Unit 2: The Individual and Society Reading and Study Guide
Unit 2: The Individual and “Society” | Reading and Study Guide | AP Literature | Sabolcik
Anchor Texts: Brave New World and The Awakening
Poetry: BNW companion poems; Realist poems
Literary Concepts: Elements of Fiction, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Realism, Naturalism, Satire, Verisimilitude, Regionalism, Naturalism, Literary Criticism
Brave New World Essential Questions:
1. How are the themes of Brave New World applicable to today’s world?
2. What makes the science fiction genre such an effective device for bringing about social change?
3. How does reading fiction shape our social and political ideologies?
4. How does Huxley use satire in a convincing way to expose subtle realities of society?
5. How does the literary period of modernism approach the human condition?
6. How can the various critical lenses allow us to see multiple dimensions of literature?
|Day |Date (A | B) |Reading in Novel Due |Poem Due* |Assignment Due |
|1 |9/15 | 9/16 |Ch. 1-3 |“Utopia” | |
|2 |9/17 | 9/18 |Ch. 4-6 |“anyone lived in a pretty how town” |PRJ 1.2 |
|3 |9/19 | 9/22 |Ch. 7-10 |“The Unknown Citizen” | |
|4 |9/23 | 9/24 | |“The Second Coming” & Shakespeare Excerpts | |
|5 |9/25 | 9/26 |Ch. 11-16 |“Acquainted with the Night” |College Essay |
|6 |9/29 | 9/30 |Ch. 17-END | |Prose Analysis |
|7 |10/1 | 10/2 |BEDFORD pp. 1538-1556 | |BNW Assessment |
*For each poem assigned, annotate the poem AND be prepared to give the theme (P1) as well as 2 qualified P2s that support it.
The Awakening Essential Questions:
1. Where do we find the influence of Realism in Chopin’s writing?
2. How does a writer create tone? How does tone affect larger meanings such as theme or characterization?
3. How does the setting contribute to the themes of the novel? What strategies does Chopin use to establish the mood?
4. What argument(s) does Chopin make about the role of women in her society? How does she make this argument?
5. Who or what gives an individual his/her identity? How is the search for identity represented in the novel?
6. How do motifs function together to create theme?
|Day |Date (A | B) |Reading in Novel Due |Poem Due* |Assignment |
|1 |10/3 | 10/6 |Ch. 1-8 |“Woman Work” | |
|2 |10/7 | 10/8 |Ch. 9-14 |Dickinson Poems |PRJ 1.3 |
|3 |10/9 | 10/10 |Ch. 15- 24 |“We Wear the Mask” | |
|4 |10/13 | 10/14 |Ch. 25-END |“Richard Cory” |Awakening Assessment |
|5 |10/15 | 10/16 |“Desiree’s Baby” Handout | |Unit Assessment, PRJ 1.4 |
*For each poem assigned, annotate the poem AND be prepared to give the theme (P1) as well as 2 qualified P2s that support it.
Literary Analysis Terms
Syntax Terms
1. Loose sentence
2. Periodic sentence
3. Balanced sentence
4. Natural order of a sentence
5. Inverted order of a sentence (sentence inversion)
6. Split order of a sentence
7. Juxtaposition
8. Parallel structure (parallelism)
9. Repetition
10. Rhetorical question
11. Rhetorical fragment
12. Anaphora
13. Asyndeton
14. Chiasmus
15. Polysyndeton
16. Zeugma
Critical Theories of Literature
1. Formal/New Critical
2. Psychological/Freudian
3. Feminist/Gender
4. Marxist
5. Biographical History/ New Historicism
6. Mythological / Archetypal
7. Reader Response
Literary Movements
Modernism
Realism, Regionalism
Other Key Due Dates:
MWDS Due Date: 10/21 | 10/22
Out-of-Class Prose Analysis: 9/29 | 9/30
PRJ 1.1: 9/9 | 9/10
PRJ 1.2: 9/17 | 9/18
PRJ 1.3: 10/7 | 10/8
PRJ 1.4: 10/15 | 10/16
PRJ 1.5: 10/27 | 10/28
MWDS for 11th Grade Novels Due Date: 9/15 | 9/16 (Assignment Eliminated) (
College Essay: 9/25 | 9/26
Modernism
Modernism describes an array of cultural movements rooted in the changes in Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The term covers a series of reforming movements in art, architecture, music, literature and the applied arts which emerged during this period.
It is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology or practical experimentation. Modernism encouraged the re-examination of every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, with the goal of finding that which was 'holding back' progress, and replacing it with new, progressive and therefore better, ways of reaching the same end.
Embracing change and the present, modernism encompasses the works of thinkers who rebelled against nineteenth century academic and historicist traditions, believing the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated; they directly confronted the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world. Some divide the 20th Century into movements designated Modernism and Postmodernism, whereas others see them as two aspects of the same movement.
Modernist literature is the literary form of Modernism and especially High modernism, it should not be confused with modern literature.
Modernist literature was at its height from 1910 to 1920, and featured such authors as Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad, W. B. Yeats, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Luigi Pirandello, D. H. Lawrence, Marcel Proust, and Robert Frost.
Characteristics of Modernism
Formal characteristics
• Open Form
• Free verse
• Discontinuous narrative
• Juxtaposition
• Intertextuality
• Classical allusions
• Borrowings from other cultures and languages
• Unconventional use of metaphor
• Metanarrative
• Fragmentation
• Multiple narrative points of view (parallax)
Thematic characteristics
• Breakdown of social norms and cultural sureties
• Dislocation of meaning and sense from its normal context
• Valorization of the despairing individual in the face of an unmanageable future
• Disillusionment
• Rejection of history and the substitution of a mythical past, borrowed without chronology
• Rejection of sentimentality and artificiality
• Product of the metropolis, of cities and urbanscapes
• Stream of Consciousness, Free-Indirect Discourse
• Psychological focus on the character, focused on the inner workings of the mind
• Revolt against the spiritual debasement of the world
• Rejection of the “ideal hero” who is infallible in favor of a hero who is flawed and disillusioned
• Emphasis on bold experimentation of style and form, reflecting the fragmentation of society
• Overwhelming technological changes of the 20th Century
In fiction, there were three major changes in attitude:
• A common sense of significance and shared values had disappeared because of the pervasive uncertainty.
• A new view of time: no longer viewed as a series of chronological moments to be presented in a sequence; now considered a continuous flow in the consciousness of the individual.
• Developments in the nature of consciousness:
o Stream of consciousness—a key new technique—explores the fabric of a character’s consciousness. Important new technique for the English novel (Joyce’s Portrait = best example). The isolation of consciousness and the importance of emotional/human bonds were themes of the novel (e.g., Conrad).
o The past is always present in consciousness at some level and affects our reactions. Jung’s theory of archetypes—hence the importance of the primitive and the interaction of the primitive and the civilized. HoD’s intro: “that the primitive affects our conduct…became almost the most important single idea of the new century.” Conrad’s Marlow gives us a negative version of the return to the primitive (he journeys backward in time).
Regionalism
Setting: The emphasis is frequently on nature and the limitations it imposes; settings are frequently remote and inaccessible. The setting is integral to the story and may sometimes become a character in itself.
Characters: Local color stories tend to be concerned with the character of the district or region rather than with the individual: characters may become character types, sometimes quaint or stereotypical. The characters are marked by their adherence to the old ways, by dialect, and by particular personality traits central to the region. In women's local color fiction, the heroines are often unmarried women or young girls.
Narrator: The narrator is typically an educated observer from the world beyond who learns something from the characters while preserving a sometimes sympathetic, sometimes ironic distance from them. The narrator serves as mediator between the rural folk of the tale and the urban audience to whom the tale is directed.
Plots. It has been said that "nothing happens" in local color stories by women authors, and often very little does happen. Stories may include lots of storytelling and revolve around the community and its rituals.
Themes: Many local color stories share an antipathy to change and a certain degree of nostalgia for an always-past golden age. A celebration of community and acceptance in the face of adversity characterizes women's local color fiction. Thematic tension or conflict between urban ways and old-fashioned rural values is often symbolized by the intrusion of an outsider or interloper who seeks something from the community.
Realism
The dominant paradigm in novel writing during the second half of the nineteenth century was no longer the Romantic idealism of the earlier part of the century. What took hold among the great novelists in Europe and America was a new approach to character and subject matter, a school of thought which later came to be known as Realism. On one level, Realism is precisely what it sounds like. It is attention to detail, and an effort to replicate the true nature of reality in a way that novelists had never attempted. There is the belief that the novel’s function is simply to report what happens, without comment or judgment. Seemingly inconsequential elements gain the attention of the novel functioning in the realist mode. From Henry James, for example, one gets a sense of being there in the moment, as a dense fabric of minute details and observations is constructed. This change in style meant that some of the traditional expectations about the novel’s form had to be pushed aside. In contrast to what came before, the realistic novel rests upon the strengths of its characters rather than plot or turn of phrase. The characters that the realistic school of novelists produced are some of the most famous in literary history, from James’s Daisy Miller to Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov. They are psychologically complicated, multifaceted, and with conflicting impulses and motivations that very nearly replicate the daily tribulations of being human.
Realism coincided with Victorianism, yet was a distinct collection of aesthetic principles in its own right. The realist novel was heavily informed by journalistic techniques, such as objectivity and fidelity to the facts of the matter. It is not a coincidence that many of the better known novelists of the time had concurrent occupations in the publishing industry. The idea of novel-writing as a “report” grew out of this marriage between literature and journalism. Another fair comparison would be to think of the realist novel as an early form of docudrama, in which fictional persons and events are intended to seamlessly reproduce the real world. The Victorian Period saw growing concern with the plight of the less fortunate in society, and the realistic novel likewise turned its attention on subjects that beforehand would not have warranted notice. The balancing act that the upwardly mobile middle class had to perform in order to retain their position in the world was a typical subject for realistic novels. There arose a subgenre of Realism called Social Realism, which in hindsight can be interpreted as Marxist and socialist ideas set forth in literature.
Advances in the field of human psychology also fed into the preoccupation with representing the inner workings of the mind, and the delicate play of emotions. William James, brother of novelist Henry James, was a gargantuan figure in the early history of human psychology. One can imagine that their conversations proved highly influential in Henry’s creative development. Psychologists were just beginning to understand that human consciousness was far more complicated and various than had previously been considered. Debates about nature versus nurture were as popular then as they are today. More than anything, the understanding that in the human mind there are very few absolutes was critical for the realist sensibility. To put it another way, Realism embraced the concept that people were neither completely good or completely bad, but somewhere on a spectrum.
The overriding concern of all realist fiction is with character. Specifically, novelists struggled to create intricate and layered characters who, as much as possible, felt as though they could be flesh and blood creatures. Much of this effect was achieved through internal monologues and a keen understanding of human psychology. Not surprisingly, the field of psychology was in the process of evolving from metaphysical quackery into a bona fide scientific pursuit. Students of the human mind were beginning to realize that an individual is composed of a network of motivations, interests, desires, and fears. How these forces interact and sometimes do battle with each other plays a large part in the development of personality. Realism, at its highest level, attempts to lay these internal struggles bare for all to see. In other words, most of the “action” of the realist novel is internalized. Changes in mood, in perceptions, in opinions and ideas constitute turning points or climaxes.
Realist novelists eschewed many of the novel’s established traditions, most notably in the form of plot structure. Typically, novels follow a definite arc of events, with an identifiable climax and resolution. They are self-contained and satisfying in their symmetry. Successful careers have been built on the scaffolding of a single story arc. The school of Realism observed that life did not follow such patterns, so for them, neither should the novel. Instead of grand happenings, tragedies, and epic turns of events, the realist novel plodded steadily over a track not greatly disturbed by external circumstances. Narrative style also changed with realistic fiction. Instead of an omniscient narrator calmly describing the persons and events, readers often confront unreliable narrators who do not have all the information. Often, the narrator’s perceptions are colored by their own prejudices and beliefs. A popular device for many realistic novelists was the frame narrative, or the story inside a story. This device compounds the unreliable narrator by placing the reader at a further remove from the events of the novel. The purpose of all of these innovations, as with the whole of Realism, was to more accurately simulate the nature of reality – unknowable, uncertain, and ever-shifting reality.
Utopia
Wislawa Szymborska 1976
Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs. 5
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista: 10
the Valley of Obviously.
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.
On the right a cave where Meaning lies. 15
On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.
Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.
For all its charms, the island is uninhabited, 20
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.
As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.
Into unfathomable life. 25
anyone lived in a pretty how town
E. E. Cummings, 1894 – 1962
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did
Women and men(both little and small) 5
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain
children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew 10
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more
when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still 15
anyone’s any was all to her
someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream 20
stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)
one day anyone died i guess 25
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was
all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep 30
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.
Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came 35
sun moon stars rain
The Unknown Citizen
W. H. Auden, 1907 - 1973
(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community. 5
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues, 10
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way. 15
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man, 20
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population, 25
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat 5
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye; 10
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
The Second Coming
WB Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 5
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 10
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, 15
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, 20
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Woman Work by Maya Angelou
I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry 5
The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
I've got shirts to press
The tots to dress 10
The can to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.
Shine on me, sunshine 15
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.
Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind 20
Let me float across the sky
'Til I can rest again.
Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and 25
Let me rest tonight.
Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You're all that I can call my own. 30
The Bustle in a House
Emily Dickinson
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart 5
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity –
I’m wife
Emily Dickinson
I ’m wife; I ’ve finished that,
That other state;
I ’m Czar, I ’m woman now:
It ’s safer so.
How odd the girl’s life looks 5
Behind this soft eclipse!
I think that earth seems so
To those in heaven now.
This being comfort, then
That other kind was pain; 10
But why compare?
I ’m wife! stop there!
She rose to his requirement
Emily Dickinson
She rose to his requirement, dropped
The playthings of her life
To take the honorable work
Of woman and of wife.
If aught she missed in her new day 5
Of amplitude, or awe,
Or first prospective, or the gold
In using wore away,
It lay unmentioned, as the sea
Develops pearl and weed, 10
But only to himself is known
The fathoms they abide.
We Wear the Mask
Paul Laurence Dunbar
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties. 5
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries 10
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask! 15
Richard Cory
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed, 5
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace: 10
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, 15
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
Date of Publication: 1932
Genre: Modernism, Dystopian
The novel begins with a quotation from Russian philosopher Nicolas Berdiaeff, translated below:
Utopias are becoming more apparent as well as more realizable than was believed in the past. And we find ourselves now before a question that is certainly otherwise distressing: how to avoid their complete and final realization? . . . Utopias are realizable. Life marches towards utopias. And perhaps a new age is beginning, an age where intellectuals and the cultured class dream about avoiding utopias and returning to a society less utopian, less “perfect” and more free.
Reading Guide:
Chapter 1
1. Note the setting of the novel, and highlight any key details. (For instance, what makes the Fertilizing Room ironic?)
2. The novel has specialized terminology. Identify the World State motto, Bokanovsky’s Process, the Bottling Room…
3. What are the three symbols/labels for sex?
4. What, according to the Director, is the “secret of happiness and virtue”?
Chapter 2
5. New terms to identify: Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning and hypnopaedia.
6. What governs the timeline in the World State? Why?
7. Note the five social classes and their corresponding colors. (Note: one color is still unknown to the reader until Ch. 4.)
Chapter 3
8. What is the “amazing truth” the Director shares with the students?
9. New characters to consider: Mustapha Mond, Lenina Crowne, Fanny Crowne, Bernard Marx, Henry Foster.
10. New terms to identify: feelies, soma.
11. Highlight important points in the history of the world from the “Age of Ford” to the “present.” Consider cause/effect.
Chapter 4
12. What is different about Helmholtz Watson?
Chapter 5
13. Why do the smokestacks at the Crematorium have “things like balconies”? Note what Lenina finds “queer” about this.
14. Where does Bernard go every other Thursday? Note all of the satire in this chapter!
Chapter 6
15. What prevents Bernard’s date with Lenina from going well?
16. What happened when the Director went to New Mexico? How and why does the Director threaten Bernard?
Chapter 7
17. Note/highlight the description of the reservation and Lenina’s reaction to it.
18. What is remarkable about the stranger’s speech? What does Bernard conclude about the stranger (aka “John Savage”)?
19. Highlight the description of Linda, as well as Lenina’s reaction to her.
Chapter 8
20. Describe Linda’s relationship with Popé and with John. Why is there conflict?
21. Note the defining moments in John’s life story—the first books he read, what prompted Popé to call him brave, his interaction with Mitsima, the ritual at the Antelope Kiva, etc. How does Bernard establish common ground with John?
Chapter 9
22. What is Bernard’s plan? Why does Mustapha Mond agree to it?
23. What does John do while Bernard is in Santa Fe?
Chapter 10
24. How do Linda and John act in the hatchery? What is the effect of their visit?
Chapter 11
25. How do Linda and John react to the transition?
26. What happens to Bernard’s social standing? How does Helmholtz respond?
Chapter 12
27. When John refuses to attend the party, how do Lenina and Bernard respond?
28. Why did Helmholtz once get in trouble with authority? How does he react to John? To Romeo and Juliet?
Chapter 13
29. What is Fanny’s advice to Lenina?
30. What does John confess to Lenina, and why does she respond as she does?
Chapter 14
31. What’s odd about the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying? Why does John get in trouble with the nurse?
Chapter 15
32. What sparks the “soma-riot” at the hospital and how do the police respond?
Chapter 16
33. Where are the prisoners taken? Note the “punishment” each one receives.
34. Why is Shakespeare prohibited in England?
35. Be able to identify/explain the Cyprus experiment and the Ireland experiment.
Chapter 17
36. Note the important details in John’s conversation with the Controller.
37. What is V.P.S.?
38. What absolute right does John claim for himself?
Chapter 18
39. How does John “cleanse” himself after the meeting?
40. Where does John go? What is his new life like?
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening
Date of Publication: 1899 (One critic called it a “strong drink” that should be labeled “poison.”)
Genre: Realism, Naturalism (key term: verisimilitude)
Style: Regionalism and “Local Color”
Reading Guide:
Chapters I-III
1. Note significant details of setting—both time and place.
2. Note first impressions of various characters—Mr. and Mrs. Pontellier, Madame & Robert Lebrun, etc.
3. What conflicts are already present in the novel?
4. Compare the ending of Chapter II to the ending of Chapter I.
5. Explain the role reversal at the beginning of Ch. III.
Chapters IV-VI
6. How does Adèle Ratignolle differ from Mrs. Pontellier?
7. What is a key difference between the Creoles and Mrs. Pontellier’s “people”?
8. Why is Robert’s intimacy with Edna no big deal? Should it be?
Chapters VII-IX
9. Chapter VII is highly descriptive. Be sure to highlight what’s significant and consider Chopin’s purpose.
10. What was Edna’s childhood like? Note her “defining moments.”
11. How is Edna affected by her interaction w/ Adèle?
12. How did Edna end up with Léonce?
13. What favor does Madame Ratignolle ask of Robert? Why?
14. What is Robert’s relationship like with the rest of his family?
15. Why does Edna like music? How is she affected by Mademoiselle Reisz’s piano playing?
Chapters X-XII
16. What key detail do we learn about Edna in Chapter X? What makes this chapter another defining moment?
17. How does Edna’s inward change take on an outward layer as well?
18. Would you consider Chapter XI a victory or defeat?
19. How does Mariequita’s presence in Chapter XII affect the dynamic of the group?
Chapters XIII-XVI
20. How does Edna end up at Madame Antoine’s? What is the effect of her visit?
21. Why do you think Chopin avoids dialogue in the description of Edna’s interaction w/ Madame Ratignolle?
22. How does Edna attempt to deal with the “shocking” news in Chapter XV?
Chapters XVII-XIX
23. How has Edna’s summer at Grand Isle affected her adherence to the social codes of New Orleans?
24. Why does Edna go to visit Madame Ratignolle?
25. How does Monsieur Ratignolle compare to Mr. Pontellier?
26. How does Edna’s internal change affect her whole household?
Chapters XX-XXII
27. What prompts Edna to visit Madame Lebrun?
28. How does Chapter XX enrich Victor’s characterization?
29. Why does Edna’s visit to Mlle. Reisz bring her to tears?
30. What prompts Mr. Pontellier to visit Doctor Mandelet? Note the doctor’s “diagnoses” and “prescription.”
Chapters XXIII-XXIV
31. Why does Edna’s father visit? How does his presence affect her? Why don’t they part on good terms?
Chapters XXV-XXVI
32. Note significant descriptions of Mrs. Highcamp and Alcée Arobin as Edna begins to “hang out” with them.
33. What momentous decision does Edna announce to Mlle. Reisz?
34. In what way do Edna and Reisz differ in opinion on the subject of love?
Chapters XXVII-XXVIII
40. What is the purpose of these very short chapters? Consider why they stand alone.
Chapters XXIX-XXXII
35. Does the dinner party satisfy Edna as she had anticipated? What causes a shift in the mood?
36. Why is Edna surprised upon returning to her “pigeon-house”?
37. What is ironic about Mr. Pontellier’s reaction to Edna’s move?
Chapters XXXIII-XXXVI
38. What news does Madame Ratignolle bring to Edna?
39. Why has Robert returned to New Orleans? Note the significant moments during their reunion.
40. What gives Edna hope after her evening of disillusionment?
41. Why does Robert consider Edna cruel?
42. What is the truth behind Robert’s trip to Mexico?
Chapters XXXVII-XXXIX
43. What’s wrong with Madame Ratignolle? What are her parting words to Edna?
44. Why is Dr. Mandelet so upset? Summarize his conversation with Edna in Chapter XXXVIII.
45. Note how the final chapter contains echoes of previous chapters.
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