Lesson video

Welcome to today's English lesson.

I'm Mrs. Crompton.

Before we begin our learning, let's make sure we have everything we need.

You will need a pen and paper.

Take a moment to make sure you've cleared any distractions away and have everything you need at hand.

The first thing that I would like us to do today is to take down our title, "The Mary/ Eve dichotomy".

As I did in our session at the beginning of the week, we're going to have a look at a few slides where some note taking will be involved.

And this is to strengthen, some of our contextual understanding as we approach the texts.

It can get really deep analysis generated of the extract that we're working with.

"Mary/Eve dichotomy" on your piece of paper.

And then what I have given you today, are two images to have a look at, as a starting point.

On the left hand side, we have the image of a Mary or Madonna figure.

And on the right hand side, we have Eve the seductress figure, both taken obviously from the Bible as images of femininity.

And you can stop for a second here and just think about some of the connotations that you have around the Mary figure.

Nurturing, maternal, gentle, the warmth that's involved with that whole idea of the mother child bond.

When I picked this image, I thought was really interesting that we've got some, what looked to me like doves in the scene too, that this particular artist has taken.

And both of the images I've taken as contemporary to our texts.

They're both Victorian images and we have got the Mary figure presented with the halo around her head.

That is our representation of what it is to be a good woman.

On the right hand side, we have the image of Eve.

She's our seductress, the temptress.

The one that leads man from innocence into original sin with the temptation of the apple.

And so we have, this idea of a dichotomy and that word dichotomy at the top is something that I just want to pause and explain.

It's a split, it's an absolute separation.

Women are either going to be a Mary figure or an Eve figure in terms of the way that texts present them.

We know that that's not going to necessarily be realistic in terms of reality, but this is a fundamental dichotomy in terms of the presentation of women in literature, from the Bible onwards, and it's a really useful thing to know because we can start thinking about the ways in which writers then use.

Remember I said a rule to break it.

How we then see characters in conflict with these constraints, these traditional images and playing with and redefining those interpretations.

Pause if you need to.

We have the 'Mary/Eve dichotomy" and we're going to be looking a little bit further at these ideas in a moment.

The next thing I have for us to look at today, is a little bit of an extract from "The Laugh of the Medusa" which is something written by Helene Cixous, who is a French feminist critic.

This is sounding really serious, but hopefully I can show you that it's not too frightening and that we can play around with this a little bit.

This is a little bit of a poem that she wrote as part of a much longer piece.

And what we have on the screen is a representation of what she considered to be the female position in a text in comparison to the masculine position in a text.

On the left hand side, you have activity, sun, culture, day, father, head, intelligible, and logos.

All of those things, are linked with the masculine and then we have the opposite.

Passivity, moon, nature, night, mother, heart, sensitive and pathos.

All linked to the feminine or the female.

And I think this is quite an interesting idea for us to use, to scaffold onto what we looked at last week with characterization.

Women are often portrayed, as a particularly passive figure in terms of their roles in texts, is something that we started to touch upon last week.

The active, the passive, who is the protagonist is something that we were exploring.

If we then add this gender, onto it and think about what was happening in Victorian times about people questioning.

How active women are, particularly with things like their own sexuality, then it becomes really interesting.

I want to give you a little bit of a challenge.

This is trickier thinking, and it might be something that doesn't click into place just now, but it is something that I will refer to.

And I will bring us back to.

What we've got here is this idea of binary opposites.

You might know that word binary, from IT or Maths even.

The idea of things that are paired and then placed in contrast to one another.

We in particular are looking at father, mother, the idea of male, female, head and heart is really interesting.

Men are attributed, or the masculine is attributed with the quality of thinking logically and using the brain where the female is associated with sensitivity, emotion, most of the instinctive qualities.

And I think that's going to be quite interesting as we continue our exploration.

Finally, just before we move on from this slide, I suppose the thing that I really want to sum up is, this idea that a lots of things that we value as a society, all of those things tend to come from the left hand side from the masculine side.

Things that we tend to prize within our society as being superior, are on the left hand side, as opposed to the right hand side.

That is the argument that Helen Cixous and the French feminists are making.

Might not be so true anymore.

I don't think it's entirely true.

I think we have started to shift these ideas and those boundaries that things are quite so rigid, but I think there's a really nice bit of theory to start looking at our text as we move on.

And for those of you that are ambitious to be looking at A Level and taking literature studies further, this is really lovely.

I first did this when I was at university, but I don't think there's any harm in us trying something a little bit more challenging as we are working.

And I think it's really relevant when we look at a character like Lucy, who is being very clearly labelled as we explore her character.

What we're going to do today then, is to try and apply some of that new learning.

I have produced for you, some statements, they read from A through to F.

And I want us to really zoom in and focus on how Lucy is being described.

On your first reading, I want you to read the passage through twice.

Every time you pause the screen, I want you to make a list of all the verbs that are being used to describe Lucy's actions.

This is going to help you start thinking about whether she is presented as passive or active.

And it's a really nice tip.

Looking at verbs can be quite interesting generally.

Remember we had the subject terminology around that, looking at present participles, looking at past participles, thinking about how much energy and activity is injected into a character through the use of verbs.

The second time I want you to read through it, I want you to focus on how she is shown as either an Eve type character or a Mary type character or how she actually breaks out of those roles.

It looks like she's going to be Mary but then she does this that makes her more of an Eve character.

I hope that makes sense.

Let's just have a little quick look again.

We're going to read through it and the reason I've separated it out, is that I want you to have those two thoughts separately.

I know some of you are going to do it in one go.

That's absolutely fine.

You might even want to use different coloured pens to show this.

But the first thing you're going to look at, are the verbs and whether it's active or passive.

The second thing you're going to look at, is the idea of her being either a Mary or an Eve figure, and whether she's conforming to, or subverting that role.

As usual, pause between each screen, make sure that you are taking your notes.

For this activity.

I would also recommend you actually write down the statements and that will also start helping you to generate a bank of results.

You've got your quotation bank starting to develop.

First reading, passive/active.

Second reading, Mary/Eve.

Then we're going to start thinking about the rich and linked evidence.

Therefore please do remember to write down each of the phrases, the sentences that I've given you from A through to F.

Welcome back then.

As a reminder, you have read through.

You have looked at the two particular strands, we've tried to apply the concept of passive/active taken a little bit of a hint from a theory that we've looked at today.

And then we have also looked at the" Eve/Mary dichotomy" and how that has been applied to Lucy.

I am not today going to go through it, in terms of giving you some example answers, but we're going to work towards a developed interpretation of the characters.

What I'm actually going to get you to do today, is to look now at the purple box, and we're going to start thinking about our rich and linked evidence.

You should have a piece of paper with your quotations written down and your notes made around them about passive and active.

And we've already, because of the direction to look at verbs, started to think about rich language.

You started to do a little bit of analysis.

Before I show you the next slide, I want to remind you of something.

We look at this phrase together, at the slide together, Lucy, Westenra becomes a vampire which compromises her much praised chastity and virtue, and banishes her soul from the promise of eternal rest.

In terms of her being a character of much praised chastity.

We've got that phrase there, "chastity" in terms of her purity.

She's not having sexual relations, she's not promiscuous.

This is a pure perfect Victorian lady at the start of the text and virtue high morals.

That's how she's presented.

There's our Mary figure.

Before she becomes a vampire, Lucy is a Mary type character.

Hold that in your mind, as we look at our focus for selecting and developing our evidence.

We are going to have a look at the way that Lucy is characterised.

And what I want us to concentrate on, is how these ideas of her being a Mary or Eve character are explored within text.

You have your quotation range, your A to F quotations.

Out of those, I would like you to select your three rich quotations.

But we're going to have our quotations anchored with this idea that at the start or prior to her turning into a vampire, Lucy was the epitome of the Mary figure.

And then you're going to see which quotations, are going to be the richest for you.

For this activity, same as we did last time.

Piece of paper, your three clouds, possibly going landscape to give you more space.

In the instruction box, I have reminded you, that we need to explode those quotations.

That means we are adding the annotations about specific words and connotations.

And now not just the verbs, but thinking about the other ideas, Mary and Eve bringing it all together, with that whole transition from how does she go from the perfect Mary into this Eve figure in the extract.

And the way in which it moves between those two interpretations.

You've got your anchor quotation in the middle, and then you're going to have your development points always linking it with the idea of how this contrasts or reinforces the first quotations interpretation.

As usual, pause the video, keep that screen on if you wish.

You've got the model of how you need to set out and you should have your quotations by your side.

The thinking in your mind, and you're going to try and unscramble that and place that on your piece of paper.

I shall see you shortly.

Welcome back.

Just to bring everything together.

I said I wasn't going to give you an answer, however I'm going to give you a really specific frame to work with, to generate your own answer, because you can do this now.

You should have your three quotations now.

We started off with your range A to F, I was trying to count them then in my head and I gave up halfway through it, could you tell? A to F, A, B, C, D E, F, six.

It's fine, I can't count.

You've got your six quotations and we have then distilled there.

We've boiled it down to the three richest quotations so that we can track this idea.

And we've got Lucy is initially a Mary character.

Yes? Can you see what the blank would be? A Mary type character.

At the climactic part of the novel, her character has changed into a Eve character, or maybe you want to say something different, and then I've given you various sentences to help us.

I have again taken words and phrases, from our analytical vocabulary bank, from last week's lessons.

That are use of the imagery, the verbs, the word choices highlights, Stoker is rejecting this idea, or Stoker is presenting this, and you have a range of sentences there to help scaffold your response, and to give you the structure to explore, your three quotations.

We've gone from six to three, and now you have your final reflection scaffold to work through.

Again, I would suggest pause this, leave this up on the screen, have it as a model that you're working against, and now is your opportunity to write up your findings about Lucy's characterization.

To finish the learning for today, you have a recap quiz to complete.

All that remains for me to say is thank you for your focus and enjoy the rest of your learning today.