the reading connect with these?~With your own personal experiences? How do these issues affect your own life? Use the journals to experiment, try out new ideas, experiment with your own writing, be creative, try out a strong sense of voice. Please type these if at all possible.

You may very well find that some of your paper and presentation topics will come out of your notebook. Please keep the notebook current. If you fall behind and do it all at once you'll negate the whole learning experience and the notebook will be a waste of time for all concerned. The content of the notebook will be graded satisfactory or unsatisfactory and it must show committed, genuine effort.

Label each response clearly

Journal Exchange

Three times during the course you will exchange reading journals and write a typed page of comments to the person whose journal you are reading. This can be informal and in the form of letter where you'll interact/react to some of the things that intrigued you about your classmate's journal.

Collaborative Class Journal

Details to follow

Discussion leader: Several times during the course you and one or two others will be in charge of beginning the class discussion¾that is posing questions or concerns the work at hand has raised for you. You will not have to lecture or provide answers to your own questions. Your job is just to help get the class thinking about the work under discussion by posing questions, or perhaps by getting them to do a little free-writing or fast small-group discussion. And then helping along the way as things occur to you, or the discussion needs a little jump start.

Panel Presentations: You will be assigned a panel group to lead a discussion of Toni Morrison's Beloved and Marilynne Robinson's, Housekeeping. Handout to follow.

Working Schedule of Assignments

8/30

Introduction to the course

9/1, 9/3/, 9/6

The Body as Text/ The Female as Muse

"Of Holders and Probers"(on Xerox)

Question: What is the author's sense of the relationship between gender and creativity? Is he right?

"The Birthmark"(on Xerox)

"The Blank Page" Isak Dinesen

"Bleeding≤ May Swensen

"In An Artist's Studio" Christina Rossetti

Question: How have women used their bodies as their texts?

Why is the blank canvas so powerful? So subversive?

What's the difference between being the subject of the poem and the poet? Or as Joyce Carol Oates puts it, the difference between being Alice and Lewis Carroll

Question: Why is sexuality problematic for women? In Medieval hierarchy virgins

were considered more worthy than widows and widows more worthy than wives. Why? A woman could not partake of the Sacraments, including Sacrament of the Last Rites, for a period of time after childbirth. Why? What mortal dangers does this pose for women who are about to give birth?

9/8

Film: Virginia Woolf A Room of One's Own

9/10, 9/13

Discussion of the book, A Room of One's Own. What issues does Woolf raise

concerning women who want to write fiction? Are there certain subjects she can't write about? Are there certain forms she can't write in? What things stand in her way? Who is Shakespeare's sister? Why does a woman need a "room of one's own"in order to write? Why can't she get it?

Begin reading Frankenstein and Bonnie Friedman's essay,≤Your Sister's Passions,Your Mother's Woes: Writing About the Living≤

9/15

Anne Bradstreet

"The Prologue≤ (on Xerox)

"The Author to Her Book≤

"Before the Birth of One of Her Children≤

Question: What attitudes toward her poetry and creativity does Bradstreet reveal?

Or hide? What attitude toward maternity?

Aphra Behn

"The Willing Mistress"

"The Disappointment≤

"On Her Loving Two Equally≤

"To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman≤

Question: Why did Virginia Woolf say that "all women together ought to let flowers

fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn≤?

9/17

Phillis Wheatley

"On Being Brought from Africa to America≤

"To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth"

Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens"

"The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America or Something Like a

Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley"(on Xerox)

Question: How is Wheatley divided against herself? Why?

9/20, 9/22, 9/24

Frankenstein Mary Shelley

Discussion of Frankenstein

"Your Mother's Passions, Your Sister's Woes: Writing About the Living,"Bonnie Friedman (on Xerox)

(9/22) Journal Exchange #1

(9/24) Journal Return

9/27, 9/29, 10/1

Thelma and Louise

Essay, "The Bearer of the Gaze in Ridley Scott's åThelma and Louise'≤

Please take specific notes on what you notice in the film!

10/4,

Discussion of T & L

Paper # 1 due 3-4 pages of a close reading of a selection from one of the texts we have read. Choose a scene, motif, image and perform a "close reading≤: analyze its language, tone, placement to make an argument both for its own significance and for its importance within the work as a whole. How does the chosen selection illuminate the work as a greater whole?

10/6, 10/8,

"The Awakening,"Kate Chopin

"Melodramas of Beset Manhood,"Baym (on Xerox)

10/11, 10/13

Life in the Iron Mills Rebecca Harding Davis

This is the story of a female narrator who is telling the story of male artist who creates a female image. What is this story saying about the relationships between creativity and gender, creativity and class. What motifs or recurring image patterns can you find? What forces conspired to bury this work for over a hundred years?

10/15

"The Yellow Wallpaper,"Charlotte Perkins Gilman

What is the relationship here between creativity and motherhood? Why do they seem to threaten each other? What is this story saying about silences and those who silence? Who owns the language in this story? Who owns the words that pronounce the diagnosis and the treatment? Who is the woman in the wallpaper? What is the relationship between creativity and madness?

10/18

Fall Break Day

10/20

Mid-Term

10/ 22, 10/25, 10/27 The Piano

(10/25) Journal Exchange #2

(10/27) Journal return

10/29

Panel preparation day: Beloved

11/1,11/3,11/5 Panel Discussions: Beloved

11/8, 11/10, 11/12

(11/12) Paper #2 due

Film: A "Resisting Viewing"

Review "'The Bearer of the Gaze'"essay

Finish reading Housekeeping

11/15 Panel Preparation day: Housekeeping

See handouts

11/17, 19, 22

Panel Discussions: Housekeeping

11/24

Reading/Writing Day

11/26

Thanksgiving Break

11/29, 12/1, 12/3, 12/6

Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams

(12/1) Journal Exchange #3

(12/3) Journal Return

12/8

Wrap up discussion

Essay #3 Film Review due: 4-5 page film review incorporating film theory and course concepts