All about fiction

Just in time to be of huge help to any students studying for exams this summer, or still facing university interviews to study English, are three TV programmes currently airing. Yes, you really can justify sitting in front of the screen to ‘help you study’!

Wider reading and success

One of the things that a crammed term of revision no longer allows time for is wider leisure reading. And yet something that always impresses examiners and interviewers is a candidate’s ability to refer to more than just the set texts they have studied in class. If you can link your ideas on a particular text to other literature of the time, or trace the concerns of the novelist to the social movements of their era, you will be heading for an A*.

Speedy literary context help

Now the Beeb is running a season on fiction and there are some really illuminating programmes to catch:

• Faulks on Fiction - At 9pm Saturday on BBC2, author Sebastian Faulks is tracing the development of various types of character that recur in novels. So far he has covered ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lovers’, demonstrating how our perceptions of what makes a literary hero or lover have changed through the last three centuries. Lots of clips from TV adaptations bring his observations to life. Catching it on BBC i-player means that you don’t have to sacrifice your social life!
• Birth of the British Novel - At 9pm Monday on BBC4 an even more helpful series is being fronted by Henry Hitchins. This charts developments in novel writing from the earliest Robinson Crusoe to the present day. It is great for demonstrating how authors created, then adapted, different prose genres, either reflecting or subverting the literary context of their times. Again there are numerous drama clips as illustration.

English Language help

If you are taking AS/A2 English Language, another literary themed broadcast focuses on text production:

The Beauty of Books – Just before the Birth of the British Novel, at 8.30pm Monday on BBC4, as this series moves through the centuries it becomes ever more pertinent to the AS/A2 Development of Language modules. Already the second episode has considered the implications of moving from hand scribed manuscripts into print, thereby creating a medieval best seller with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Handy social context help

Meanwhile (in case you didn’t already know), Crossref-it.info has got lots of helpful articles about the worlds inhabited by Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Romantics and Victorians. They will help you to make links between your set texts and the political, social and philosophical movements of the day. Lots of brownie points there!

Every success!

Invisible barriers

One of the hardest aspects to understand about a culture are the unspoken values that govern it – the things that nobody makes clear but everybody assumes. English literature inevitably reflects English culture, which in turn has been shaped by the nation’s position as a democracy, its Protestantism and its geographical location, among other things.

It is hard to gauge how far this history has influenced British attitudes, yet it is surely part of the desire to look outward, to express individual opinions and be self determining, which we see in characters like Elizabeth Bennet, Pip, Jane Eyre and the Mayor of Casterbridge.

Class wars

However, all these literary creations also encountered another invisible value that shaped their existence – that of social class. How one sector of the population judges another is usually a mystery to the outsider, but the problems it poses are real enough. Class can determine:

> who one can marry

> what employment is acceptable

> where one may live.

Of course, encountering such obstacles has provided great material for the English novel in particular. Can the labourer Pip ever really be a gentleman? Should clergyman’s daughter Margaret Hale be united with a cotton manufacturer? Will Miss Bennet’s vulgar mother always ruin her chances in marriage?

Does it matter?

When today’s society is much more mobile and egalitarian, it may seem hard to understand what all the fuss is about. That’s why at Crossref-it.info there is now a helpful article on English class and hierarchy to guide readers through the minefield of these invisible attitudes. Next time you wonder just why Angel Clare’s parents are anxious about his marrying Tess, why not check it out?

The status of girls

Fighting for their rights

Mass demonstrations in Egypt. Our screens are filled with men and women demanding that their democratic rights are actually reflected in the way their country is governed. These are remarkable scenes, but all the more so when you realise that just 60 years ago there would have been no women involved, because before 1956, Egyptian females were not allowed to vote!

Today, girls in the UK have the same rights in law as their male counterparts:

• They can vote once eighteen
• They can get a job in almost any sphere of employment
• They are paid an equal rate as lads for comparable work
• They can have their own bank accounts, get their own mortgages, possess their own property.

But of course!

The long struggle

In fact it has taken a long time to reach this level of equality. A new Crossref-it.info article on Female emancipation gives you the gen.

The novels Crossref-it.info has featured recently demonstrate just how vulnerable young women have been in the past:

• The new guide to Wide Sargasso Sea depicts how Antoinette Cosway can be handed over as part of a financial transaction to marry a man she hardly knows. It demonstrates her anger and fear as she sees him become the possessor of all that had once been hers, while incarcerating his wife in the process.
• In the Jane Eyre guide, we see how an orphan whose relatives reject her is at the mercy of a capricious employer. When she has to escape his attentions, she can only become a vagrant. With no male to protect her or provide references for alternative employment she is powerless to change her situation, other than relying on charity.

How we got there

No girl today would expect to find themselves in the same situation, but that is owing to the long struggle by women to achieve parity with men. But if you think it’s all over, watch out for the forthcoming Crossref-it.info guide on Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale …