Set texts at school

Apology accepted - it happens, don't worry!

Personally I don't think quotas make sense. Few texts are so simple, and if they were genuinely purely 'sexist' or 'racist' texts (none mentioned on this thread are, IMO), no-one in their right mind would study them.

sorry LRD it was your 6.30am post - perhaps I misunderstood.

In the end I suppose it's up to the school. Perhapsthey should have a quota of 'sexist' texts, some 'racist' ones.

Well the whole notion of 'great literature' and a 'canon' is up for debate anyway!

Lots of male writers are sexist ... so are lots of female writers. Much of 'great literature' was written in very different times and it's fair to recognize that.

But there is a very influential myth that only men really write 'great literature', and that you have to look very hard to find women doing it at all .. so texts by women must, automatically, be second rate. This is to ignore the fact that several women writers (eg. George Eliot, the Brontes) first published under male names and were therefore judged by their societies on exactly the same criteria as men. There are a lot of brilliant women writers out there.

Well the set texts my son has done are: Of Mice and Men, Macbeth, A Christmas Carol, and An Inspector Calls. I think with those texts there is a lot of breadth about themes, and some strong women.
I cannot see my son getting through The Color Purple etc. But then he is a male reluctant reader.
Maybe "Cannery Row" would be a good alternative, I can still picture the wife who hung curtains while living in a drainage pipe.

Actually getting someone to say "She deserved it" of Curly's wife would be a great point to bring out and challenge pupils attitudes.

Chinua Achebe thought so!

Norman, I agree with you - I do think kids should be challenged to notice this stuff and think critically, and that things like Heart of darkness and so on should be read.

I would just also say I think it's probably very difficult to get them thinking about that stuff critically, and I think quite often that's not what ends up happening. Certainly not at GSCE.

'amd LRD - you think you Shouldn't critically analyse a text because as a feminist you don't agree with it's themes? Even though it is situated in a certain time and expresses those values? Even though it is a work of great literature?
Of course you can examine it from a feminist perspective?'

I don't know how I gave that impression, because that's not what I think at all! What I'm saying is, a feminist reading of these texts mentioned in the OP - especially if they're all read together (which I think is the big problem), will show students very clearly how misogynistic literature can be. It's a pity to give only that impression.

If you notice, I mentioned studying Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Webster, and enjoying doing so. Those are all male authors and all have written plenty that you could dislike, as a woman reader or a student of male/female relations. But they are great texts about women and shape our literary heritage. What makes you think I don't recognize that?

The thing is, there are also plenty of great texts written by and about women that get missed out on in schools, and that's a shame.

'sexist books'

Bloody hell. Children deserve to read great literature and to be challenged to think critically about it. And they are capable of it and tackling these situated assumptions of 'sexism of rape, unwanted pregnancy, racism etc
It is not beyond them. These issues are as salient to teens as they were when these books were written

So was Joseph Conrad a racist?

I don't think OMAM is especially great lit either - it's very crass and point-hammered-home stuff. Which, as I say, is why I think it was probably chosen.

You're so right, OP.

I think it's made worse by the fact that, IMO, Mice and Men has been chosen because its 'key themes' are pretty clear - certainly in terms of what Steinbeck wants the reader to take from the book. And from what I can see, GCSE English is very much about 'what does the writer want the reader to learn, and how does the writer go about making the reader understand this'.

(It then comes as a shock for anyone who does Eng Lit at degree level, that we are NOT just interested in writer-message/moral-reader, and there might be a bit more you can say about a text than that, but I digress.....)

I think if you had a group of lower ability students in year 11, you would really struggle to get them to think about a text in terms of what the writer didn't say, or didn't mean to say, if that makes sense. It is obviously going to be easier to focus on how Steinbeck makes the reader feel sympathy with Lennie/George.

But the more I think about it, the worse it is. And yet that book has only ever been controversial because it has been thought to encourage euthanasia .

All the endless prefiguring about how much Lennie likes to pet things and he pets them too much and they die..... dodgy stuff.

amd LRD - you think you Shouldn't critically analyse a text because as a feminist you don't agree with it's themes? Even though it is situated in a certain time and expresses those values? Even though it is a work of great literature?
Of course you can examine it from a feminist perspective?

If you pursue the line that literature must adhere to a certain set of modern values or be banned then I guess Heart of Darkness is out, Merchant of Venice too.

Apologies for rubbish typing!

I agree, 3 sexist texts seems lacking in variety! But do schools often choose such a narrow range from the overall selection? That seems like a bad idea from the point of view of answering exam questions, never mind the sexism which the children are absorbing from a constant dripfeed.

At GCSE we were marginally better off. We did at least compare and contrast "The Seduction" by Eileen McAuley and "Cousin Kate" by Christina Rosetti.

Other than that I remember Of Mice and Men, An Inspector Calls and Macbeth.

Oh, I have remembered that for AS/A2 we also had a poetry anthology: 8/29 were by women in the Post-1770 section, and (unsurprisingly) only 2:25 for Pre-1770. And I just looked through it and none of my notes seem to deal with women's issues/feminism. It's all stuff like "use of naturalistic imagery", "emphasis on vowels". There's one small note on Christina Rosetti's "Remember" - he will no longer control her - I think that was it. :(

Greythorne I think it is entirely possible tonliok at feminist themes in Mice and Men, but am not a teacher.

I studied GCSE eng lit 20 years ago and chose Grace Nicholls' poetry and Margaret Atwood the edible woman for an extended essay.

We also considered the race dynamics in a Paul Theroux short story, religious themes in Lord of the Flies and the female characters in A Taste of Honey

Our school eng lit department was erm progressive though

For AS and A2 we did: Shakespeare X 3 (Hamlet, Othello and The Tempest), Tennyson, Brian Friel (Translations), Tennessee Williams (Streetcar), Louis de Bernières (Captain Corelli) and finally Kate Chopin (Awakening and short stories).

But even with Kate Chopin I seem to recall we looked at it from a historical and racial/cultural perspective rather than a feminist one. The teacher even mocked the feminist aspects in passing. What a wasted opportunity amongst all the rest of that male dominated stuff.

I hated English Lit.

But I've just found the specification from the time and we could have done Aphra Behn, Caryl Churchill, Gillian Clarke, Elizabeth Jennings, Margaret Atwood, Iris Murdoch, Carol Ann Duffy, Carol Shields. Plus Austen, Shelley, Emily Bronte and Gaskell.

Now I know they're not all feminist writes per se, but at least it would have been better than just the one. And I had no idea we could even have done. The other two A level groups did nothing written by a woman. Unit 5 had 21 writers listed - only one woman. We also only had to done one Shakespeare play, there was a massive choice for the A2 module.

I know you can study anything from a feminist perspective, but I think it's a disgrace that in 2003 we had to study 8 texts and only one was by a woman, and 2/3 of my year had 8 men.

I did Of Mice and Men in school for O-Grade, 30 or so years ago I suppose now. Even then, and with teachers who weren't particularly feminist, I can remember a discussion about why Curly's wife was described the way she was, why she didn't even get a name, what the author was doing by describing her the way he did.

I don't recall any discussion of the idea she was "asking for it", but we certainly looked at how authors choose to describe characters and events, and how that affects the overall story.

I thought that was the norm for studying English?

Oh, and how could I forget, we also studied Marlowe (Dr Faustus)