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 …

Taking time out and defying convention

Delayed publication

The author of Wide Sargasso Sea, on which Crossref-it.info has just launched an A Level guide, had quite a job in getting her manuscript to a point of publication:

• In 1957 Jean Rhys told her editor, Diana Athill, that it would be ready in six to nine months time, claiming that a large part of it was already written
• In fact, the writing of Wide Sargasso Sea was not finished until the end of March 1966
• Diana Athill wrote to Jean about ‘the labour and torment’ that had gone into its writing. No doubt she was referring to herself as the editor, as well as to its author!

A new approach

Rhys was writing using innovative forms and a variety of perspectives. It took her a while to work out how these could be utilised to create a narrative whole. During that time, her life and work disappeared from popular view.

At Crossref-it.info we too have had to take some time and work out a different approach with our guide to Wide Sargasso Sea.

Like you, we know that the future of literary study lies on-line rather than in a book-case. That’s why we developed a web-based English Literature resource and that’s why it has proved so popular worldwide. For each text we have covered that is not in the public domain, the author’s publisher has understood the power of the medium and granted permission to quote from their text.

Problems and solutions

However, we faced a problem when Rhys’ publisher seemed anxious about having her novel analysed on-line.

What to do? We knew how important it was that the text wasn’t once again rendered invisible to a new generation of students, whose automatic port of call is the internet. It has taken a while, but the whole guide has been re-worked, aiming to be as clear and specific as possible in its explanation of Wide Sargasso Sea, without actually using Rhys’ words. Not so easy for a novel that doesn’t have numbered chapters!

Result

It was worth waiting for Rhys’ masterpiece.

Hopefully everyone who uses the new Crossref-it.info guide on Wide Sargasso Sea will agree that it was worth waiting for this as well!

Why not check it out now?

Wide Sargasso Sea

Some authors are defined by one particular work which overshadows the rest of their output:

• Joseph Heller will forever be identified with his satirical masterpiece, Catch 22
• J. D. Salinger is known primarily as the creator of Holden Caulfield, narrator of The Catcher in the Rye
• Margaret Mitchell did write another novel, but nothing to match Gone with the Wind.

Until the late 60’s few people would have heard of Jean Rhys, who had produced a few collections of short stories and novellas in the 1920s and 30s. By the end of the 1950s many were not even sure if she was still alive. Then in 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea appeared.

For all sorts of reasons Wide Sargasso Sea became the work with which Rhys is for ever identified. It had a huge impact:

• With its multiple viewpoints and disjointed narrative, it echoed the multilayered interpretations of modernism, yet was also post-modern before the term had become recognised.
• Its perspective on a ‘colonial’ account (Jane Eyre), from the viewpoint of the colonised, helped to wake literate Britain up to the role of Britain’s economic world dominance within its literature
• It was revisionist in its handling of a well loved cultural icon, Mr Rochester, shaking forever the unthinking adulation of Brontë’s romantic hero
• It created a woman’s narrative voice at variance with the clear female voice of Jane Eyre herself, whom generations had learnt to love.

All these reasons and more make Wide Sargasso Sea a distinctive novel, and a popular choice on A Level syllabuses, especially when set in conjunction with Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

At Crossref-it.info a comprehensive guide to Brontë’s classic has already been available for a couple of years. Now we are about to launch one to help students studying Rhys’ most famous work.

Watch this space!

Ways in to Rossetti

An intriguing poet

Featuring on a number of current A Level English syllabuses, the poetry of Christina Rossetti makes for intriguing study.

On one level she is very accessible – dealing as she does with universal themes such as love, loss and the impact of beauty. However, there is an elusive quality to many poems, as they seem to allude to a world that is closed off to the inhabitants of an empirical, materialistic, post modern 21st century.

A bid for freedom

Rossetti’s experience of life in Victorian England had a clearly defined focus, developed within the constraints of what was considered acceptable for women in her position. Her strong impulse for freedom of imagination and self expression was instead met through her Christian faith.

Opening up her world

Coming to Rossetti’s work from a background of other religious beliefs or none means that the references she used as shorthand need to be worked at in a way she would not have envisaged. But once the reader sees what she is getting at, her work sings.

Help for students

In September Crossref-it.info launched an extensive guide to Rossetti’s work, in which everything that might be less than clear to modern readers is illuminated at the touch of a cursor (or finger if you are accessing the material via your mobile).

Help for busy teachers!

If you are a teacher wondering how you can engage your students with these texts, it may help to know that this week Crossref-it.info is launching

a series of six lesson sequences on a selection of Christina Rossetti's poems which take the

headache out of planning! There are a variety of different approaches suitable for different styles of learner or levels of ability, as well as keeping in mind the requirements of differing syllabuses.

Whichever way you come to Christina Rossetti, we want you to get the most from the experience. That’s why Crossref-it.info exists!

The Madness of Hamlet

The Madness of Hamlet set in Zimbabwe? How can that be relevant to A Level English students? Well, it depends whether you want an interesting take on a (perhaps overly familiar) text, where the action has been stripped to its story-telling essentials.

• The premise seems impossible – the first folio text acted by only two (male) actors and using only two props? How can a play with multiple characters, plot lines and changes of scene be made sense of, in only 90 minutes?
• In fact the version by Two Gents Productions of Kupenga Kwa Hamlet which I saw on Monday is dramatic and exciting, never hard to follow and throws up some fascinating insights on a well known tale. Physical energy is punctuated by moments of stillness, tragedy offset by easy humour, seeming to recapture the dynamism that perhaps existed in rehearsal 410 years ago.

If you are studying Hamlet for an exam course, the opportunity to see a live performance of the play is highly likely. The central role is seen by actors as the Everest of their early career (as Lear is once they are at the other end of it). Currently performing at the National Theatre is Rory Kinnear, who has garnered rave reviews.

But if you want to think and (re)engage with this classic in a fresh way that still honours Shakespeare’s intentions, investigate http://www.watermill.org.uk/kupenga_kwa_hamlet.html for the chance to experience a great piece of theatre.

And if you want to make sure you know the play before you go, check out Hamlet on Crossref-it.info, where there are handy synopses, as well as detailed information about the text.

Answers to last week's quiz

We hope you enjoyed last week’s quiz. The two famous novels it was based on were Emma and Jane Eyre, between which there are some surprising similarities.

The correct answers are:

1. Emma & Jane

2. Wodehouse & Eyre

3. Painting

4. Their mother (Jane’s father had also died)

5. Mr (Philip) Elton & St.John Rivers

6. Harriet Smith & Rosamond Oliver

7. Mr (George) Knightly & Edward Rochester

8. Mrs (Augusta) Elton & ‘the Church’ (but if you said ‘unmarried’ you would also be correct)

9. Jane Austen & Charlotte Brontë

10.a. Since 1990, Emma has been portrayed by Doran Godwin (1993), Kate Beckinsale (1996), Gwyneth Paltrow (1996), Romola Garai (2009)

10.b. Since 1990, Jane has been portrayed by Charlotte Gainsborg (1995), Samantha Morton (1997), Ruth Wilson (2006)

How many of the possible 18 marks did you get right?

If you enjoyed this brain teaser, look out for another quiz next month – and remember that www.crossref-it.info is there to help answer your literary questions!

Something for the end of your day...

Slightly different this week, a quick literary quiz to test your knowledge!

In two famous novels from the first half of the nineteenth century, the heroines receive an unwelcome proposal of marriage from a clergyman, having previously believed that each man was in love with another woman.

1. What is the first name of each heroine?

2. What are their surnames?

3. What hobby did these heroines share?

4. Which parent had both heroines lost?

5. What are the names of the two clergymen?

6. Who are the two women which each heroine thought that the vicars loved?

7. Who did the heroines finally marry?

8. Who were the eventual ‘brides’ of the clergymen?

9. Name the author of each novel.

10. Can you name one actress who has portrayed each heroine on film or TV (since 1990)?

How did you do? If you are struggling, then a clue is that one of these novels is featured on www.crossref-it.info (take a look under the green "Texts in detail" button)

Answers will be given next week!