Step 1 Pre-reading Activities: (15 minutes) 步骤一：读前活动（15分钟） 1. Warming up questions: (5 minutes) (1) What does “room” mean here? (2)What does “one’s” refer to? 热身问题:（5分钟） 1. 题目中的“房间”意味着什么？ 2. 而题目中“一个人的”又代表什么？ 2. Background information: (10 minutes) 背景信息: (10分钟) (1)Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) Adeline) Virginia Woolf (née Stephen;25 January 1882 –28 March 1941) was anEnglish novelist andessayist regarded as one of the foremostmodernistliterary figures of the twentieth century. During theinterwar period, Woolf was a significant figure inLondon literary society and a member of theBloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novelsMrs Dalloway(1925),To the Lighthouse(1927), andOrlando(1928), and the book-length essayA Room of One's Own(1929) with its famous dictum, "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Personal life Virginia Stephen married writerLeonard Woolfin1912, referring to him during their engagement as a "penniless Jew." The couple shared a close bond, and in1937Woolf wrote in her diary "Love-making — after 25 years can’t be attained by my unattractive countenance ... you see it is enormous pleasure being wanted, a pleasure that I have never felt." They also collaborated professionally, in 1917 founding theHogarth Press, which subsequently published most of Woolf's work.[2]The ethos ofBloomsbury discouraged sexual exclusivity, and in 1922, Woolf metVita Sackville-West. After a tentative start, they began a relationship that lasted through most of the1920s.[3]In 1928, Woolf presented Sackville-West withOrlando, afantastical biography in which the eponymous hero's life spans three centuries and bothgenders. It has been called byNigel Nicolson, Vita Sackville-West's son, "the longest and most charming love letter in literature."[4]After their affair ended, the two women remained friends until Woolf's death. Death After completing the manuscript of her last (posthumously published) novelBetween the Acts, Woolf fell victim to a depression similar to that which she had earlier experienced. The war, theLuftwaffe's destruction of herLondonhomes, as well as the cool reception given to her biography of her late friendRoger Fry, worsened her condition until she was unable to work.[5] On28 March 1941, rather than having anothernervous breakdown, Woolf drowned herself by weighing her pockets with stones and walking into theRiver Ousenear her home. Her body was not found untilApril 18. Her husband buried her remains under a tree in the garden of their house inRodmell,Sussex. (2)William Shakespeare (baptised26 April1564–23 April 1616)[a]was anEnglish poet andplaywright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in theEnglish languageand the world's pre-eminent dramatist.[1]He is often calledEngland's national poetand the "BardofAvon" (or simply "The Bard"). His surviving works consist of 38plays,[b]154sonnets, two longnarrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language, and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[2] Shakespeare was born and raised inStratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18 he marriedAnne Hathaway, who bore him three children:Susanna, and twinsHamnetandJudith. Between 1585 and 1592 he began a successful career inLondon as an actor, writer, and part owner of theplaying companytheLord Chamberlain's Men, later known as theKing's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as hissexuality,religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him werewritten by others.[3] Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1590 and 1613. His early plays were mainlycomediesandhistories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. Next he wrote mainlytragediesuntil about 1608, includingHamlet, King Lear, andMacbeth, considered some of the finest examples in the English language. In his last phase, he wrotetragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime, and in 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published theFirst Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. TheRomantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and theVictorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence thatGeorge Bernard Shawcalled "bardolatry".[4]In the twentieth century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are consistently performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world.
Step 2 Text Analysis: (60 minutes) 步骤二：文章解读（60分钟） A Room of One’s Own(1929);(now regarded as a classic feminist work) All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. 1)Themes, Motifs & Symbols 主旨，主题及象征 #Themes The Importance of Money For the narrator ofA Room of One’s Own, money is the primary element that prevents women from having a room of their own, and thus, having money is of the utmost importance. Because women do not have power, their creativity has been systematically stifled throughout the ages. The narrator writes, “Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time . . .” She uses this quotation to explain why so few women have written successful poetry. She believes that the writing of novels lends itself more easily to frequent starts and stops, so women are more likely to write novels than poetry: women must contend with frequent interruptions because they are so often deprived of a room of their own in which to write. Without money, the narrator implies, women will remain in second place to their creative male counterparts. The financial discrepancy between men and women at the time of Woolf’s writing perpetuated the myth that women were less successful writers. The Subjectivity of Truth InA Room of One’s Own, the narrator argues that even history is subjective. What she seeks is nothing less than “the essential oil of truth,” but this eludes her, and she eventually concludes that no such thing exists. The narrator later writes, “When a subject is highly controversial, one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.” To demonstrate the idea that opinion is the only thing that a person can actually “prove,” she fictionalizes her lecture, claiming, “Fiction is likely to contain more truth than fact.” Reality is not objective: rather, it is contingent upon the circumstances of one’s world. This argument complicates her narrative: Woolf forces her reader to question the veracity of everything she has presented as truth so far, and yet she also tells them that the fictional parts of any story contain more essential truth than the factual parts. With this observation she recasts the accepted truths and opinions of countless literary works. #Motifs Interruptions When the narrator is interrupted inA Room of One’s Own, she generally fails to regain her original concentration, suggesting that women without private spaces of their own, free of interruptions, are doomed to difficulty and even failure in their work.While the narrator is describing Oxbridge University in chapter one, her attention is drawn to a cat without a tail. The narrator finds this cat to be out of place, and she uses the sight of this cat to take her text in a different direction. The oddly jarring and incongruous sight of a cat without a tail—which causes the narrator to completely lose her train of thought—is an exercise in allowing the reader to experience what it might feel like to be a woman writer. Although the narrator goes on to make an interesting and valuable point about the atmosphere at her luncheon, she has lost her original point. This shift underscores her claim that women, who so often lack a room of their own and the time to write, cannot compete against the men who are not forced to struggle for such basic necessities. Gender Inequality ThroughoutA Room of One’s Own, the narrator emphasizes the fact that women are treated unequally in her society and that this is why they have produced less impressive works of writing than men. To illustrate her point, the narrator creates a woman named Judith Shakespeare, the imaginary twin sister of William Shakespeare. The narrator uses Judith to show how society systematically discriminates against women. Judith is just as talented as her brother William, but while his talents are recognized and encouraged by their family and the rest of their society, Judith’s are underestimated and explicitly deemphasized. Judith writes, but she is secretive and ashamed of it. She is engaged at a fairly young age; when she begs not to have to marry, her beloved father beats her. She eventually commits suicide. The narrator invents the tragic figure of Judith to prove that a woman as talented as Shakespeare could never have achieved such success. Talent is an essential component of Shakespeare’s success, but because women are treated so differently, a female Shakespeare would have fared quite differently even if she’d had as much talent as Shakespeare did. #Symbols A Room of One’s Own The central point ofA Room of One’s Ownis that every woman needs a room of her own—something men are able to enjoy without question. A room of her own would provide a woman with the time and the space to engage in uninterrupted writing time. During Woolf’s time, women rarely enjoyed these luxuries. They remained elusive to women, and, as a result, their art suffered. But Woolf is concerned with more than just the room itself. She uses the room as a symbol for many larger issues, such as privacy, leisure time, and financial independence, each of which is an essential component of the countless inequalities between men and women. Woolf predicts that until these inequalities are rectified, women will remain second-class citizens and their literary achievements will also be branded as such. 2)Key ideas of each part 文章每一部分的主题思想 Para.1She tried to find some information about women in history but failed——to little information. Para.2Contrast: Imaginatively (in fiction) ——very important,, very great practically (in historical records as well as in history) ——insignificant Para.3.Since there were few facts about women in history, she suggested to rewrite history. Para.4.She tried to create an imaginary figure who was as brilliant as William Shakespeare, but there was no doubt about the tragic fate about this Judith Para.5-6Again She emphasized the point that women had no place in history. 3)Summary ofA Room of One's Own 文章的摘要 The dramatic setting ofA Room of One's Ownis that Woolf has been invited to lecture on the topic of Women and Fiction. She advances the thesis that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." Her essay is constructed as a partly-fictionalized narrative of the thinking that led her to adopt this thesis. She dramatizes that mental process in the character of an imaginarynarrator("call meMary Beton,Mary Seton,Mary Carmichaelor by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance") who is in her same position, wrestling with the same topic. The narrator begins her investigation at Oxbridge College, where she reflects on the different educational experiences available to men and women as well as on more material differences in their lives. She then spends a day in the British Library perusing the scholarship on women, all of which has written by men and all of which has been written in anger. Turning to history, she finds so little data about the everyday lives of women that she decides to reconstruct their existence imaginatively. The figure ofJudith Shakespeareis generated as an example of the tragic fate a highly intelligent woman would have met with under those circumstances. In light of this background, she considers the achievements of the major women novelists of the nineteenth century and reflects on the importance of tradition to an aspiring writer. A survey of the current state of literature follows, conducted through a reading the first novel of one of the narrator's contemporaries. Woolf closes the essay with an exhortation to her audience of women to take up the tradition that has been so hardly bequeathed to them, and to increase the endowment for their own daughters. 4）Key words and expressions 主要词汇表达 (1) avarice (2) memoir (3) anecdote (4) whisk away (5) parish register (6) poach (7) on the sly (8) lust (9) on the track of (10) wizard Step 3 Post-reading Activities: (12 minutes) 步骤三：读后活动（12分钟） Topic for Discussion (1)Why does Virginia Woolf suggest rewriting history? (2) What does the story of the imagined Shakespeare’s sister signify? (3) Do you agree with Woolf when she says that genius like Shakespeare’s is not born today among the working class? Explain. Step 4 Assignment: (3 minutes) 步骤四：作业（3分钟） 1.Exercises about the text 2. Reading skills: Reading the Feature Story in a Newspaper 3. Fast Reading & Exercises 4. Home reading:Aptitude Aplenty 5.Preview Unit 8
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