Lesson video

Hello and welcome to your lesson today on exploring how love has changed over time.

I'm Miss Sutherland and I'll be teaching you today.

Our learning outcome for today is to explore how love has changed over time and plan an article reflecting these ideas.

We'll be exploring how love has changed throughout the centuries to make it what it is today and how our modern understanding of love differs from love in the 19th century and even the 16th century.

Here are our three keywords for today's lesson: stance, advantageous and declarations.

Stance, a stance is a way of thinking about something, especially expressed in a public statement.

Advantageous.

Advantageous is something that is helpful or useful to you.

And declarations.

A declaration is a formal or explicit statement.

So those are our three keywords for today's lesson.

I'll give you a moment to reflect upon those keywords or jot them down if you want to.

Pause the video and go through those keywords on your own now.

Great.

Let's look at our learning cycles.

So in our first learning cycle, we'll be considering past ideas of love, and this includes looking at what love was like when Shakespeare was writing in the 16th century and when Jane Austen was writing in the 19th century.

And then finally, in our second learning cycle, we'll be comparing these ideas to the modern-day attitudes to love.

And we'll be planning an article that looks at love over time and how it's changed.

So let's start off with considering past ideas of love.

Discuss now how would you define love? Create a mind map on what you associate with love now.

Off you go.

So you may have associated love with happiness, with friendship, with romance, maybe with marriage, with good memories.

And you may have thought of love as a bond, as a partnership.

Any of those ideas you may have said.

All our ideas about love are probably shaped by what's come before us.

So we'll be looking at how our idea about love might be shaped by through what it was like in the 16th century, through what it was like in the 19th century, and finally, what it's like today.

So let's look at this extract from Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Egeus is talking about his daughter Hermia.

Hermia is in love with Lysander, but Egeus wants her to marry Demetrius.

Let's look at his speech.

"And, my duke, be it so she will not hear before your Grace consent to marry with Demetrius.

I beg the ancient privilege of Athens as she is mine, and I may dispose of her, which shall be either to this gentleman, Demetrius, or to her death." Discuss what does that short extract from "A Midsummer Night's Dream," written in the 16th century, tell you about love in the late 1500s? Pause the video and discuss.

This extract shows that in the late 1500s when Shakespeare was writing, love did not always prevail.

Often, a woman married a person who her father preferred, regardless of whether she loved him or not.

And this is evident from Egeus' speech because he is telling her that if she does not marry Demetrius, who he prefers her to marry, then she will be disposed to her death.

So in this speech, Egeus, Hermia's father, is not giving her an option of marrying for love.

So we see in the 16th century when Shakespeare was writing that marriage was perhaps more important than love.

Now let's move on to look at love in the 19th century.

Here is an excerpt from Jane Austen's 1814 novel "Emma." Jane Austen writes, "A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked or because he is attached to her and can write a tolerable letter." Discuss now what could this show about how ideas about love changed since the late 1500s? Pause the video and discuss.

Now, this extract states a woman is not to marry a man merely because she in asked.

And that is what one of the characters in "Emma" thinks.

So we can clearly see here how attitudes on love, especially for women, have changed since the late 1500s 'cause whereas Egeus gave Hermia no choice but to marry Demetrius, in this novel, "Emma," we clearly see that the character is advised not to marry just because she's asked.

So it seems that women has a lot more freedom in 1814 on matters of love compared to the 1500s.

Now, I want you to read Jane Austin's advice on love.

Jane Austin wrote a letter to her 21-year-old niece Fanny in 1814, advising her on love and marriage.

The letter is in your additional materials.

Pause the video and give that letter a read.

Off you go.

Now, I want you to discuss, based on Austen's letter, what else did you learn about love in 1814? Pause the video and discuss.

So from reading that letter, you may have noticed that Jane Austen focuses quite a lot on the qualities of Fanny's suiter, Mr. A, meaning that the qualities of a man was very important in matters of love in the 19th century.

You may have also noticed how Jane Austen finishes her letter by saying that the most important thing is whether you like him or not; you should not just marry him because he has good qualities; you must also consider your own feelings.

So we see here how in 1914 matters of love, were concerned with the qualities of the match, but also the person's own feelings towards that person.

Now, let's check your understanding of what we just talked about.

In the late 1500s, women had more say in their love and marriage than in the 19th century.

Is that true or false? Pause the video and answer that question.

Well done if you said that is false.

Women in the late 1500s did not have more say in their love and marriage in the 19th century.

Now, how do we know that's false? Pause the video and justify your answer.

In the late 1500s, 16th century, who women married was largely down to her father's wishes.

The opinion of fathers still mattered in the 19th century, but women had more of a say.

Now, imagine you are Fanny, a 21-year-old woman in 1814.

Based on what you know about 19th century love, I want you to write one paragraph of a letter from Fanny's perspective to Jane Austen asking for advice on love.

You could write about how you met the person you're interested in, the qualities you like about the person you're interested in, what your family and friends think about the person you're interested in and what you think will happen next in the relationship.

So pause the video now and get writing from the perspective of Fanny.

Remember to include all of the ideas about 19th century love.

Remember to base your letter on what it might feel like to be in love in the 19th century.

Pause the video and get writing.

Off you go.

Here is a snippet from an example letter.

Dear Aunt Jane, mother introduced me to a handsome young man, Mr. A last Sunday.

He's really charming and his family have considerable status, but how do I know if he's the one for me? I do think he would be a rather advantageous match for marriage.

I would surely be comfortable.

After speaking with Susan though, I don't think I feel quite the same affection as she does for her husband.

She speaks of laughter and butterflies and the warmest conversations.

I often wonder if I have enough of that with Mr. A.

I now want you to reread your letter.

Did you mention Fanny's views on the status of her match, the prospect of the match and her own feelings? Which should you emphasise more and why? Free read your letter and check that it references ideas on love in the 19th century.

Pause the video.

Off you go.

So now we know a bit about love over the centuries.

We're going to move on to planning an article about love over time.

I want you to discuss the following questions.

What is love like in our modern-day society? How has love changed since 1814? And are there any similarities between ideas about love in 1814 and now? Pause the video and discuss.

Off you go.

You may have said that our perspective on love is perhaps more liberal in the modern-day society.

You may have mentioned that we no longer communicate via letters, but mainly online if we're not next to the person.

You may have talked about how our relationships perhaps are less focused on marriage than they once were and how our relationships do centre around love rather than on the qualities of the match rather than the match being advantageous.

Now, we're going to plan a magazine article on how love has changed over time.

In order to do this successfully, we need to think about our own stance on how love has changed over time.

In other words, how do we feel about the changes in love over the years? Do we think that love has changed for the better or for the worse? Discuss now how do you feel about love, our attitude to love, our treatment of love in the modern-day society that we live in.

Pause the video and discuss.

Now discuss, in your opinion, has love changed for the better or the worse since say Shakespeare's time or Jane Austen's time? Pause the video and discuss.

Thanks for sharing your opinion.

I now want you to discuss, would you rather be in love during 1814 or modern-day society? Pause the video and discuss.

Great discussions there.

I hope that's helped you work out your stance on how we treat love in our modern-day society.

Discuss now.

Can you think of an engaging magazine article title that could work to show how love has changed over time? What would you name your article that shows how you feel about love over time? Pause the video and discuss.

Here are some examples.

"From letters to likes: declarations of love have got better with time." So this student clearly thinks that how we express our love, it has improved since 1814.

The second article title: "Love's not Time's fool, or is it?" So this person seems to imply that love was better perhaps in Shakespeare's time because it uses a quote from Shakespeare to kind of allude to the idea that love is time's fool.

So perhaps love has got worse over time.

"Romance is dead: love no longer means what it once did." So this person seems to think that our idea of romance, of love and special moments with our partners, this person seems to think that love was treated much better in the past and modern-day love does not compare to love in the past.

And finally, the language of love.

Why our great grandparents were better at expressing their emotions.

So this person seems to think that the language of love has got poorer over time, and that's the way our great grandparents communicated was much superior to the way we communicate in our modern-day society.

And finally, "Love is love: why we're more clued up on love than any previous generation." So this student thinks that actually, our modern-day attitude to love is better than previous attitudes to love in other centuries.

Perhaps this person thinks that we know more about love and we know what it means, and we know the essence of love much better.

And perhaps that's because of how our attitudes to love have become more liberal.

Now, I wonder which article title you most align with out of those.

I hope they've given you some good inspiration for your own article title.

Notice how all of the titles reveal the stance of the writer.

We've just gone through how each of these titles show how the author feels.

So each of those article titles give an insight into the topics and opinions that will be covered in the article.

Offering the writer's stance in the article title might help to entice the reader as it creates a sense of intrigue, especially if the reader's opinion differs to that of the writer.

So always reveal your stance in your article title if you want to hook your reader.

Now, which article title below does not reveal the stance of the writer? Pause the video and answer that question.

Well done.

If you said the first article title, "Love over time: how love has changed since Shakespeare's day," that title does not reveal the stance of the writer.

That title is merely informative.

It tells you what the article will talk about and it tells you that the article might just give facts about how love has changed over time.

But what we want to plan is an opinion article.

We want to give our opinion about how love has changed over time, how we feel about that.

So let's move on now to planning our very own article about love over time.

First thing I want you to do is craft an engaging title that reveals your stance on how love has changed over time.

The second thing I want you to do is plan three to four paragraphs of an article that explores how love has changed over time and your opinion on this.

So pause the video and get started.

Plan your article title and plan three ideas that you're going to talk about.

Remember, your article's about your opinion on how love has changed over time.

Pause the video and get planning now.

Off you go.

Excellent effort there.

Here is an example plan.

So this title is "From letters to likes: declarations of love have got better with time." Paragraph one will be about declarations of love in 1814, how they were lengthy and less immediate, and perhaps quite tedious.

The second paragraph will talk about how love is now communicated online.

Some people may perceive this as less romantic, but it is more direct and people know where they stand.

And finally, paragraph three will talk about how declarations of love are now more authentic and diverse rather than following traditional patterns as they once did.

So this article is clearly showing that the writer thinks that modern-day love is superior to love in the 19th century and before.

I want you to reread your plan and check the following in your work.

Does your title reveal your stance about the changes in love over time? Does each paragraph in your article explore a different topic? And does each paragraph clearly show your stance on the topic? Pause the video and check your plan now.

Brilliant.

I hope that one day these articles will come to fruition and you'll actually be able to write your opinions about how love has changed over time.

It's such an interesting topic.

Here's what we've learned today.

Attitudes and perspectives on relationships have changed significantly since the 16th century.

Marriages in the 16th century were largely based on the choice of a woman's father, not love.

Over time, women have had more freedom in matters of love, although marrying for advantages was still important.

And love nowadays often involves digital declarations and generally more freedom in romantic relationships.

Thank you so much for joining me in today's lesson.

I hope you've enjoyed exploring how love has changed over time, and I hope to see you in another lesson soon.