FEMININE VOICES IN

WOMEN
NOVELISTS’ WRITING

Conducător ştiinţific:
Conf. univ. dr. IRINA TOMA
Autor:
Prof. MIHAELA-SORINA DOAMNA
Şcoala:
ŞCOALA ‘DIACONU CORESI’
Localitatea:
FIENI
 ARGUMENT
Why literature? Any literary work comes into existence only through the interaction
between the reader and the text.
Why teaching literature? There are at least three main reasons for the teaching of
literature: the cultural model, the language model and the personal growth model.
Why Victorian literature? This period represents a transition between the writers of
the Romantic period and the very different literature of the 20th century. The 19thcentury
is often regarded as a high point in British literature (as well as in other European
countries).
Why Victorian writers? (More particularly women novelists?) These writers are
considered the most significant of the period and they had something to say about a
number of important issues such as: the relations between men and women, parents and
children, the treatment of women and children, the realization of selfhood, love and
marriage, the nature of true love, the power of love.
Why Feminine Voices? Victorians were concerned with four controversial issues:
evolution, industrialism, Great Britain’s identity as an imperial power and ‘The Woman
Question’. In the debates about the Woman Question, voices came into print that had not
been heard before. Not only did women novelists play a major role in shaping the terms of
the debates but also women from working classes found opportunities to describe the
conditions of their lives.
1. INTRODUCTION: REASONS FOR ENJOYING LITERATURE
WITHIN THE CLASSROOMS

2. VIEW ON PRE-VICTORIAN AND VICTORIAN AGE – GENERAL

BACKGROUND AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT WITH STRESS
UPON WOMEN NOVELISTS OF THE AGE
• Social hierarchy and rights, employment, clothing, moral values,
education, religion
• Woman’s condition

3. THE TRADITION OF WOMEN NOVELISTS: Jane Austen, Charlotte

Bronte, Emily Bronte – life, source and work
4. FEMININE VOICES
• ELIZABETH BENNET (PRIDE AND
PREJUDICE 1813) – discovered
herself in her loss of pride and
prejudice

• JANE EYRE (JANE EYRE 1847) -

The independent and successful woman
of the 19th century

• CATHERINE EARNSHAW
(WUTHERING HEIGHTS 1847)
- Two faces of love
5. METHODOLOGICAL APPLICATION
(ON DIFFERENT LEVELS OF STUDY)
Literature (n.) = 1. written works, esp. those whose value lies in
beauty of language or in emotional effect; 2. the realm of letters; 3.
the writings of a country or period; 4. literary production; 5. colloq.
printed matter, leaflets, etc; 6. the material in print on a particular
subject (from Latin litteratura)

Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press 2004, p 473

 Literature is a very versatile subject and is generally considered

one of the most difficult subjects to teach. There is no right or
wrong way to teach a Literature class; the job of the professor is
not to teach the student, it is to lead the student.
 Teaching literature not only improves reading fluency through the
expansion of vocabulary, but also increases students' reading comprehension
skills. Comprehension skills not only include retelling main events, but also
include the ability to identify the author's choice or words, central themes,
character development, symbolism, irony, etc.

 Literary texts can provide rich linguistic input, effective stimuli for
students to express themselves in other languages and a potential source of
learner motivation.

 There is no point in the idea of a separation of literature from language

since literature is language and language can indeed be literary.

◊ Why use literature in class?

• authentic material
• it encourages interaction
• it expands language awareness
• it educates the whole person
• motivating
 There are at least four main reasons which lead a language teacher to use
literature in the classroom:

1. Valuable Authentic Material - in a classroom context, learners are exposed to

actual language samples of real life / real life-like settings. They become familiar
with many different linguistic forms, communicative functions and meanings.

2. Cultural Enrichment - literary works, such as novels, plays, short stories, etc
facilitate understanding how communication takes place in that country. A reader
can discover the way of the characters, the way literary works see the world
outside (i.e. their thoughts, feelings, customs, traditions, possessions; what they
buy, believe in, fear, enjoy; how they speak and behave in different settings).

3. Language Enrichment - Literature provides learners with a wide range of

individual lexical or syntactic items. Students become familiar with many
features of the written language. Thus, they improve their communicative and
cultural competence in the authentic richness, naturalness of the authentic
texts.

4. Personal Involvement - Once the student reads a literary text, s/he begins to
inhabit the text. S/He is drawn into the text. The student becomes enthusiastic
to find out what happens, s/he feels close to certain characters and shares their
emotional responses.
◊ Teaching Literature in an optional course: The purpose of
this optional course is to provide readers with a guide to understanding,
enjoying and studying women novelists and some of their works by giving them
easy access to information about the work. The following elements are
contained in each part: Introduction / Plot – Summary / Characters / Themes/
Style / Historical Context / Critical Overview / Topics for Further Study /
Compare and Contrast

Evaluation : group/individual projects / oral presentation / essay writing

scene/portrait/setting sketching / script writing / PPT

◊ Lesson plans 1- 4

• Characters in Pride and Prejudice;

• Introducing Jane Eyre – An Unlikely Victorian Heroine;
• Who’s Who? Who’s Where? and Who’s in Charge? – Wuthering Heights;
• The Status of Women in Pride and Prejudice.
 ◊ CONCLUSIONS
Although women novelists wrote in the way that society expected
them to, their work, which was admired for its wit and intelligence, greatly
improved the reputation of female authoresses.
Their realistic characters and social commentary also helped lay the
foundations for the modern novel. And although they are far from
feminists, the heroines point towards the future by being lively and
independent.
The issue of what women achieved through the mediation of writing is
not at all ambiguous, but extremely clear and simple as it was obtained only
by presenting experience as a whole because ‘the middle class woman began
to write’.

Literary texts offer a rich source of linguistic input and can help
learners to practise the four skills - speaking, listening, reading and writing
- in addition to exemplifying grammatical structures and presenting new
vocabulary. Literature can help learners to develop their understanding of
other cultures, awareness of ‘difference' and to develop tolerance and
understanding. Literature can open horizons of possibility, allowing
students to question, interpret, connect, and explore. To sum up, literature
provides students with an incomparably rich source of authentic material
over a wide range of registers.
 SOURCES
PRIMARY SOURCES
1. Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice, Longman Penguin Readers 1998
2. Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre, Longman Penguin Readers 1999
3. Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Longman Penguin Readers 2003

SECONDARY SOURCES
• Auerbach, Emily, Searching for Jane Austen, Univ. of Wisconsin, 2006
• Blain, Virginia, Isobel Grundy and Patricia Clements, The Feminist Companion to
Literature in English. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1990. viii-ix
• Daiches, David, A Critical History Of English Literature, volumes I-IV, Secker
& Warburg, London 1965
• Lewes, George Henry, The Novels of Jane Austen, Blackwood’s Edinburgh
Magazine 1859
• Samson, George, The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, London,
1993
• Toma, Irina, Victorian Contrasts, Ed UPG Ploiesti 2006
• Zirra, Ioana, Contributions of the British 19th Century – the Victorian Age –
to the History of Literature and Ideas, Ed Univ. Bucuresti 2003
• Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class 1963
• Vizental, Adriana, Strategies of Teaching and Testing English as a Foreign
Language, Polirom 2007