Liminality, symbols, motifs and themes

Hello Class and welcome to my blog!

We entered the class to be confronted with two questions:

1. Males: Would you describe yourself as a boy or as a man? and why?
2. Female: Would you describe yourself as a girl or a woman? and why?

Many came to the conclusion that they would describe themselves as a boy/girl because they didn't want to be fully responsible like a adult has to. I myself said I don't feel mature enough to call myself a man (which was certainly proved towards the end of the lesson)

Mr Sadgrove then taught us what the word Liminal meant, so he presented us with this definition:

• The unfixed position between any two oppositional terms; the experience of being on a threshold or a boundary, marginal.
• Liminal- of, pertaining to, or situated at the limen (threshold)

To help us remember the word, we were told to draw a picture representing the meaning . So if you were not present in the lesson, do this.

The class was then given an article from Emagazine (which sir has posted the login details below this post). This article consisted of liminality within Wuthering Heights and which characters had barriers, keeping them separate to others in any different way).

We came to the conclusion that Heathcliffe's Liminality was:

• He's different to the others because `Heathcliffe` is the name of a dead child. So he is, in a way, in a marginal position between the living and the dead.
• He is also on the borderline of a supernatural creature because the Earnshaw's call him the "imp of Satan" and when he first arrives, he is known as "as dark almost as if it came from the devil"
• He is also inbetween the "gypsy brat" and the rich Earnshaws. (Inbetween two barriers is the key point in understanding what liminal means.)

The article also mentioned Life and Death:

• In Chapter 3, when Catherine’s ghost appears, the window acts as the barrier between the living and the supernatural. Therefore Catherine also has liminal elements.
• Catherine is seen as a ghost before she dies, so she is once again trapped between the real world and the dead.
• Heathcliffe's dies, but his eyes are still open. From this we can say that he is, like Catherine, within those boundaries of life and death.

Nature and Culture:

• The window pane breaks down the barrier between nature and culture. It's the portal between instinct and civilisation.

Lastly, we were given a sheet, with a table labelled with Symbol, Motif and Theme. we had to decide which of the following went with what word.

• Power
• Weather
• Windows
• Love
• Confinement and escape
• Books
• Dreams
• The Bible
• Animals
• Childhood and Family
• Suffering
• A Whip
• Communication
• Transcendence (above other things)
• Religion
• Economic and Social Status
• Violence

Homework:
-Essay- Discuss the idea of the liminality with reference to Wuthering Heights.
Focus on how it is communicated through (symbols, motifs, windows, doors, ghosts, dreams) Use AO2 and some dripped in AO4

-Annotate the rest of the symbols sheet

-Read Chapter 6

Feel free to add anything I may of missed out on, due to the extreme laughing!! Thanks :D

Chris W

Wuthering Heights Radio

In order to help you help yourselves you should go on BBC iPlayer and listen to the radio drama which dramatises Wuthering Heights.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007jlky/Emily_Bronte_Wuthering_Heights_Episode_1/


Some questions to think about:
1) What is the effect of the removal of the narrative structure?
2)How is the dramatic version diffrent from the written novel?
3)Does this change your view of any of the characters; are they more or less "monumental" ?

Roman A.

Emagazine login

This year's emagazine log in details are:

Login: emagazine9
Password: cs349qt

There's bare stuff on the Gothic. Happy reading.

DB

Unrelated

Aleks on the Telly - fwd to 12 mins.

The Uncanny.

During our lesson we dealt with the aspect of "The Uncanny" and how it related to the Gothic genre.

Mr Sadgrove began the lesson by showing us several pictures, each of which contained an aspect that we could not comprehend because we did not understand it; this included images like a foot connected to a wall with no visible body and a woman's body strangely distorted.

Sir went on to reveal that these images all represented an aspect of the Gothic called the uncanny and put up the definition which was:

" Strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way."

From this definition the class began to associate certain words within the definition to a character, setting or narrative within the novels and plays they had read. For example, it was said that the character of Heathcliff fit this definition well along with Wuthering Heights itself.
Although the class was able to easily grasp the 'official' definition of the uncanny, we pressed on and explored the deeper meaning of the idea and, especially, how it relates to the Gothic.

We had a task where sir gave out three quotes relating to the uncanny and how it interacts with the Gothic printed on A4 paper and we, as pairs, had to read and annotate the quotes about how they relate to any of the Gothic literature we had read previously.
After this task, we looked at an example of the uncanny in Wuthering Heights. This was the scene where Lockwood meets the ghost of Catherine and how, to the reader, the interaction between the un-mysterious Lockwood and the mysterious and supernatural ghost becomes uncanny.

We read two articles, one about Sigmund Freud - a famous psychiatrist and another about Punter - a critic.
The former of the pair discussed the uncanny in a way that introduced it to us, in our own homes. Freud used two words:
Heimlich - Literally translating to 'homelike'
Unheimlich - Literally translating to 'unhomelike'

Freud said that it is when these two things interact, the heimlich and the unheimlich that the uncanny is formed. When the unhomelike elements invade our sanctuary, the home.

However Punter argued alternatively, explaining that the uncanny can be present even in the home, with Bronte's Wuthering Heights serving as a prime example of how the home is not safe and can be violent, mysterious and unsettling.

Rather then the Oxford and Freudian definitions, I prefer one that states the uncanny is when the barrier between the unknown and the known cracks and breaks down. If we go by this idea, even the most ordinary and 'known' ideas can become 'unknown' and uncanny.
An example of this being when you hear a loud sound at night, noise is not, in itself, unknown to you but it becomes so because you 'know' that the night should be quiet and this creates the sense that it is uncanny.

Since there was no homework that I am aware of, feel free to comment on anything I may have missed or what you interpret as the uncanny in your eyes and how it may relate to other literature such as the Bloody Chamber and Macbeth.

Roman A.

Macbeth Act 3

Today we read and summarized act 3.

Macbeth is worried that Banquo and his child, Fleance may take his place as king, like the witches predicted. Macbeth hires two murders to kill Banquo and Fleance.

The murders now joined by another murderer sneak up on Banquo and Fleance, they kill Banquo but Fleance manages to escape, murderers take Banquo's body to Macbeth. Macbeth isannoyed that they never killed Fleance.

At the feast Macbeth is holding with the other lords, Macbeth see's Banquo's ghost sat in his chair, no one else can see Banquo. Macbeth speaks/shouts at the ghost Lady Macbeth tells all the guest to leave immediatly.

The witches meet with Hecate the goddess of magic who is angry with Macbeth as he is trying to stop fate, Fleance becoming king, she tells the other witches that they are going to lie to Macbeth about visions to confuse him.

Later that night Lennox is with another lord discussing Macbeth, he talks of Banquo's death,which is being blame on Fleance who has fled, Lennox says how he thinks Macbeth was to blame and not Fleance. Lennox says Macduff has gone to king of England to get help, and save Scottland from Macbeth.

Homework: Research historical and gothicky context for Macbeth and two essays,

1) "Ghosts are projections of our innermost anxieties" -disuss this in relation to Macbeth.

2) How are horror and terror used in act 3.

Effects of using comic relief - focus on whole of Act 2.

The first thing we learnt in lesson was what is Comic Relief and why has Shakespeare used it in Act 2. Comic relief is basically the inclusion of a humorous character, scene or witty dialogue in an otherwise serious work, often to relive the tension. In Act 2 it’s used when the Porter talks in a drunk state. We then were asked to read Act 2 Scene 3 and answer the question "Why did Shakespeare use comic relief here? and also link to other text eg: Nelly's stories. We then went on to do an activity which was to making six boxes in our book. Then give each box the following headings and find 3 quotes for each of the following and explain what they show or represent. The headings were:

ANIMALS:
1) "the wolf, whose howls his watch"- shows the personification of Murder.
2) "owl scream and the crickets cry"- shows The Great Chain of Being has been disturbed.

WEAPONS:
1) "A dagger of the mind"-shows a fight in himself.
2) "As this which now I draw"- shows the oppositions or reality vs imagination.

BLOOD:-
1)" and wash this filthy witness from your hand "- shows guilty conscience or horror/terror.
2)"Sliver skin laced with golden blood"-shows the fact that he has killed a King.

NATURE:
1)"It was the owl that shrieked"-shows The Great Chain of Being been disturbed.
2)"The night has been unruly........and did shake"[lines 46-53 Lennox speaking]-shows that something extremely wrong has happened. There is a use of Pathetic Fallacy here.

SLEEP:
1) "Macbeth shall sleep more"-shows the extent of wrong he has done.

DARKNESS:-
1) " A desolate place-thunder and lighting. Enter witches"-shows dark imagery.

These are a few of quotes we came up with as a class. We then proceeded to reading Act 3. We read up to Act 3 Scene 2. Through this Macbeth plans on killing Banquo and finds a way to this dreadful act.

This was all we did in lesson today. Now coming on to the home-work we are suppose to comment on this blog and the comment should include a home-work of your choice and don't forget 2 people can’t do the same home-work. :D

19th September’11 – Mr. Sadgrove—focused on the narrative voices in Wuthering Heights.

We as a class started off on a very artistic note. We were asked to draw a man(Lockwood) and to the right of the man we had to state what we as readers think of Lockwood as a narrator with evidence i.e. AO2 analysis and to the left of the man we had to state what the other characters of Wuthering Heights think of Lockwood along with evidence i.e. AO2 analysis and in the center of the character we had to state what Lockwood thinks of himself again with evidence. After this activity we went on to reading an article from E-magazine. This article is written by Sue Hemming who takes into consideration the narrator's role of Nick Carraway and Lockwood in The Great Gatsby and Wuthering Heights. We were then asked to write a summary of we understood from the article and this is what I said:-

• compares Wuthering Heights to The Great Gatsby and shows the similarities between Nick and Lockwood and also between Gatsby and Heathcliff


• talks about the importance of "fragmented narratives" in these texts i.e. they make the text easier to understand

So for the people who were not in lesson please go and collect this article from Mr. Sadgrove and read it for next lesson as this would help while writing an essay... :)

And here goes the home-work due for our next lesson which is on the 27th :-

1)Read chapter 1-4

2)What impression do we get of our narrator -Lockwood? 2-3 paragraphs.

3)Draw the exterior of Wuthering Heights(the house) - and label with evidence from the text.

4)"The opening of Wuthering Heights sets up what essentially is a Gothic novel"? Do you agree? 3-4 paragraphs.

A2S1 - Is this a dagger?

Today we had people read out the dagger soliloquy, then re wrote the soliloquay in our own words..
we then read Act 2 scene 1 and 2.
Then we planned the homework which was....WHAT DO THE LANGUAGE AND BEHAVIOUR OF MACBETH AND LADY MACBETH TELL US ABOUT THEIR RELATIONSHIP IN ACT 2-SCENE 1 & 2
Things you could add for this essay are split into 2:

Gothic themes:

• supernatural


• ambiguity


• wolf


• great chain of being


• visions


• stormy/dark setting


• women/men


• powerful figures


• opposition


• horror/terror


• exaggeration


• blood


• God/religion/amen

Language Structure Form:

• foreshadow


• soliloquay


• verse/prose


• adjacency pairs


• pathetic fallacy


• dramatic irony

We started the lesson by doing a task representing how we (the reader) get information from the novel Wuthering Heights. The 1^st person would tell 2^nd person about their weekend. 2^nd person then told the 3^rd person who wrote about it. Then this note would be passed on to the 4^th person, who would read it and pass on what they remember to the 5^th person. Then that person would summarise it to the 6^th and final person. From this task we learned how unclear the specific set of info is when going through the entire filter.

The type of narrator Lockwood is, is a frame narrator, where the "frame" is where we hear the story, which is in the inside. We hear things about the inside of the story from the somebody at the outside. This could cause only peices of the story being fed to the reader. This makes Lockwood also a fragmented narrator. This links to the gothic genre because it shares the uncertainty and ambiguity that the typical gothic story would have.

We then read the opening of chapter 1 and spoke about Lockwood’s narrative style. We discussed how Lockwood was an unreliable narrator, evident in his misjudgement on certain things e.g. “Mr Heathcliffe and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us”. This is completely wrong, because Heathcliffe actually hates Lockwood. Lockwood also seems like a very big talker and judgemental on everything in the opening chapter. “This is certainly a beautiful country!....I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society”. “A capital fellow”. This contradicts with the change in punctuation when Nelly speaks. Nelly is more basic and straight-forward. This may be due to her simplicity as a maid.

HOMEWORK:

· Complete the questions on the sheet

· Annotate the other sheet

Macbeth

The learning objectives were:
- To review the witches predictions.
- To understandhow language of Act 1 reflects the characters personalities.

After that, Mr. Chatterley gave us a quick quiz on the story of Macbeth so far. I can't remember the questions and they went too fast for me to write down, so here's the answers:

1- You'll be King, the Thane of Glamis and Cawdor
2- Your decendants will be King.
3- How can I be the Thane of Cawdor? Why did you tell me this?
4- Excited and confused.
5- Doesn't know what to think.
6- Going to be the Thane of Cawdor.
7- Reference to the devil.
8- The original Thane has his title stripped.
9- Thinks he must be destined to be King.
10- "Two truths are told,
As happy prologue to the swelling act,
of the imperial theme."

I don't know if that helps anyone at all but it's what I had written in my book.

We then moved on to answering the question "How could Lady Macbeth's thought's be revelaed through the delivery of the script?" (studying form and language). We discussed her possibly using a more aggressive tone. Afterwards, we discussed how Lady Macbeth would read the letter sent to her. The conclusion was she'd probably be "intrigued".

We did a little more reading and got up to Act 1, Scene 7 which brought us to a point where Macbeth was trying to convince himself not to kill Duncan. He had a long speech and with this we were required to analyse parts of the speech wich we believed to show that he didn't want to kill Duncan - among these were:

- "Could trammed up the consequences." = He doesn't like the consequences that may occur.
- "be-all and end-all" = might ruin everything for him.
- "we still have judgement here" = possibly afraid of being judged, possibly by God.
- "pity's like a newborn" = pity's Duncan.
- "I am his Kinsman and his subject" = doesn't want to stab him in the back (literally) and betray him after all the faith Duncan's shown in him.

Homework:
- What does conversation between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth tell us about about each character? Show how she bully's him.
- Learn Act 2, Scene 1 soliloquay. I'll post the soliloquay below later just to make my blog post look longer.

Never speak or make contact during the blog selection.

Daniel.

First Lesson on Wuthering Heights and Roman's Return

After a mix up with the timetables, I, Roman, was transferred to another class. But I am back so don't worry.
Today we had our first lesson with Mr Sadgrove. We began it by discussing the course, including the exam structure and the way that we would be handling the coursework. After a few questions regarding this matter, we began the lesson.

We were told that we would be doing McBeth with Mr Chatterley and Wuthering Heights with Mr Sadgrove.

We began the lesson with Mr Sadgrove making sure that we had all read the book by asking certain questions to test our knowledge of the Heights. After this, a few of us were asked what 'Wuthering Heights' was about, in refrence to the overall theme; the most common answer being that it was a "tragic love story"

Sir went on to show us a song by Kate Bush which was about Wuthering Heights asking us to observe the setting in which her music video was in and the way that she acts. We were asked what the song meant and who's point of view it showed.
The class came to the conclusion that the song focused on the lost soul of Catherine Earnshaw who is haunting Heathcliff and wants to go back to him after dying.

After the song we were given a list of blurbs which we all read as a class and described what impressions the independant blurbs gave us of what kind of novel Wuthering Heights would be and how this differs from what we know and our own interpretation of the novel. Following this, we were asked to write our own blurb which was more inclined to the gothic nature of Wuthering Heights.

Homework:
- Read the poems by Emily Bronte and annotate/make notes in your book about them and how they may link to Wuthering Heights focusing on:
- How do these extracts relate to the idea of gothic?
- What links can we draw between the poetry and Wuthering Heights?
- Anything else interesting about the poems.
The annotations/notes must be at least one page in length.
- Use the words within Bronte's poems to rewrite a poem from a diffrent characters point of view. e.g. Hareton
- Try to make it ambigious as the class must guess who your poem is about.

Macbeth, lesson one

Welcome back my fellow students!

We kicked off the lesson by mind mapping some of the characteristics of witches. The following is what we agreed to be the most common among witches:

- Old women

- Isolated from society

- Alone and ugly

- Black cat

- Devil worshipper/ assistant

- Sorcery/ does evil magic

- Broom stick/ hat

- Witches are bad side to religion- opposite to God.

Then Sir asked us, as to why Shakespeare would use witches to open the play Macbeth. The class struggled to answer this question. Mr Chatterley, kindly told us that it is due the Historical context of the play (1606, or 17^th century). This is indeed AO4, he then told us when using AO4 to consider the context in which the text is written, as well as the context the piece is received. Before we began reading we read a little about the context of King James I who was the King during the period the play was written (although the play is set 600 years before). We then read a bit about the structure of theaters and how they used to have limited crops, therefore had little scenery. This is part of AO2 as the FORM of the text is a PLAY, which we need to consider when writing essays.

Finally we began to read Macbeth, we read up to Act 1 scene 3. We stopped each time to make sure everyone understood what was happening. After reading the play, Sir asked us to consider the elements in the play that could be considered GOTHIC. He then asked us to make a plan for the following question:

“How does the start of Macbeth confirm it as a gothic text?”

We came up with the following :

- The use of Witches.

- The theme of oppositions , i.e. foul/ fair

- Use of Kings, castles and battle. (Although, the battle seems less gothic )

- However, to argue against the question, you can mention that the play was in fact written before the Gothic Genre was invented.

Homework:

-Research about James the first and other historical context, see page 162 of Macbeth.

That’s all I can remember, I hope it helped. Aisha M

Macbeth, lesson one

Welcome back my fellow students!

We kicked off the lesson by mind mapping some of the characteristics of witches. The following is what we agreed to be the most common among witches:

- Old women

- Isolated from society

- Alone and ugly

- Black cat

- Devil worshipper/ assistant

- Sorcery/ does evil magic

- Broom stick/ hat

- Witches are bad side to religion- opposite to God.

Then Sir asked us, as to why Shakespeare would use witches to open the play Macbeth. The class struggled to answer this question. Mr Chatterley, kindly told us that it is due the Historical context of the play (1606, or 17^th century). This is indeed AO4, he then told us when using AO4 to consider the context in which the text is written, as well as the context the piece is received. Before we began reading we read a little about the context of King James I who was the King during the period the play was written (although the play is set 600 years before). We then read a bit about the structure of theaters and how they used to have limited crops, therefore had little scenery. This is part of AO2 as the FORM of the text is a PLAY, which we need to consider when writing essays.

Finally we began to read Macbeth, we read up to Act 1 scene 3. We stopped each time to make sure everyone understood what was happening. After reading the play, Sir asked us to consider the elements in the play that could be considered GOTHIC. He then asked us to make a plan for the following question:

“How does the start of Macbeth confirm it as a gothic text?”

We came up with the following :

- The use of Witches.

- The theme of oppositions , i.e. foul/ fair

- Use of Kings, castles and battle. (Although, the battle seems less gothic )

- However, to argue against the question, you can mention that the play was in fact written before the Gothic Genre was invented.

Homework:

-Research about James the first and other historical context, see page 162 of Macbeth.

That’s all I can remember, I hope it helped. Aisha M

Macbeth, lesson one

Welcome back my fellow students!

We kicked off the lesson by mind mapping some of the characteristics of witches. The following is what we agreed to be the most common among witches:

- Old women

- Isolated from society

- Alone and ugly

- Black cat

- Devil worshipper/ assistant

- Sorcery/ does evil magic

- Broom stick/ hat

- Witches are bad side to religion- opposite to God.

Then Sir asked us, as to why Shakespeare would use witches to open the play Macbeth. The class struggled to answer this question. Mr Chatterley, kindly told us that it is due the Historical context of the play (1606, or 17^th century). This is indeed AO4, he then told us when using AO4 to consider the context in which the text is written, as well as the context the piece is received. Before we began reading we read a little about the context of King James I who was the King during the period the play was written (although the play is set 600 years before). We then read a bit about the structure of theaters and how they used to have limited crops, therefore had little scenery. This is part of AO2 as the FORM of the text is a PLAY, which we need to consider when writing essays.

Finally we began to read Macbeth, we read up to Act 1 scene 3. We stopped each time to make sure everyone understood what was happening. After reading the play, Sir asked us to consider the elements in the play that could be considered GOTHIC. He then asked us to make a plan for the following question:

“How does the start of Macbeth confirm it as a gothic text?”

We came up with the following :

- The use of Witches.

- The theme of oppositions , i.e. foul/ fair

- Use of Kings, castles and battle. (Although, the battle seems less gothic )

- However, to argue against the question, you can mention that the play was in fact written before the Gothic Genre was invented.

Homework:

-Research about James the first and other historical context, see page 162 of Macbeth.

That’s all I can remember, I hope it helped. Aisha M