Virginia Woolf Social Criticism Law Case Study
- Country :
Australia
Instructions
Choose one of the following questions and use it as a basis to form an argument for your essay. Remember that you can choose to agree, disagree, partially agree, etc, with the contentions and statements made below. You can respond to what is proposed by creating an argument statement, for example (refer to q 1), you could state: In this essay, I argue that Austen was a shallow writer who rarely explored deep emotions, whereas Bronte’s Wuthering Heights demonstrates that she was ‘a mistress’ of deep emotions.
Questions
- Virginia Woolf contended that Austen was ‘a mistress of much deeper emotions than appears on the surface’. What is meant by this? Discuss the statement in relation to Pride and Prejudice.
- Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles is primarily a novel concerned with social criticism rather than romance. Discuss.
- Wuthering Heights predominantly displays romantic narrative elements, including elements of the Gothic genre. Discuss whether this is an accurate description of this novel (please note, you need to read the whole novel in order to do this question).
- Compare Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy (as a couple) to Elizabeth and Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. How does the position of women and gender relations differ between the two texts? Does this affect how we read the power relations in the two texts?
- Bridget Jones’s Diary has been described as a modern Pride and Prejudice. Discuss the gender norms at work in the text, and how they conform to Romance or Realism.
- Please note: For the adaptation question, you may be able to locate academic papers about the film version, or you may need to establish your comparison by referring to papers about the novels.
Assessment Criteria/Submission/Important Information
Criteria:
• Attention to all aspects of the specific question
• Relevant references to at least four critical texts: two from the Reader and two that you locate yourself in the library, or through the library database Selection of appropriate sections and quotations from fictional text(s), correctly referenced
• Demonstrated understanding of some critical debates around the terms ‘romance’ and ‘realism’ and, where appropriate, ‘modernism’ and ‘gender’
• Effective academic English expression
• Accurate use of referencing throughout including list of references (Harvard system)
