Hello, my name is Ms. Grant.

I'm so glad you decided to learn with me today.

We're in the modern text first study unit, and our modern text is "Leave Taking".

Today, we are gonna look at the character of Enid.

Pinnock says that she was fascinated by the character of Enid when she was writing her, and you can see that richness, that fascination coming throughout the eight scenes of this play.

I'm so excited to look at this character with you today.

I'm gonna be your support and guide as we work through the lesson together.

Let's get started.

So by the end of today's lesson, you are going to be able to explore how Pinnock presents Enid's past and present.

We're going to look at her life in England.

We're gonna compare it to her growing up in Jamaica.

And we're gonna think, well, why does Pinnock present Enid's past and present in this way? How do they interact with each other? What impact does this past and present have on the character of Enid? There are some keywords which are gonna help unlock our learning today.

They are hardship, which means a synonym for difficulty or suffering.

Destitute, which is a synonym for extreme poverty.

Isolated, which means being alone, without friends, help, or support.

We're gonna reference these words throughout today's lesson, and they're gonna help us achieve our objective.

Our lesson outline for today, we're gonna start off by looking at Enid's past, and then we're going to finish today's lesson by looking at Enid's present.

Let's start off with looking at Enid's past.

So I'd like you to reread the section of Scene Two in which Brod tells Viv something of her mother's upbringing and Jamaica.

He says, "Back home she, Enid, used to rise with the dawn, and she was on them feet, bare feet all day, climb high hill, walk over big stone to fetch water from a gully, work in the field, pick coffee, plantain, then sell it to market." And Enid says, "Brod, what the use you telling her these things? She don't understand that way of life." Brod says, "Well, she should, to Viv.

Your mother don't like to talk about back home.

Me, I dream about the land of wood and water.

Pure rainforest." Enid says, "Then why you nuh go back there, you have such a longing for it? I don't dream about back home because this is my home." Now, a gully is a channel of water and plantain is a cooking banana.

I'd like you to discuss, just focusing on this section of Scene Two, how is Enid's life in Jamaica presented? Pause the video and discuss this question now.

Lovely to see people returning to this moment in the text and discussing this question.

Well, you might have that Enid's life is presented as physically hard, both in terms of securing the necessities of day-to-day life like water but also her job itself.

So she gets up really, really early, and she's doing hard physical labour all day.

So it's presented as quite hard in some ways.

I'd like you to discuss now, we know what her life in Jamaica might have been like physically, but what about her feelings towards Jamaica? How are they presented? And you could compare these feelings to Brod's feelings from this short section in Scene Two, if you like.

So pause the video and discuss how are Enid's feelings towards Jamaica presented, pause the video now.

Lovely to move from working out what is Enid's life like in Jamaica to that slightly deeper question, well, what are feelings to Jamaica? How are they presented? And you might have.

Well, England maintains that England is her home.

That's what we see at the end of this section of dialogue.

She says, "I don't dream about back home because this is my home," and home for her means England, and therefore she doesn't dream of Jamaica.

But Brod's dream suggests Jamaica has a really pleasant memory for him, and he's proud of Enid's strength and the beauty of Jamaica's landscape.

So he starts off this section of dialogue by talking about Enid and what she did all day.

And he's definitely in this section, very proud of her ability to work.

He's kind of telling Viv how proud she should be of her mother and her work ethic and her strengths.

He's also proud of the beauty of Jamaica's landscape.

He's saying, "Pure rainforest, I dream about the land of wood and water." So you can see how comparing Enid's feelings to Brod's feeling could be a really useful way in to this section of the text.

Now, I'd like you to reread two further sections about Enid's past.

So in Scene Three, Enid and Brod recall a church service.

And Brod says, "Remember that night Hurricane Hanley blow through May Pen? Boy, that night, Chully called down spirit more powerful than any hurricane." Enid says, "That service was sweet." And Brod says, "Spirit fling Mooma around the room till she burst out talking in tongues, remember?" And Enid says, "We was all talking in tongues that night, Brod." Let's look at the second section from Scene Eight where Enid opens up to Del.

Enid says, "In a way, we poorer than them," Enid's family in Jamaica, "They're all in it together.

When I was a girl, you kill a cow, you share it up.

Everybody in the district get a piece.

Here, you poor and you by yourself." Now, I'd like you to look at these two sections about Enid's past, and I'd like you to discuss this question, how does Pinnock develop our understanding of Enid's past? I'm using that word develop because we've obviously already looked at a short section from Scene Two in which Enid and Brod talk about Jamaica.

So we're developing our understanding here by looking at two further sections from Scene Three and Scene Eight.

So pause the video and discuss this question.

How does Pinnock develop our understanding of Enid's past? Pause the video now.

Beautiful discussions there, deepening your understanding of Enid's past, which is the focus for this first section of the lesson, this first learning cycle.

Let's have a look at this first section to begin with about Hurricane Hanley blowing through May Pen when Brod and Enid remember at this church service.

So Enid's life in Jamaica was definitely characterised by powerful religious fervour and a sense of community.

I like the section at the end where Enid corrects Brod says, "It wasn't just Mooma who's talking in tongues.

We was all talking in tongues." So this idea of community, this idea of togetherness, and this definitely is a pleasant memory for Brod and Enid.

They're reflecting on this as sweet, that's how Enid characterises it, the sweet service.

And Brod is thinking, "Wow, that really, really was a powerful service.

Remember what it was like in Jamaica." And this section in Scene Eight had a lot of really reflective discussion on this moment where Enid says to Del, "In a way, we poorer than them." So Enid again is recalling this sense of community that she had in Jamaica making some of the hardships she faced more bearable.

And you remember that one of our keywords today was isolated, and we are really seeing Enid's sense of isolation in this moment of Scene Eight.

She says, "Here," and she means England, "You poor and you by yourself." So this sense that Enid is quite isolated in Britain is coming through really nice discussion of those two sections of the text in conjunction with Scene Two.

So we've got a really nice, we're developing our discussion of Enid's past, not just looking at one moment, but in fact looking at three different moments from the text and coming to some really nice evaluative conclusions.

I check for understanding just so we've really secure in the idea of Enid's past.

So this statement here, "Enid's past was full of hardship," do you think that is true or false? Pause the video and select your response now.

Well done if you selected true.

It was full of hardship.

Hardship, one of our keywords for today, meaning sort of synonym for suffering.

I'd like you to justify your answer.

Is it, A, life in Jamaica was unbearable, hence Enid's move to England, or B, life in Jamaica was hard, but Enid's experiences were also rich, grounding and happy.

Pause the video and justify your answer now.

Well done if you selected B, relying particularly on that moment where Enid and Brod are describing the church service, which was obviously a rich grounding, happy memory for both of these characters.

Now, I'd like you to reread Scene Four of "Leave Taking".

And as you read, create a mind map around this question.

How is Enid's life in Jamaica presented? And you can see that there's already one example there to guide your mind map creation.

So it says hard, her family could not afford necessities like electricity or running water.

So we got an adjective to describe how Enid's life in Jamaica is presented a dash, and then just making a small note about why, the adjective is valid why it's a correct interpretation.

So you're gonna use that to model your own creation of the mind map about this question.

How is Enid's life in Jamaica presented? I'd like you to pause the video, reread Scene Four, and create that mind map.

Pause the video now.

Lovely to see such fantastic creation of those mind maps.

I really liked the detail that was given for this question.

So people noting down specific references and sometimes even quotations from Scene Four.

It was also lovely to see people really appreciate that rereading of Scene Four.

So rereading a text is such an important way to develop your understanding of it, develop your arguments about it, your evaluation of it.

So rereading is a key skill in English.

So let's have a look at your mind map and some of the ideas that you might have had.

So I heard a lot of people using this adjective, desperate and citing the bit of dialogue where Enid talks about the idea of real hunger.

So really being very, very hungry.

Not the kind of hunger that Viv has experienced in England where she might have thought, "Yes, I'm hungry.

It's dinnertime, it's lunchtime," but it's not that kind of hunger that has a sort of slight edge of danger to it.

You're so hungry that you might begin to actually starve.

But Enid it seems has faced this kind of desperation, this kind of destitution.

It's fragile.

"Is the land fail you," Enid says.

Enid's family would be destitute.

So they have land and they found that land, but Enid does say, "If the land fail you, you're completely stuck, you are destitute." And I had lots of people using that keyword from today's lesson.

So the idea of this extreme poverty was something that Enid faced in her past.

Noble, so Enid's family had a sense of their own self-worth.

She says, "We walked around like we were somebody, even though we faced this very difficult destitution." So there was this idea of mobility, this idea of pride.

Humbling, and because others made fun of her family's poverty, she said that they got picked on and that people made fun of them.

So she did have to face this kind of mocking attitude and that can be very humbling.

And conflicted, and this was a word that had lots and lots of people use, and it's going to really help us understand learning cycle two, where we look at Enid's present, it's conflicted because Enid wanted to leave Jamaica, and her mother didn't accept this.

Though at the end of this scene, Enid says she wants to go home, and she means Jamaica when she says home.

So lots of you are called.

Well, in Scene Two she said to Brod, "England is my home." But now faced with her mother's death, she's now calling Jamaica her home.

So the idea of Jamaica is definitely full of conflict for our character of Enid.

Well done for creating such clear, precise mind map.

These notes are gonna be incredibly useful to you, especially as we move on to learning cycle two and look at Enid's present.

So let's move on to learning cycle two.

We're now gonna look at Enid's present.

We've looked at her past in Jamaica.

Now, we're going to look at her present.

We know that she is living in London with her two daughters.

So I'd like you to reread these four sections about Enid's present.

We've got Scene Two where Enid argues with Brod.

Enid says, "You come here, you try to fit in, stick to the rules.

England being good to me.

I proud of my English girls." Two, Enid fights with Del.

This is again from Scene Two.

Enid says, "I work two jobs, seven days a week.

I wear one dress, one pair of shoes with a hole in it so that you can dress like those children who have fathers.

People laugh at me, but they never laugh at you." We've got this third section that we're going to reread again from Scene Two.

Enid discusses opportunities.

Enid says, "My daughter going to university.

How many my sister children back home going to university?" And the final one is from Scene Four, and it's when Enid tells Viv about her past.

Enid says, "You think my mother could afford electricity, hot and cold running water, flush toilet?" So we've got these four sections about Enid's present here.

Now, I'd like you to discuss how does Pinnock present Enid's life in Britain? And we're just gonna focus on these four sections, three from Scene Two and one from Scene Four.

So pause the video and discuss this question now.

Beautiful discussions there.

And just like you did in learning cycle one, tying together different moments from the text to come to conclusions.

Here, I heard people doing that with these four sections of the text.

So looking all four of them and thinking, what can I think about Enid's present in Britain? So let's start off with when Enid argues with Brod.

So Enid says, "You come here, you try to fit in, stick to the rules, England be good to me.

I proud of my English girls." Well, Enid accepts that she lives in a country where she has to try to fit in rather than her identity being celebrated or welcomed.

She's proud that her daughters are British and feels England has offered her a life which she couldn't have in Jamaica.

So Brod argues with her at this moment saying, "These girls got Caribbean souls." That's his response to when Enid says, "I proud of my English girls." But she's really adamant that she doesn't mind trying to fit in rather than her identity being celebrated or welcomed and that she wants her children to think of themselves as English girls and that she's very, very proud of that aspect.

Now, Enid fights with Del.

She says, "I work two jobs seven days a week.

People laugh at me, but they never laugh at you." This is a really interesting moment to think about Enid's present.

So Enid's life is still one of hardship, and I heard lots of people use that word.

Well, we saw hardship in Jamaica, but actually we see hardship in Britain as well.

And it was really nice to see people refine their ideas about this idea of destitution because you're absolutely right that Enid is not destitute in England.

She's not facing extreme poverty, but she does have to make sacrifices so her daughters have the things that she never had when she was growing up.

So there is a difference here.

She's not destitute as she sometimes faced the idea of destitution in Jamaica, but there is hardship here.

Now when Enid discusses the opportunity, she says, "My daughter going to university.

How many of my sister children back home going to university?" Now, lots of people said Enid is so proud of Viv's academic career and often seems like this makes the move to Britain worthwhile for her.

So not only does she mention it a lot, she mentions it to Brod, she sees Viv's report card, it was all As, really, really proud of it.

She's also thinking about Viv's future because we know that she saves a lot of money so that Viv can have financial stability at university.

So it feels a real focus for her, particularly at the beginning of the play, that this is why it is worth facing some of the hardships she faces in Britain because Viv is gonna have such a bright future, a bright academic future.

And finally, Scene Four, Enid tells Viv about her past, "You think me mother could afford electricity, hot and cold running water, flush toilet?" Well, Enid works hard in England, but she has access to necessities in a way that her family in Jamaica does not.

So this is quite a hard moment I think to understand what is Enid actually saying about her present? Because really in lots of ways, she's talking about her past, but what it shows us is that in Britain, she's aware of the necessities that she has just day by day.

And she knows that in Jamaica these necessities were not available to her, were pretty hard one by.

So there's a moment here where Enid is reflecting on her past and the difference that she has in her present.

So really nice exploration there of those four moments that we were trying to look at in order to understand, well, what is Enid saying about her present? And we can't just say one thing.

It was really nice that we had a real range of interpretations there.

Some things that made her present sort of worthwhile, that were good, some things that were different from her past and some things that were much harder than her life in Jamaica.

Now, a check for understanding just so that we can think about Enid's past and Enid's present together.

So we did look at Enid's past in learning cycle one.

We're looking at the present now, but really we need to be able to tie these two together so that we can understand this character as a whole.

So in what ways is Enid's life in England similar to her life in Jamaica? A, she's isolated.

B, she's destitute.

C, she faces hardship.

Pause the video and select your response now.

Well done if you selected C, she faces hardship.

So really good understanding of our keywords there.

So hardship, there is some sort of suffering in her life.

It's there's some kind of difficulty in her life in England, but she is not destitute.

She's not facing that extreme poverty that she sometimes faced, that family sometimes faced in Jamaica.

And of course lots of people referencing well, she's not.

In Jamaica, she was not isolated.

She had the community and referencing the ideas that we looked at in learning cycle one.

Whereas in England she does feel much more isolated and she tells Del this explicitly in Scene Eight, "You poor, you by yourself." So really well done for being able to use all those ideas from learning cycle one in order to understand this, check for understanding at this point in the lesson.

Now, I'd like you to reread Scene Eight from, the stage direction, "Del goes to a cupboard and takes out the envelope that Viv gave her," to, "Right up to the end, she never say a word to me." And as you read, I'd like you to complete the table showing in what ways Enid's life changed when she migrated to Britain and in what ways it stayed the same.

So here's the table, we've got changed, and I've put an example in there for you.

So Enid is not destitute and is able to save money so Viv can enjoy university without financial worry.

So that's one way in which her life has changed.

And you are going to develop some other ways in which her life has changed by rereading Scene Eight.

But you are also going to note down some ways in which her life is not changed at all.

It's unchanged.

So pause this video, reread Scene Eight from the stage direction to right up to the end, she never say a word to me.

And complete the table after you have reread that section of Scene Eight.

Good luck, and I'll see you back here shortly.

Lovely to see people rereading Scene Eight and selecting such clear details in order to populate that table.

Really thinking about well in what ways her life has changed and what ways is Enid's life really unchanged and being able to have these two ideas which are in some ways completely different.

Well, they're the opposite of each other sitting in your mind at once.

That really shows me that you are drawing out the complexity of this character and the complexity of this play.

So let's look at some ideas you might have had.

So we already had our original idea that one way in which her life has changed as Enid is not destitute, and she's able to save money, so Viv can enjoy university without financial worry.

But Enid is arguably more isolated in Britain, really lovely to hear people using that keyword she says, "Here, you poor and you by yourself." How has it changed? Well, her daughter is able to go to university.

Viv enrolled in a course called Black Studies.

And not only is this a good opportunity for Viv, the colonialist and Eurocentric education that Enid was taught in Jamaica is starting to change.

Now this was quite a subtle point, but lots of people did pick up on it.

Well, Viv is going to university, and we know that Enid feels that in Jamaica she would not have had this opportunity.

But also the course that she's going to study is showing some element of change and is perhaps why Viv is excited about going to university because we know that she has mentioned a couple of times in the play, she mentions that she's unhappy, she doesn't feel connected to what she's studying.

And so this idea that this course Black Studies are something that actually might excite her, and she might feel some connection to, in a way she hasn't to the Eurocentric education she's had before.

So a really subtle point there, but in some ways Enid's life is changing because her daughter is able not just to go to university, but the idea of the very content of her education is changing as well.

Now, people in Jamaica used to make fun of Enid's poverty, but now they call her Ms. English and say have them proud a me.

So this is a moment where Enid is saying, "Look, when I go back to Jamaica, people don't make fun of me anymore." However, lots of people know to, well, this must be quite difficult because being called Ms. English means necessarily that they're not thinking of her as Jamaican anymore.

And that might feel quite a difficult, quite a challenging emotion to feel, but it definitely is a change because she did use to be made fun of.

We saw that section in Scene Four when you reread it in learning cycle one.

And so now we have a change here.

They're saying how proud them, sorry, she says, "Say how them proud a me." And Brod speaks of Enid's physical resilience and strength in Jamaica.

And Enid says, "We still walk around like we was something." But Enid tells Dell that she can't fight anymore at the end of Scene Eight, life in Britain and the death of her mother seems to have sapped her strength.

Sort of quite a sad moment, a sad change for Enid when she says, "I can't fight anymore." I remember reading that for the first time and thinking this is a character who is really desperate and needs someone to take care of her.

And she's turning to Del to do that.

And this is quite a change from the physical resilience and strength that we've seen before.

Let's look at some ideas about how Enid's life is unchanged.

Well, Enid's life is still difficult.

One of hardship, deprivation and sacrifice.

She works two jobs and save years and years in order to help fund Viv's higher education.

So it is still a difficult life that she is facing, and it is still full of sacrifice and hardship.

Enid experienced intergenerational conflict with her mother, and she experiences intergenerational conflict with her daughters.

And I had lots of people talking about this kind of cycle of mothers and daughters not understanding each other or not understanding the choices that they want to make.

And I think this is a really nice way to explore the character of Enid because in some ways, especially at the beginning of the play, we think, "Ah, she's Del and Viv's mother.

This is who she is." But seeing her in that daughter role I think really helps us understand at this kind of intergenerational conflict and the cycle that just keeps continuing.

Enid was made fun of in Jamaica because her family was so poor.

In England, she faces racial discrimination and this is a hate crime, so much more intense than what she faced in Jamaica, but both served to isolate and shame Enid.

So people did pick up on this point that Enid is facing racial discrimination in England.

It's not the same as what she faced in Jamaica, which was teasing.

But the effect can be the same, both serve to isolate and make Enid feel ashamed of herself.

So in some ways, there's an element of a bit of her life being unchanged and that feeling of shame being pushed on to Enid.

Enid grew up respecting and adhering to the traditions of Jamaica and the play ends with her consulting Del, now an obeah woman.

And I really, really like this discussion looking at the end of the play because absolutely the end of the play is such an amazing moment between mother and daughter, but also between Enid's past and present, where her daughter, very much a part of her present, of course, and they're in England, but they are actually enjoying and returning to these Caribbean traditions.

Well done for populating that table with such interesting developed deep, reflective ideas.

It's an amazing set of notes that you're gonna be able to return to again and again when you want to explore and think about the character of Enid.

In summary, Enid faced hardship growing up in Jamaica.

Enid experienced a strong sense of community growing up in Jamaica.

Enid's life in England is still characterised by hardship.

Arguably, Enid is more isolated in Britain than in Jamaica.

It has been such a pleasure to work through this lesson with you today, and I'm looking forward to seeing you next time.