OUTLINE:

• Course evaluation.
• Final examination:  Wednesday, April 28, 11:30
• Periodicity checklist.
• Discussion of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape
• Possible further discussion of Woolf re. the questions below, if time allows.

GROUP ONE:  COMMENT ON WOOLF'S DESCRIPTION OF SHAKESPEARE'S SISTER (CHAPTER THREE).

• Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens":  "For these grandmothers and mothers of ours were not Saints, but Artists; driven to a numb and bleeding madness by the springs of creativity in them for which there was no release.  They were Creators, who lived lives of spiritual waste, because they were so rich in spirituality--which is the basis of Art--that the strain of enduring their unused and unwanted talent drove them insane.  Throwing away this spirituality was their pathetic attempt to lighten the soul to a weight their work-worn, sexually abused bodies could bear."
• Does this sound like Judith Shakespeare to you?
• What do you make of Judith in light of Woolf's own suicide (because of bipolar disorder)?

GROUP TWO:  COMMENT ON THE DIFFERENCE THAT WOOLF ATTRIBUTES TO THE SEXES.

• Would Woolf agree with the following chart?  Do you?
  • Female:  right brain, induction, process, concrete facts
  • Male:  left brain, deduction, product, abstract ideas
• What image do we get on 96 (Chapter 6, par. 2), and what does it suggest?  Cp. the fish in Chapter One.
• What is an androgynous mind, and what does Woolf mean by “man-womanly” and “woman-manly”?  (98, 104)
• Which male writers have "androgynous" minds?  (98, 103)
• Is it really true that women and men have different writing styles?  Is Woolf right or wrong?  (99)

GROUP THREE:  Woolf makes comments about men's portrayal of women in previous literature on the following pages:

• 35-36:  "Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.  Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle.  The glories of all our wars would be unknown.  We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheepskins or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste," etc.  "...mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action."
• 43:  "...women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time...."
• Do you think that the literature that we have studied this semester illustrates her points?