Frankenstein Questions To Ponder!

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The NovelNotice the epigraph from Paradise Lost. What impact does this have on your reading of the story?
What is at stake in Mary Shelley’s tale of the novel’s inspiration and creation?

The FrameWhy do we hear Walton’s voice first and last? What kind of man is he?
Is our location important? Where are we?
Why is this novel written in letters? What does it mean to write a letter or tell a story? (Epistolary)
Consider that we hear Victor only through Walton and (until the very end) the monster only through Victor. Are these narrators reliable?

Education of Young MonstersParallel the education of Victor and his creation.
How is Victor educated? What does he desire to know?
Contrast Victor’s interests with Henry’s.
Read the chapters in which the monster details his education carefully. How is he like a child here? How unlike?
What does the monster learn from the deLaceys? What do we learn?
Why are the specific books the monster finds important? What do they each teach the monster?
How is the monster like Adam or Lucifer? How is he different?

Race, Class and GenderWhat kinds of critique of race, class, and gender does the novel attempt?
How is this complicated?
Consider Justine’s role as a woman, servant and orphan.
Why does the monster frame Justine?
Two of the women in the story are foreign-born. What might this mean?
What information and what kind of opportunities are available to the women in the novel?

The BodyConsider the physical nature of characters and things in the novel. The monster, the dead bodies, etc.
What does it mean to be made as the monster is made, from pieces?
What affect does his work have on Victor’s body?

Friends, Family, MoreWhat is the importance of friends and family in the text? For Walton? For Victor? For the monster?
What impact does his mother’s death have on Victor? Read his dream. When does he dream it?
How are familial relationships presented throughout the novel?
Do you notice anything incestual about Victor and Elizabeth’s relationship?
How is Victor’s relationship to mankind different from the monsters? Does he see this distinction?

Love, Marriage and SexIn what ways are love and sex constructed by the novel?
Consider the positions of Madame Frankenstein, Elizabeth and Safie in entering their marriages. What is unusual here?
Consider the scene in which Victor destroys the female monster.
What does the monster mean when he tells Victor “I’ll be with you on his wedding night?”
How is the bridal scene represented? Why?
How could the monster be read as Victor’s id?

Invention, Creation, and ChildbirthWhat is the difference between invention, creation and childbirth?
Do you agree with the idea that the monster is an invention rather than a creation? Why or why not? What defines either?
Read the creation scene. Consider it both in light of Biblical creation or physical childbirth.
Consider Victor as both a godlike creator and a mother.
What is the role of the feminine or female in the creation of the monster?


The “Extraordinary Man” and EgoWhy does Victor do what he does? Why does he believe he has the right? Is Walton similar?
Do you believe Victor’s representation of himself?
Why doesn’t Victor defend Justine with the truth?
Consider the myth of Prometheus. Were his actions justifiable? Why or why not?

The End
Who is the “good spirit” that leaves food out for Victor during his pursuit?
How does the monster respond to Victor’s death and why?

Hamlet Criticism and Soliloquies

For Wednesday/Thursday....

1. Read the essay by AC Bradley on Hamlet. Open link right. Read Lecture 3. Sections 2-4.

soliloquy — from the Latin solus ("alone") and loqui ("to speak") — is a speech that one gives to oneself. In a play, a character delivering a soliloquy talks to herself — thinking out loud, as it were — so that the audience better understands what is happening to the character internally.

2. You will go through the soliloquies of Hamlet. They are found here: Hamlet Soliloquies 

With each soliloquy, you need to identify the following things:

• Why does Shakespeare use soliloquies to reveal characters' thoughts?
• Why is it important that the character is alone on stage during the soliloquy?
• What is the major theme of this soliloquy
• What is the tone of this soliloquy
• What major allusions does Hamlet make? 
• How does this soliloquy answer what has happened in the plot... or hint at what is to come?
• Does Shakespeare utilize irony in anyway? 
• What rhetorical devices are employed? Parallelism? Rhetorical Questions? Repetition? 
• What do we learn about the character? 

Class: Wednesday/Thursday (April 29th/30th) PLUS READING SCHEDULE, PLUS FINALS

For Hamlet acts 1-2. 

• Pick 3 questions from each of the following schools of literary theory: Formalism, Marxism, Archetypal, Feminism, Psychoanalytic. 
• Apply each of these questions to the first 2 acts of Hamlet. Put your findings in your notes. Leave some space for following acts. 
• Once you are done with this... and only after you have completed the questions... start reading Acts 3-5. You should have a much more comprehensive view of the play as you move forward. Still apply these question as you read.. add to your notes. You will be able to balance the bigger picture of the play once stopping after act 2 and building a strong literary foundation to move forward.
• Have a good start on this for class.. you do not need to be completely finished for class. We will work on SOME together... But have this started.

Hamlet reading schedule: 

Friday, May 1st- Read Act 3 of Hamlet adding to literary theory notes... 

Monday, May 4th- Have Hamlet completed.  Socratic seminar on Monday. 

Frankenstein: 

May 6th/7th: Letters and Chapters 1-3 (pages 1-39)

May 8th: Chapters 4-10 (pages 40-70)

May 11th: Finish the book (71-166)
* You know your schedule. If you need to read ahead.. do so. I will also Frankenstein books available Wednesday (4/29) on... pick up when you need to do so. 

FINALS: 

May 13th: 2nd and 4th Hours FINAL
May 14th: SENIOR PRESENTATIONS 

May 15th: 3rd hour FINAL 

Due: Friday, April 24th

1. Read the entire introduction to Hamlet. Take good notes!
2. Read Act 1.1-1.2 of Hamlet. 
3. Read through and take notes on the following PowerPoint over the introduction to Shakespeare.
Shakespeare PowerPoint

Class today: April 20th

I have a sick bug at home today..

1. You need to take out your literary theory questions.
2. Using Formalism, Marxism (sociological), Feminism, and Archetypal schools of theory, pick 5 questions from each school... and ask them of the General Prologue.. The Knight's Tale... The Wife of Bath's Tale... and The Miller's Tale. (Use the same five questions for each tale)

Work on your own today.

Write your findings out in your notes with ample evidence.

Wife of Bath Discussion- Class today

For class today- Group into small groups of 3-4.. go through the following questions: 

1. In her prologue, the Wife of Bath selectively reconstructs and presents her own life. What does she include, and what might she have left out?
   Does she accept any responsibility for her life and its troubles, or does she simply shift the blame onto her husbands, ‘men’ in general, or ‘women’ in general?
   What does the Wife depict as the male world-view, and how does it compare with what she presents as the female world-view? Is this a genuinely female view, or just her own, and if it is, why would she want to present it as that of ‘women’? Is it possible, in the late fourteenth century, to envisage a ‘female’ world at all?
   Is the Wife’s experience comparable to that of the other female pilgrims, the nun and the prioress?
   The Wife implies that she is uttering universal truths – are her words applicable today?
   Whose secrets is the Wife revealing – her own, her husbands’, or those of men/women in general, or all/none of these?
2. How does the Wife use language – does she succeed in turning the language of male dominance against itself, or does she simply present herself as guilty of all the ‘sins’ and failings which men (and priests in particular) allege? Is she a good theologian, or a good preacher? How does language prevent gender equality?
   What might be the impact of the Wife’s revelation that she (and every woman) is a gossip and a liar on the credibility of her story?
   What is the Wife’s attitude to the clergy, and does she reveal anything about a lay woman’s piety? Is Jankin himself an indictment of the clergy, or of clerical authority?
3. What authority does the Wife claim (she could be compared with the second nun and the prioress in this respect), and why does she claim experience over learning?
   Is this a carnivalesque ‘world upside down’, and if it is, does it represent a serious threat to authority?
   Is the Wife saying that learning is, or has become, divorced from real life?
4. What is the relationship between sex and violence in the Wife’s story, and how does this relate to the sex and violence (in this case, rape) in her Tale? Is Alison a ‘battered wife’, and what are the social and psychological points being made about this? Is this related to the male’s insistence upon linguistic and discursive dominance over the female? If the female body is text, what does Jankin’s, and the knight’s, violence represent?
5. The Tale centres around rape – is Alison implying that the forced marriage of a twelve-year-old girl is rape, in which Church and society both collude (this can be compared with the marriage of May and January in the Merchant’s Tale)? Can Alison be said to have ‘raped’ her old husbands? Is the implication that rape is a crime born of frustration and social exclusion – the young knight has no defined status – and is this how the knight feels he needs to prove himself? Therefore – who is to blame for this; the individual, society, the Church, the romance genre (which stresses the need for a young man of high status to prove himself as a lover), upbringing (in the chivalric tradition of winning honour by violence, and courtly love), or an unrealisable ideal?
6. Is the Wife’s prologue a sermon, a confession, an autobiography, an alternative hagiography (saint’s life), an exemplum (story illustrating a moral example), or what?
7. Why does the Wife choose an Arthurian romance – for example, is a sign of her middle-class aspirations? In what ways does the Tale take up the themes from the Wife’s prologue?
8. Does the knight get the punishment he deserves, or is he rewarded, with the collusion of the queen and her ladies, for raping the girl? Is the rape undone by the conclusion?
9. What DO women most desire? Is it what any of the women in the Tale say it is, or is it innocence, purity, childhood (as is possible with the prioress)? Could it be all of them at once. Does this imply that the Canterbury pilgrims are searching for these things also; that is, for a return to the Garden of Eden? Is Chaucer? Are we all?

After you are done, take out your literary theory questions and use these to go through the Wife's Prologue and Tale.. Use Formalism, Archetypal and Marxism... 

Read the Miller's Tale for Friday

The Wife of Bath Essay

Read and take good notes on the following article.
Pay attention to how the article is structured and supported.
Think about not only the subject of The Wife of Bath.. but how the writer develops an argument.
Wife and Painting of the Lions