ADVANCED ENGLISH MODULE A WORKBOOK

MODULE A: COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TEXTS AND CONTEXTS

TEXTS IN TIME

F Scott Fitzgerald “The Great Gatsby” and Sonnets by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott FitzgeraldWORKSHEET ONE

Chapter One Comprehension Questions.

1. Why did Nick Carraway come East? How long did he plan to stay? How long did he actually stay?

2. Where did Nick find a house? What made the place “one of the strangest communities in North America”?

3. What are the very first things Nick tells us about Gatsby? How might this set the stage for what follows in the novel?

4. What are the initial impressions Nick gives us of Tom Buchanan? What phrases and images are used to create those impressions?

5. What mood is created through Fitzgerald’s description of the Buchanans’ house and the clothes of the two women on the sofa- Daisy and Miss Baker?

6. What are the initial impressions we gain of Daisy in Chapter One? How does Fitzgerald establish these impressions?

7. How does Fitzgerald establish in Chapter One that the Buchanans’ marriage is not a very happy one?

Chapter Two

1.What kind of place is Wilson’s garage and describe the area where it is?

2. What kind of person is Mr Wilson?

3. What are our initial impressions of Myrtle Wilson? How do those impressions change when we read all of Chapter Two?

Chapter Three

1. Describe how Fitzgerald uses accumulated detail to build a certain image of Gatsby’s house and the life he builds around himself.

2. What theories do people have about who Gatsby is and how he got his money?

3. How does Nick first get to meet Gatsby?

4. Describe the party at Gatsby’s in Chapter Three.

5. Why do you think Fitzgerald includes the incident of the car accident at then end of the party?

Chapter Four

1. What is the point of the long list of names of Gatsby’s guests at the start of Chapter Four?

2. What does Gatsby tell Nick of his life? What clues are there in this chapter about how Gatsby made his money?

3. What is Jordan Baker’s version of Daisy’s life? What do we learn from her about the true motives of Gatsby?

4. Find a sentence near the end of this Chapter that encapsulates Nick’s view of Jordan. Why does he stay with her and draw her close?

Chapter V

1. In this chapter Fitzgerald seeks to create for the reader the intensity, the magic of Gatsby’s love. How does Fitzgerald build up for us a strong sense of Gatsby’s emotional state at this point? Comment on any imagery used, on the use of dialogue and Nick’s comments as narrator.

2. What do we learn by implication of Daisy’s emotional state?

3. Compare and contrast Nick’s affair with Jordan Baker with Gatsby’s relationship with Daisy.

4. What do we know of Tom’s character already? How does this position us to adopt a certain attitude to the love affair between Daisy and Gatsby?

5. Comment on the effectiveness of Fitzgerald’s writing in this chapter. What techniques is he using to maintain the reader’s interest and suspense while developing a series of larger associations around characters and events?

6. So far, what impact does the social context have on Fitzgerald’s portrayal of love, relationships and the individual’s desire to achieve their dreams? Research more on the Roaring Twenties/the Jazz Age by using the website connection on the Wiki site for Advanced English.

THE GREAT GATSBY:

WORKSHEET 2

CHECK YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE PLOT: Fill in the Missing words.

The story is presented as the personal account of _____________ _________________, a young man from a Midwestern family who lived in New York after graduating from Yale in the early 1920s. ___________ declares that, following his father's advice, he avoids judging people: a habit that has caused trouble, exemplified by events concerning a man named _________.

__________ explains that in 1922 he was renting an inexpensive cottage sandwiched between two ______________ in West Egg, a seaside community of wealthy parvenus on Long Island Sound. Directly across the bay was ________ _______, inhabited by members of the "old aristocracy," including _______ and __________ Buchanan. ________ is Nick's second cousin once removed; Nick knew of her husband _________, a celebrated footballer and polo player at Yale. Nick describes the Buchanans through a visit to their opulent East Egg mansion: although phenomenally wealthy, _________'s glory days are behind him; he is brutish, snobbish, self-centred and overbearing and his wife _________, although engaging, "gay," and attractive, is spoilt, pampered and superficial and largely ignores her three-year-old daughter. Nick detects a strain in the marriage and _________'s friend ____________ Baker, a well-known lady golfer, tells him that Tom has a ______________ in New York City.

Travelling to the city together, Nick and Tom stop in the valley of _______________at a shabby garage owned by George ____________, where Nick is introduced to the owner's wife, ___________ . Her colorless husband George has no suspicion that she is Tom's mistress. Nick passively accompanies the pair to their urban love-nest, where Myrtle presides over a pretentious party that includes her sister Catherine. Catherine

______________ of the extramarital affair and informs Nick that both lovers cannot stand the people they married and would marry each other if Tom's wife was not a ____________ who "doesn't believe in divorce," something Nick knows to be untrue. Nick finds the evening increasingly unbearable but is unable to leave until Tom _________________________ in an ______________. Nick, half-drunk, leaves with Chester McKee, a would-be artistic photographer; Nick later wakens to blearily go off to his job as a _________________________.

Nick's next-door neighbor is the wealthy and mysterious _________ ________________, who each weekend throws lavish parties hosting hundreds of people. Nick receives a formal invitation from _____________'s butler and attends. The party is wild and fun, but he finds that none of the guests know much about ____________ and rumors about the man are contradictory. Many have never even met their host, as the parties are open and guests ____________________. Nick runs into _____________Baker, but they are separated while searching for __________. A man strikes up a conversation with Nick, claiming to recognise him from the US Army's First Division during the Great War. Nick mentions his difficulty in finding their host and the man reveals himself to be _____________ himself, surprising Nick, who had expected him to be older. ______________ invites Nick to more get-togethers, and an odd 'friendship' begins.

One day Gatsby appears in a magnificent ________________ roadster and drives Nick to New York City, irritating him with the odd statement that Jordan will be asking Nick for a favor on Gatsby's behalf. Gatsby then presents a clichéd description of his life as a wealthy dilettante and war hero to an incredulous Nick, but the latter is convinced when Gatsby displays a Montenegrin war decoration. Gatsby then introduces a bemused Nick to underworld figure __________ ____________________, but when Nick sees Tom and tries to introduce Gatsby, Gatsby disappears.

____________ reveals to Nick that Gatsby fell in love with ___________ before the war and hosts parties in the hope that she will visit. Gatsby has asked Jordan to ask Nick to get him a meeting with Daisy. Nick agrees: the reunion is initially awkward, but Gatsby and Daisy begin a love affair. An affair also begins for Nick and Jordan, but Nick knows of Jordan's shortcomings and understands that their relationship will be superficial.

Later, Daisy invites ________ and __________over to her mansion and the three, accompanied by _______ and ______________, depart for a hotel in the city at Tom's suggestion. Tom also insists that he and Gatsby switch cars; he has to stop to buy petrol from George Wilson. At the hotel, Tom begins to confront Gatsby asking “What kind of trouble do you think you are making” and the two men enter into a verbal showdown. Gatsby’s love for Daisy is now out in the open. In front of Gatsby, Daisy, Nick, and Jordan, Tom claims that he has been researching Gatsby. Tom alleges that Gatsby is a ______________ and expresses his loathing of him. Gatsby urges Daisy to say ____________________; Daisy says that ___________________________________________. Tom mockingly tells Gatsby that nothing can happen between him and Daisy. Gatsby retorts that the only reason Daisy married Tom was because he (Gatsby) was too __________to afford to marry Daisy at the time. Tom is angered and for the second time in the novel he visibly loses _____ ____________. By the end of this verbal battle between the two men Tom has clearly “defeated” Gatsby as Daisy _________________________________________________ from Gatsby. It is clear that she never wanted the confrontation and lacks the inner __________ to make a decisive break with Tom. Gatsby and Daisy drive off together in _____________ car while Tom, confident now that Daisy won’t leave him, takes his time getting home in the company of Nick and Jordan.

George Wilson, husband of Tom's mistress Myrtle, has been arguing with his wife. Myrtle runs outside only to be struck and killed by ____________ _______, which is driven by _____________. Daisy and Gatsby speed away. Later, Tom, Jordan, and Nick notice a commotion by the garage on their way to East Egg and stop. George Wilson, half-crazy with shock, rants about having seen a ____________ car and Tom tells Wilson privately that the yellow car he had been driving earlier in the day was not his, but Wilson does not seem to listen and Tom, Jordan, and Nick leave. The half-crazed Wilson, however, later makes a mental connection between the driver of the car and Myrtle's lover and resolves to pursue it.

The following day Nick learns the truth about the accident while breakfasting with Gatsby by his pool. Gatsby is depressed, unsure of whether Daisy still loves him and hoping for a call from her. Seeing himself as Gatsby's closest friend, Nick advises Gatsby to leave for a week. "They're [Daisy, Tom, Jordan] ___ ________ _____________," Nick says, "You're worth the whole ___________ _____________ ________ ____________." Gatsby smiles the irresistible smile that Nick describes as having "faced—or seemed to face—the whole world, then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor."

Wilson appears at the Buchanan mansion with _ ________, finding Tom packing to escape with Daisy. Tom, unaware of Daisy's culpability, names Gatsby as the _________ of the ____________ that killed Myrtle. Wilson finds Gatsby floating in his pool and ____________ him before ___________________________________.

Nick takes the responsibility to organise ______________ ______________. His attempt to find other mourners is virtually fruitless; not even Gatsby's shady business associates will attend. Apart from Nick, the only other mourners are "Owl Eyes," a Gatsby party guest, and Gatsby's father, Mr. __________. Left in the past by his son, he shows Nick a well-

worn photograph of their modest house and a notebook from Gatsby's youth that he feels illustrates his son's drive and ambition.

Nick severs connections with Jordan, and, after a brief run-in with Tom, Nick returns permanently to the Midwest, reflecting on Gatsby and the experience. Nick feels that the fast life of New York is not for him.

The Great Gatsby: Worksheet 3

Task: Read through the following Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Then answer the following questions. (About a paragraph each)

1. (Complete the sentences, using your knowledge of Fitzgerald’s life.) Part of the power of this novel is undoubtedly that Fitzgerald has written parts of himself into each of the three main male characters – Nick, Gatsby and Tom. Like Nick Fitzgerald … Like Gatsby ….. Like Tom ……

2. In what ways was Fitzgerald part of the rich and carefree lifestyle enjoyed by the privileged classes during the 1920’s? In what ways, like Nick, did he stand outside that society?

A BIOGRAPHY OF F SCOTT FITZGERALD

(adapted from Wikipedia with added comments)

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896. His father, Edward, was from Maryland, with an allegiance to the Old South and its values. Fitzgerald’s mother, Mary (Mollie) McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who became wealthy as a wholesale grocer in St. Paul. Both were Catholics.

    Edward Fitzgerald failed as a manufacturer of wicker furniture in St. Paul, and he became a salesman for Procter & Gamble in upstate New York. After he was dismissed in 1908, when his son was twelve, the family returned to St. Paul and lived on Mollie Fitzgerald’s inheritance. Fitzgerald attended the St. Paul Academy; his first writing to appear in print was a detective story in the school newspaper when he was thirteen.

Fitzgerald’s family background was not really wealthy. All his life he was on the edges of wealthy society but without the secure wealth or family connections to make him truly belong. Also he always remembered how his father’s dismissal from Proctor and Gamble left him a broken man. He knew that wealth and financial security could disappear overnight.

    During 1911-1913 he attended a Catholic prep school in New Jersey, where he met Father Sigourney Fay, who encouraged his ambitions for personal distinction and achievement. At Princeton University Fitzgerald neglected his studies for his literary apprenticeship. Fitzgerald left University in 1917 to join the army (the US had entered World War One) and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the infantry. Convinced that he would die in the war, he rapidly wrote a novel, “The Romantic Egotist”.

    In June 1918 Fitzgerald was assigned to Camp Sheridan, near Montgomery, Alabama. There he fell in love with a celebrated belle, eighteen-year-old Zelda Sayre, the youngest daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge. The romance intensified Fitzgerald’s hopes for the success of his novel, but after revision it was rejected by Scribners for a second time. The war ended just before he was to be sent overseas; after his discharge in 1919 he went to New York City to seek his fortune in order to marry. Unwilling to wait while Fitzgerald succeeded in the advertisement business and unwilling to live on his small salary, Zelda Sayre broke their engagement.

    Fitzgerald quit his job in July 1919 and returned to St. Paul to rewrite his novel as This Side of Paradise. It was accepted by editor Maxwell Perkins of Scribners in September. Set mainly at Princeton and described by its author as “a quest novel,” This Side of Paradise traces the career aspirations and love disappointments of Amory Blaine.

    The publication of This Side of Paradise on March 26, 1920, made the twenty-four-year-old Fitzgerald famous almost overnight, and a week later he married Zelda Sayre in New York. Fitzgerald was famous but not really that rich and his lifestyle with Zelda was well beyond his income. They embarked on an extravagant life as young celebrities. The Fitzgeralds took an apartment in New York City where he wrote his second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, a naturalistic chronicle of the dissipation of Anthony and Gloria Patch. When Zelda Fitzgerald became pregnant they took their first trip to Europe in 1921 and then settled in St. Paul for the birth of their only child, Frances Scott (Scottie) Fitzgerald, who was born in October 1921.

    Next Fitzgerald planned to become rich by writing a play for Broadway but the play was not a success. In the fall of 1922 they moved to Great Neck, Long Island, in order to be near Broadway (New York). The distractions of Great Neck and New York prevented Fitzgerald from making progress on his third novel. During this time his drinking increased. He was an alcoholic, but he wrote sober. Zelda Fitzgerald regularly got “tight,” but she was not an alcoholic. There were frequent domestic rows, usually triggered by drinking bouts.

    Seeking the calm needed for his work, the Fitzgeralds moved to France in the spring of 1924. There he wrote The Great Gatsby during the summer and fall in Valescure near St. Raphael. In France the Fitzgeralds’ rocky marriage was further damaged by Zelda’s involvement with a French naval aviator.

    The Fitzgeralds spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Rome, where he revised The Great Gatsby; they were en route to Paris when the novel was published in April. The Great Gatsby marked a striking advance in Fitzgerald’s technique, utilizing a complex structure and a controlled narrative point of view. Fitzgerald’s achievement received critical praise, but sales of Gatsby were disappointing, though the stage and movie rights brought additional income. It is now widely regarded as Fitzgerald’s greatest novel.

   The Fitzgeralds remained in France until the end of 1926, alternating between Paris and the Riviera. Fitzgerald made little progress on his fourth novel, a study of American expatriates in France. During these years Zelda Fitzgerald’s unconventional behaviour became increasingly eccentric.

    The Fitzgeralds returned to America to escape the distractions of France. After a short, unsuccessful stint of screen writing in Hollywood, Fitzgerald rented “Ellerslie,” a mansion near Wilmington, Delaware, in the spring of 1927. The family remained at “Ellerslie” for two years interrupted by a visit to Paris in the summer of 1928, but Fitzgerald was still unable to make significant progress on his novel. At this time Zelda Fitzgerald commenced ballet training, intending to become a professional dancer. The Fitzgeralds returned to France in the spring of 1929, where Zelda’s intense ballet work damaged her health and contributed to the couple’s estrangement. In April 1930 she suffered her first breakdown. Work on the novel was again suspended as he wrote short stories to pay for her psychiatric treatment.

    The Fitzgeralds returned to America in the fall of 1931 and rented a house in Montgomery. Fitzgerald made a second unsuccessful trip to Hollywood in 1931. Zelda Fitzgerald suffered a relapse in February 1932 and entered Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. She spent the rest of her life as a resident or outpatient of sanitariums.

    In 1932, while a patient at Johns Hopkins, Zelda Fitzgerald rapidly wrote Save Me the Waltz. Her autobiographical novel generated considerable bitterness between the Fitzgeralds, for he regarded it as pre-empting the material that he was using in his novel-in-progress. Fitzgerald rented “La Paix,” a house outside Baltimore, where he completed his fourth novel, Tender Is the Night. Published in 1934, his most ambitious novel was a commercial failure, and its merits were matters of critical dispute. Set in France during the 1920s, Tender Is the Night examines the deterioration of Dick Diver, a brilliant American psychiatrist, during the course of his marriage to a wealthy mental patient.

    The 1936-1937 period is known as “the crack-up” from the title of an essay Fitzgerald wrote in 1936. Ill, drunk, in debt, and unable to write commercial stories, he lived in hotels in the region near Asheville, North Carolina, where in 1936 Zelda Fitzgerald entered Highland Hospital. Fitzgerald went to Hollywood alone in the summer of 1937 with a six-month Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer screenwriting contract at $1,000 a week. The $91,000 he earned from MGM was a great deal of money during the late Depression years but, although Fitzgerald paid off most of his debts, he was unable to save. After MGM dropped his option at the end of 1938, Fitzgerald worked as a freelance script writer and wrote short-short stories for Esquire. He began his Hollywood novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, in 1939 and had written more than half of a working draft when he died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940. Zelda Fitzgerald died in a fire at Highland Hospital in 1948.

Zelda and Scott's grave in Rockville, Maryland, is inscribed with the final sentence of The Great Gatsby

    F. Scott Fitzgerald died believing himself a failure. The obituaries were condescending, and he seemed destined for literary obscurity. By 1960, however, he had achieved a secure place among America’s enduring writers. The Great Gatsby, a work that seriously examines the theme of aspiration in an American setting, has become regarded as a great American novel.

More Background to The Great Gatsby

The character of Daisy is partly based on Zelda. Gatsby is rejected by Daisy for financial reasons in 1917. He re-enters her life in financial triumph, and now that he is wealthy, Daisy becomes his lover. All this closely mirrors Fitzgerald's own experiences with Zelda. However, Daisy is also largely modelled on an earlier girl Fitzgerald fell in love with when he was 19. Ginevra King (1898-1980), the daughter of a wealthy Chicago businessman, grew up amidst the Chicago social scene. Ginevra first met Fitzgerald while visiting her roommate from Westover, Marie Hershey, in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1915. She was 17, Fitzgerald was 19. According to letters and diary entries, they both fell in love. They sent letters back and forth for months, and their passionate romance continued until January 1917. In August 1916, Fitzgerald first wrote down the words, thought to have been said to him by Ginevra’s father: "Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls."

On July 15, 1918, Ginevra wrote to Fitzgerald, telling of her engagement to William Mitchell, the son of her father's business associate. They married later that year and had three children. In 1937 she left Mitchell for businessman John T. Pirie, Jr. That year she also met Fitzgerald for the last time in Hollywood; when she asked him which character was based on her in the novel The Beautiful and the Damned, Fitzgerald replied, "Which bitch do you think you are?"

The writing of The Great Gatsby

Fitzgerald started planning it in June 1922 and began the writing in 1923. He ended up discarding most of a false start, some of which would resurface in the story "Absolution."[2] Unlike his previous works, Fitzgerald intended to edit and reshape Gatsby thoroughly, believing that it held the potential to launch him toward literary acclaim. He told his editor Max Perkins that the novel was a "consciously artistic achievement" and a "purely creative work — not trashy imaginings as in my stories but the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world." He added later, during the editing process, that he felt "an enormous power in me now, more than I've ever had." [3]

After the birth of their child, the Fitzgeralds moved to Great Neck, Long Island in October 1922, appropriating Great Neck as the setting for The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald's neighbors included such newly-wealthy New Yorkers as writer Ring Lardner, actor Lew Fields and comedian Ed Wynn.[4] Great Neck, on the shores of Long Island Sound, sat across a bay from Manhasset Neck or Cow Neck Peninsula, which was home to many of New York's wealthiest established families. In his novel, Great Neck became the new-money peninsula of "West Egg" and Manhasset Neck the old-money peninsula of "East Egg".[5]

Progress on the novel was slow. In May 1924, the Fitzgeralds moved to the French Riviera, where he completed the novel. In November, he sent the draft to his publisher Perkins and his agent Harold Ober. The Fitzgeralds again relocated, this time to Rome, for the winter. Fitzgerald made revisions through the winter after Perkins informed him that the novel was too vague and Gatsby's biographical section too long. Content after a few rounds of revision, Fitzgerald returned the final batch of revised galleys in the middle of February 1925.[6]

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

I. "I thought once how Theocritus had sung..."

I thought once how Theocritus had sungOf the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,Who each one in a gracious hand appearsTo bear a gift for mortals, old or young:And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,Those of my own life, who by turns had flungA shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,So weeping, how a mystic Shape did moveBehind me, and drew me backward by the hair;And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, ---'Guess now who holds thee?' --- 'Death,' I said. But, there,The silver answer rang, --- 'Not Death, but Love.'

XIII. "And wilt thou have me fashion into speech

And wilt thou have me fashion into speechThe love I bear thee, finding words enough,And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,Between our faces, to cast light on each?---I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teachMy hand to hold my spirit so far offFrom myself---me---that I should bring thee proofIn words, of love hid in me out of reach.Nay, let the silence of my womanhoodCommend my woman-love to thy belief,---Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,And rend the garment of my life, in brief,By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

XIV. "If thou must love me, let it be for nought..."

If thou must love me, let it be for noughtExcept for love's sake only. Do not say'I love her for her smile---her look---her wayOf speaking gently,---for a trick of thoughtThat falls in well with mine, and certes broughtA sense of pleasant ease on such a day'---For these things in themselves, Belovèd, mayBe changed, or change for thee,---and love, so wrought,May be unwrought so. Neither love me forThine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,---A creature might forget to weep, who boreThy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!But love me for love's sake, that evermoreThou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

XXI. "Say over again, and yet once over again..."

Say over again, and yet once over again,That thou dost love me. Though the word repeatedShould seem 'a cuckoo song,' as thou dost treat it,Remember, never to the hill or plain,Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strainComes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.Belovèd, I, amid the darkness greetedBy a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt's pain,Cry, 'Speak once more---thou lovest!' Who can fearToo many stars, though each in heaven shall roll,Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?Say thou dost love me, love me, love me---tollThe silver iterance!---only minding, Dear,To love me also in silence with thy soul.

XXII. "When our two souls stand up erect and strong..."

When our two souls stand up erect and strong,Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,Until the lengthening wings break into fireAt either curvèd point,---what bitter wrongCan the earth do to us, that we should not longBe here contented? Think! In mounting higher,The angels would press on us and aspireTo drop some golden orb of perfect songInto our deep, dear silence. Let us stayRather on earth, Belovèd,---where the unfitContrarious moods of men recoil awayAnd isolate pure spirits, and permitA place to stand and love in for a day,With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

XXVIII. "My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!..."

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!And yet they seem alive and quiveringAgainst my tremulous hands which loose the stringAnd let them drop down on my knee to-night.This said,---he wished to have me in his sightOnce, as a friend: this fixed a day in springTo come and touch my hand . . . a simple thing,Yet I wept for it!---this, . . . the paper's light . . .Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailedAs if God's future thundered on my past.This said, I am thine---and so its ink has paledWith lying at my heart that beat too fast.And this . . . O Love, thy words have ill availedIf, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

XXXII. "The first time that the sun rose on thine oath..."

The first time that the sun rose on thine oathTo love me, I looked forward to the moonTo slacken all those bonds which seemed too soonAnd quickly tied to make a lasting troth.Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe;And, looking on myself, I seemed not oneFor such man's love!---more like an out-of-tuneWorn viol, a good singer would be wrothTo spoil his song with, and which, snatched in haste,Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note.I did not wrong myself so, but I placedA wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float'Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced,---And great souls, at one stroke, may do and doat.

XLIII. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of Being and ideal Grace.I love thee to the level of everyday'sMost quiet need, by sun and candle-light.I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.I love thee with a passion put to useIn my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.I love thee with a love I seemed to loseWith my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese

Sonnet 1

EBB opens the sonnet sequence by placing herself in the tradition of pastoral love poetry going right back to the ancient Greeks. From Theocritus to Petrarch to Shakespeare it is a male-dominated poetic tradition marked by stereotypes. She enters this tradition, she insists, to write her own story. In the first four lines it is “the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years” but in the second quatrain they become “the sad years, the melancholy years,/Those of my own life” and they bring not gifts but a shadow. Prior to meeting the beloved, her life had been dominated by griefs, by losses, by melancholy and illness. This is no convention – it is her own personal story.

In the final sestet she becomes aware of “a mystic Shape” that comes behind her and takes control over her. She thinks it is Death only to be told it is “Not Death, but Love”. The sequence thus opens by placing opposite each other the twin powers of Death and Love, or Thanatos and Eros, two realities that break into our lives and remake us, two forces far stronger than ourselves.

The voice that rings out and answers her is a silver voice – silver is precious, beautiful, but not the highest metal which is gold. Is there some hint here that the moment of falling in love, having fallen into the power of love, is wonderful but something further, more precious, lies beyond it? The image of “silver” is carried on in later sonnets, notably Sonnet XXI in the second last line as “the silver iterance” of the lover saying ‘I love you’ that stands in contrast to the silent love of the soul. In Sonnet XXII it is only the supernatural angels that possess “some golden orb of perfect song”.

In the first Sonnet the speaker recounts the moment of first being overcome by love, first realising that her being has been remade by love.

Sonnet XIII

(roughly paraphrasing)First four lines: Do you really want me to shape into speech, craft into poems, the love I feel for you? Are words so important to you that you think they can be like a bright torch showing us who we really are, making an image of us as lovers, that will be strong enough to endure the tough stuff life will throw at us? I have written this bundle of poems. I give them to you.

Second quatrain: The reality of love is something hidden in me and out of reach and I can’t achieve the objectivity and control that would let me

both have the distance needed to write of love and be the one actually living it, experiencing it. In a way, like Nick in The great Gatsby, she is trying to be both “within and without”, simultaneously part of the action and the one recording it and reflecting on it.

First Tercet (3 lines): My experience of love and my whole being is a woman’s and so quite outside the whole verbalising, sonnet-making tradition of the Western canon. Forget all the posturings of love sonnets. I am inside “the silence of my womanhood”. In the play of the conventional sonnet-narrative/love-narrative I am at the stage of being the “wooed” but “unwon” woman, stranded on her pedestal.

Last tercet: Let the silence of my womanhood tear the garment, the fabric of my life through fearless, but silent bravery. If my heart was really to pour out its feelings they would include immense quantities of grief. My silence is largely to shield you, my beloved, from the full force of this grief.

In narrative terms the speaker is now at the stage of needing silence to let love transform her. Conventional language and imagery is of little help since her love is a woman’s, quite different from the male-narrative of traditional love poetry. Moreover, the ability to trust this love must come gradually since her life has a great undertow of grief (the death of her mother, the death of her brother, prolonged illness, pain, isolation, no longer being young).

She is frightened of speaking too much. The grief inside her, all that is trapped inside her, may be too much for the beloved who may turn away.

Sonnet XIV.

The rhyme scheme in this sonnet preserves the traditional divide between the octet and the sestet (a b b a a b b a/ c d c d c d). However, the meaning flows continuously through this sonnet with little sense of a volta (a sudden turn in the meaning or message of the poem) in the tercet. The volta comes only in the last two lines.

(paraphrase)Octet: Don’t love me for my looks, my smile, the sound of my voice, the way I think, the fact that our thoughts and concerns match so well. Anything of these things could change and then you might stop loving me.

Sestet: Also don’t love me out of pity. Once I had your love I might stop weeping and then you would also stop loving me. Love me just for the sake of love so your love can be eternal.

The speaker is here implicitly responding to praise and words of love from the beloved. All the things a man might say about how wonderful, beautiful, intelligent she is as a woman only make her worried. She is taking control of the situation, putting words in the beloved’s mouth in order to rebut them. She doesn’t want to be put on any kind of pedestal – not of good looks, not of intelligence, not of being the perfect companion, not of being the one who is so needy. Let love just be an unqualified miracle.

In poetic terms note how beautifully shaped this poem is. Using a mostly monosyllabic, very simple vocabulary, EBB weaves rhyme and alliteration to make her thoughts memorable and powerful. The last three lines are woven together with alliteration : the words “long . . lose .. love” binding back and forth across each other.Note too how her simple direct language lets her capture male self-centredness so effectively - “for a trick of thought/That falls in well with mine”.

This sonnet echoes very powerfully against the narrative of The Great Gatsby where both the narrator and Gatsby give Daisy the aura of the idealised woman, the beloved on a pedestal, longed-for from afar, the green light across the bay, “the king’s daughter, the golden girl”, the one with the overwhelming “indiscreet” voice that draws in all who hear her, the one whose presence evokes magic places, wondrous enchanted events one is about to join in. The novel may also savage her as wilful, spoilt, fearful, cowardly – but the novel never gives her a voice, a real inwardness, an equality with the voices of Nick and Gatsby. Her cry of “You want too much” is maybe never really listened to in the novel.

Sonnet XXI

At this point in the narrative of the sonnets the lovers are together. Both have confessed their love and accepted the other’s love. This sonnet delights in and celebrates the abundance of love. She implores the lover to repeat over and over “I love you”, likening the words to the “cuckoo song” that makes spring, that is an inseparable part of spring and so is never tiring. There are things you can’t have too much of – stars, flowers, and being told by your lover that he loves you, provided always there is a “silent” loving with the “soul”. As often the volta happens only in the last two lines.

Here, as so often in the Sonnets, EBB places erotic love within a religious/spiritual framework. It is the souls that love. It is the souls that triumph over death.

Sonnet XXII

In many ways this sonnet provides the clearest and strongest portrait of EBB’s image of an equal love, a love where neither is on a pedestal, neither is the wooing lover projecting his needs onto the other, but both souls are “erect and strong”. (Interesting choice of words!) But also, like Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights, EBB images the perfect love as by necessity here on earth. She claims for love a deep spirituality different in nature from Christianity with its emphasis on the after-life. Her appeal “Let us stay/Rather on earth, Beloved” links directly to the Catherine-Heathcliff story in Wuthering Heights, one of the great classics of Romanticism.

The last two lines achieve a glowing beauty:

“A place to stand and love in for a day,With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.”

Sonnet XXVIII

Opens with the paradoxical nature of these love sonnets – they transform what is “alive”, “quivering”, “tremulous” into “dead paper”. For all their words they seem “mute” compared to the intensity of the emotion that created them. She then recalls her first meeting with Browning “as a friend” on “a day in spring”. His love letters to her were like “God’s future” thundering on her “past”. And in the close she conceals the details of what Browning’s love letters said out of respect for that love.

This poem plays on the ambiguities of making poetry or making public the intimacy of love. In the octet she is referring to the letters he wrote to her – “this” letter said he wished to see her as a friend, “this” other letter set a date in spring to visit her, “this” is where he first wrote “I love thee” and on that letter she points out the paradox that such light paper should carry words so heavy with implications for her whole life.

This particular sonnet clearly traces the narrative of a developing love – from first meeting, to first intimations of love, to full love and commitment. Elizabeth Browning uses a clipped, condensed style to convey a sense of immediacy, as if she is talking directly to us while glancing through the bundle of letters.

Sonnet XXXII

This sonnet records a transformation in her attitude towards his love of her – she records how for some time she felt that someone like herself could not inspire real love in a man. She believed that just as the love blossomed so suddenly, it must die just as suddenly for him. Most of all, in the second quatrain and part of the first tercet, she sees herself as like “an out-of-tune /Worn viol” that must soon be laid down. She now accepts that this opinion of hers wronged him by refusing to believe in his sincerity or his capacity for love.

The closing lines provide the volta: “perfect strains may float/ Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced”. Perfect love does not require perfect bodies or even perfect people but is nourished most of all by “great souls”. It is the spiritual dimension of love towards which she turns her attention.

Despite all the insistence on “souls” throughout the sequence, the image of the “worn viol” is highly physical, as is the image suggested by the last two lines.

This sonnet forms an interesting contrast to the attitudes in The Great Gatsby. EBB stresses that love is, at least in her case, a love between imperfect people, certainly people with imperfect bodies. In the world that Fitzgerald creates physical perfection is all important – youth, beauty, sophistication, wealth, beautiful clothes, immense white houses, beautiful cars. Myrtle falls in love with Tom’s clothing and appearance and falls out of love with her husband shortly after the wedding when she realises the wedding suit was borrowed. The word “beautiful” occurs over and over across the book.

Sonnet XLII

The most famous sonnet of the sequence. The opening line suggests the poet will now “count” the ways in which she loves her lover. However, the poem is not about this. Rather than list the ways in which she loves her lover, there is a single sweep throughout the poem, stressing the absolute unqualified nature of her love. There is a balance between soaring, expansive images (“to the depth and breadth and height/My soul can reach”) and a subdued very simple image of love (“to the level of everyday’s/ Most quiet need”). The key adverbs she uses for this love are “freely” and “purely”, again insisting on the spiritual, religious overtones of this love.

In the last tercet the religious context she brings to love is most apparent. Although the poem seems to be entirely general about all people, all love, it is really quite specific to her own life, her griefs, her losses, her late discovery of love.

Focus Questions on the Sonnets

1. What images of love are presented in the Sonnets by EBB? In what ways do they develop a narrative of a love relationship?

2. Comment on how awareness of Death (mortality) and religious idealism shape EBB’s portrayal of love.

3. In what ways do the poems insist on being a woman’s perspective and containing a female viewpoint?

4. How has EBB adapted sonnet form and love poetry conventions to her personal ends?

5. Identify TWO ways in which this love story is very different from the central love story in The Great Gatsby.

6. This sequence is written in early Victorian England. Identify ONE way in which it stands outside the values/attitudes of the time. Identify ONE way in which it fits within the values/attitudes of the time.

Worksheet 4: Read the biography below carefully and answer the following questions:

1. List three ways in which Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s life was very unusual for a woman in early 19th century England.

2. List three aspects of her life that are reflected in her Sonnets. Give quotations from the Sonnets to justify your answer.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Biography ( edited from Wikipedia entry)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 6, 1806 – June 29, 1861) was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime.[1]

Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born on March 6, 1806, in Coxhoe Hall, between the villages of Coxhoe and Kelloe in County Durham, England. Her parents were Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett and Mary Graham-Clarke; Elizabeth was the eldest of their 12 children (eight boys and four girls). All the children lived to adulthood except for one girl, who died at the age of four when Elizabeth was eight. The children in her family all had nicknames: Elizabeth's was "Ba". The Barrett family, some of whom were part Creole, had lived for centuries in Jamaica, where they owned sugar plantations and relied on slave labour. Elizabeth's father chose to raise his family in England while his fortune grew in Jamaica.

Elizabeth was educated at home and attended lessons with her brother's tutor. This gave her a good education for a girl of that time, and she is said to have read passages from Paradise Lost and a number of Shakespearean plays, among other works, before the age of ten. During the Hope End period, she was "a shy, intensely studious, precocious child, yet cheerful, affectionate and lovable".[3] Her intellectual fascination with the classics and metaphysics was balanced by a religious obsession which she later described as "not the deep persuasion of the mild Christian but the wild visions of an enthusiast."[4] [1]

By the age of twelve she had written an "epic" poem consisting of four books of rhyming couplets. When she was 14, her father paid for the publication of a long Homeric poem entitled The Battle of Marathon. Barrett later referred to this as "Pope's Homer done over again, or rather undone." By the age of twenty, she had read the principal Greek and Latin authors and Dante's Inferno in their original languages. She learnt Hebrew and read the Old Testament from beginning to end. Her first collection of poems, An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems, was published in 1826.[5]

It was then (at age 20) that Elizabeth began to battle with a lifelong illness, which the medical science of the time was unable to diagnose. She began to take morphine for the pain and eventually became addicted to the drug.

In 1828, Elizabeth’s mother died. She is buried at the Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels in Ledbury, next to her daughter Mary. The death of her mother hit her hard. Her father’s financial losses in the early 1830s forced him to sell Hope End, and although the family were never poor, the place was seized and put up for sale to satisfy creditors. In 1831 Elizabeth received news that her beloved grandmother, Elizabeth Moulton, died.

In 1838, at her physician's insistence, Elizabeth moved from London to Torquay, on the Devonshire coast. Her brother Edward, one of her closest relatives, went along with her. Her father, Mr. Barrett, disapproved of Edward's going to Torquay but did not hinder his visit. The subsequent drowning of her brother Edward, in a sailing accident at Torquay in 1840, had a serious effect on her already fragile health; when they found his body after a couple of days, she had no strength for tears or words. They returned to Wimpole Street.

By the time of her return to Wimpole Street, she had become an invalid and a recluse, spending most of the next five years in her bedroom, seeing few people other than her immediate family. One of those she did see was her friend John Kenyon, a wealthy and convivial friend of the arts. She felt responsible for her brother's death because it was she who wanted him to be there with her. During this time she allegedly developed an addiction to opium.

She continued to write poetry, including The Cry of the Children, published in 1842. This poem condemned child labour and helped bring about child labour reforms. At about the same time, she contributed some critical prose pieces to Richard Henry Horne's A New Spirit of the Age. She also wrote The First Day’s Exile from Eden. In 1844 she published two volumes of Poems, which included A Drama of Exile, A Vision of Poets, and Lady Geraldine's Courtship.

Meeting Robert Browning and works of this timeHer 1844 Poems made her one of the most popular writers in the land at the time and inspired Robert Browning to write to her, telling her how much he loved her poems. Kenyon arranged for Browning to meet Elizabeth in May 1845, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature.

Elizabeth had produced a large amount of work and had been writing long before Robert Browning had ever published a word. However, he had a great influence on her writing, as did she on his; it is observable that Elizabeth’s poetry matured after meeting Robert. Two of Barrett’s most famous pieces were produced after she met Browning: Sonnets from the Portuguese and Aurora Leigh.

Among Elizabeth's best known lyrics are Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)—the "Portuguese" being her husband's pet name for her. The title also refers to the series of sonnets of the 16th-century Portuguese poet Luís de Camões; in all these poems she used rhyme schemes typical of the Portuguese sonnets.

The verse-novel Aurora Leigh, her most ambitious and perhaps the most popular of her longer poems, appeared in 1856. It is the story of a woman writer making her way in life, balancing work and love. The writings depicted in this novel are all based on similar, personal experiences that Elizabeth suffered through herself. The North American Review praised Elizabeth’s poem in these words: “ Mrs. Browning’s poems are, in all respects, the utterance of a woman—of a woman of great learning, rich experience, and powerful genius, uniting to her woman’s nature the strength which is sometimes thought peculiar to a man.”[9]

The courtship and marriage between Robert Browning and Elizabeth were carried out secretly. Six years his elder and an invalid, she could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Browning really loved her as much as he professed to, and her doubts are expressed in the Sonnets from the Portuguese, which she wrote over the next two years. Love conquered all, however, and after a private marriage at St. Marylebone Parish Church, Browning imitated his hero Shelley by spiriting his beloved off to Italy in August 1846, which became her home almost continuously until her death.

At her husband's insistence, the second edition of Elizabeth’s Poems included her love sonnets; they proved immensely popular and have remained the most widely read part of her work.

Compare and Contrast The Great Gatsby and the Sonnets. 1. Complete:

While the Sonnets were written in ___________in _________, Fitzgerald’s novel was written during the __________________. Fitzgerald’s narrator is __________________ whereas the Sonnets are narrated by ______________. Fitzgerald’s novel is dominated by a male perspective whereas Barrett Browning’s Sonnets _____________________. Nick Carroway, the narrator of the events of The Great Gatsby, is essentially positioned ________________ the main action looking in, observing sometimes with irony, often with compassion and at times with sharp disapproval. Instead we see the story of Elizabeth Barrett’s love for Robert Browning from ____________ and we accompany her directly through her fears, uncertainties and hopes.

2 Write three paragraphs comparing what The Great Gatsby and the Sonnets have to say about each of the following ideas:(a) Love is forever and, if you love someone truly, it

never changes.(b) Most people are fundamentally attracted to

money and love has little chance to thrive where there is no money.

(c) People’s emotions, their loves, their passions and ideals, are deeply affected by the society they live in.

3 For each of the following statements find evidence, an example or a quotation from the relevant text to support it:(a) Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets give a more

optimistic view of the possibility of love being everlasting and bringing enduring happiness.

(b) F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel provides the portrait of a society while Browning creates an account of an individual love affair as felt by a woman.

(c) Money and material show are the core values of the world Fitzgerald creates while a strong belief in spirituality and religion shape Browning’s experience of love.

GUIDED ESSAYWriting a guided essay on The Great Gatsby and the Sonnets of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

HSC 2010 Exam Question: Analyse how The Great Gatsby and Browning’s poetry imaginatively portray individuals who challenge the established values of their time.

You will be assessed on how well you: Demonstrate understanding of the meanings of a pair

of texts when considered together Evaluate the relationships between texts and

contexts Organize, develop and express ideas using language

appropriate to audience, purpose and form

Written in very different forms and in two sharply different worlds (1920’s America and mid-19th century England), Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Browning’s Sonnets both portray individuals who challenge the established values of their time. In Gatsby both Gatsby himself and Nick in different ways stand outside the established values of their society only to be defeated by the frivolous and self-centred world they stand in part outside of. In Browning’s Sonnets Browning herself as the woman narrator in a sequence of love sonnets speaks out, ultimately victoriously, for values of sexual equality and idealistic enduring love that oppose the male-dominated materialistic values of Victorian England.

Gatsby as the poor boy who turns himself into a millionaire to win the woman he loves challenges the conformity of the wealthy world represented by the Buchanans. Gatsby challenges the established values of his time by the way he makes his money and by his romantic commitment to an adolescent love that breaks social barriers. {Now write a paragraph developing this idea with details from the novel and quotations}

Fitzgerald also uses the narrator Nick to challenge the established values of the 1920’s, an era obsessed with money and appearances where traditional attitudes were being replaced by a cult of freedom and individuality at the price of commitment and marital fidelity. Nick’s position inside and outside the story enables him to challenge these dominant values of the jazz age as Fitzgerald uses symbolism, imagery and dialogue to suggest the gulf between the false values of the age and what might be true values. {Now write a paragraph developing these ideas with examples and quotations. Include references to the literary techniques mentioned.}

The established values of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s England were essentially male-dominated. In love and marriage women were expected to conform to social

expectations; marriages were typically arranged by parents and love was meant to take second place to social responsibility. Likewise within the conventions of love poetry it was men who fell in love and had to win the woman. A woman’s role was essentially passive. Women had far less freedom or equality than in the Roaring Twenties of Fitzgerald’s America. Yet Browning’s Sonnets place a woman at centre stage, making her the protagonist of the love story and enabling Browning to challenge the established values of the time. {Now develop a paragraph supporting these statements with examples from the Sonnets}

Browning’s use of narrative voice and her playing with the conventions of the love sonnet enable her to capture imaginatively the fears and the elation of a woman standing outside the conventions of her time. For example, she explores a woman’s fears in. . . Likewise in Sonnet . . . she explores the need for equality in love, in fact the impossibility of love existing without equality between the sexes. {Now develop these ideas with quotations and explanation}

Both Fitzgerald and Browning are interested in a central character who dares to challenge the established values of their time. Using the form of a novel, Fitzgerald underlines the significance of Gatsby’s obsessive love for Daisy by symbolism and the use of plot parallels. Thus we understand Gatsby in part through the contrast between his chivalrous, undying, grand love for Daisy and Tom’s relationships with Daisy and with Myrtle, as well as the Nick-Jordan relationship. {In this paragraph analyse major techniques used in the novel and in the poetry – for the poetry consider religious symbolism and the turning of that around to emphasise a woman’s right to passionate, physical fulfillment.}

While Fitzgerald himself is clearly challenging the established values of the time it could be argued that no one character inside the book completely steps outside the values of the age. Thus Gatsby accepts materialism as the way to win Daisy and, for all his old-fashioned squeamishness, Nick does trail around with the Buchanans and have an affair with Jordan, a woman who symbolically cheats even at golf. It could be argued that the female narrator of Browning’s Sonnets is a more convincing portrait of an individual challenging the values of their time. {Write a paragraph developing this idea}

In conclusion, both Fitzgerald and Browning portray individuals who challenge the dominant social values of their age. In Fitzgerald’s novel the protagonist challenges the dead hand of social class and old money that define the borders behind which the rich can retreat into their “carelessness”, although considered in another way Gatsby is also a product of the time’s materialistic values. Browning can be seen as using the more personal form of poetry to portray her own convention-breaking love affair against parental wishes with a younger man. Both texts, however, invite us to enter imaginatively into the elation and the fears of an outsider risking all for love.

ADVANCED ENGLISH Module A – Comparative Study of Texts and Contexts Elective 2: Texts in Time“In this elective students compare how the treatment of similar content in a pair of texts composed in different times and contexts may reflect changing values and perspectives. By considering the texts in their contexts and comparing values, ideas and language forms and features, students come to a heightened understanding of the meaning and significance of each text.” (BOS Syllabus)

For each text you will need to assess and analyse what it has to say about such topics as idealism, love, hope and the

relationships between men and women assess and analyse the relationships between the text and the context of the time in

which it was produced

You will also need to evaluate how each writer creates meaning – how techniques are used to shape our understanding.

Assessment Event 3. Module A.

Date: Monday June 12Time: 1 hour and 10 minutes

In class you will be given an essay question inviting you to compare and contrast the treatment of love and idealism in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the “Sonnets from the Portuguese” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

In your essay you should assess and analyse what each text has to say about love and idealism compare and contrast the two texts’ perspectives on these ideas assess and analyse how the context of the time has effected the perspectives of F.

Scott Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Barrett Browning develop a sustained argument about what the texts have to say about love and

idealism and the role the context of time plays in this, supporting your viewpoint with detailed references to each text

analyse how each author has used the form of their text (novel or sonnet) to convey their perspective on love and idealism

Your essay will be assessed in terms of how well you

evaluate relationships between texts and contexts organize, develop and express ideas using language appropriate to audience, purpose

and context

ALTERNATIVE TASK FOR MODULE A: Comparative Study of Texts and Contexts

Prose Fiction and Poetry

‘Both Fitzgerald’s novel and Browning’s Sonnets explore ideas about love and death but their conclusions are the complete opposite.’ To what extent does your study of the two set texts support this statement? Compare how these texts explore varying ideas about love and death. The prescribed texts are: – F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby and – Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh and Other Poems Sonnets I, XIII, XIV, XXI, XXII, XXVIII, XXXII, XLIII _____________________________________In your answer you will be assessed on how well you:

■ demonstrate understanding of the meanings of a pair of texts when considered together ■ evaluate the relationships between texts and contexts ■ organise, develop and express ideas using language appropriate to audience, purpose and form Module A – Essay PreparationLinking Sonnets from the Portuguese to The Great Gatsby

Note: the essay below is a personal response by the author. It does not claim to be perfect. It has been done to give you an idea of how you might approach the task. You should seek to develop your own response to the two texts and be ready to support your ideas with close details from both texts.

Note also: it is a response to the 2009 HSC Question. You will need to respond to the specific question you are given in an assessment or exam.

The general things to note about this response are

It addresses the set question, frequently using the terms of the set question to shape the answer.

It develops and sustains a personal response to the question It supports that response with close references to both texts It analyses briefly some of the language forms and features used in

both texts to convey their ideas It links back and forth across the texts It shows awareness of the contexts of both texts

Question from 2009 HSC Paper 2

‘A deeper understanding of aspirations and identity emerges from considering the parallels between The Great Gatsby and Browning’s poetry.’ Compare how these texts explore aspirations and identity.

The prescribed texts are: F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby and

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh and Other Poems Sonnets I, XIII, XIV, XXI, XXII, XXVIII, XXXII, XLIII

© Peter Boyle, 2010.

Both Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets explore the role of human aspirations and the quest to establish or maintain an identity against vastly different social contexts and in markedly different literary forms. While The Great Gatsby (TGG) develops an ironic, shifting but ultimately pessimistic if not cynical viewpoint on the nature of human aspirations and our likelihood of maintaining an individual identity against the range of social pressures, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets present a more idealistic and optimistic assessment of the role aspirations and identity can play in our lives if we approach them with courage and sincerity.

Fitzgerald explores aspirations and identity chiefly through the central figure of Jay Gatsby. Gatsby himself is an elusive and problematic figure we are made to view through a series of lenses, above all through the admiring but cynical and world-weary gaze of Nick Carroway. Gatsby’s aspiration to win Daisy and achieve the perfect life, abolishing five years of life and reclaiming the Daisy he fell in love with as a young officer, is a bold plan Nick can’t help but admire. From his opening “Gatsby turned out all right in the end” to his closing words spoken to Gatsby across the sweep of his lawn, “They’re a rotten crowd . . .You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together”, Nick makes it clear that to him Gatsby is special, the shining star, out there above the rest because of his “extraordinary gift for hope”, a self-made man “who had come a long way to this blue lawn”, to be so close to his “dream”. While Nick would settle for a pragmatic affair with the careless new-age woman Jordan Baker or where others like Tom Buchanan cynically use people, leaving a trail of damage behind them, Gatsby holds out for his dream and all he does is aimed step by step at achieving that dream. Fitzgerald crafts for us a deeply ambivalent figure – a gangster, a crook, the man who purchases a huge mansion and throws extravagant parties that he does not attend himself, a man who shapes his own image from clothes and cars to accent and language, yet who maintains an almost boundless innocence, willing to believe that Daisy has only to say “I never loved you” to Tom for all to be right. When Nick comments “You can’t repeat the past” and Gatsby says “incredulously”, “Why of course you can!” we gain a sense of his overweening belief in the power of his endeavours. What is especially tragic is that Gatsby has selected as the object of all his passion a confused young woman whose “artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery”. When EBB and TGG are read together what stands out immediately is how artificial the people in TGG are (except for Nick who is too cynical to risk unreserved unqualified love) compared to the sincerity and openness of EBB.

Gatsby’s aspirations and identity are deeply flawed – Fitzgerald hints throughout – both because they are built on a spoilt rich girl who lacks the daring needed to give substance to Gatsby’s dream and, more importantly, because they suffer from “the vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty” dreamed up by a deeply-corrupted, money and appearances-obsessed society. Gatsby’s logic is ‘Daisy rejected me because I lacked money, very well I will make money, it doesn’t matter how and then, dazzled by my wealth and all wealth creates, she will fall into my arms’. Fitzgerald uses the bizarre image of Daisy weeping into the shirts (“I’ve never seen such beautiful shirts”) to capture the warped values of US 1920’s society. Likewise in the subplot involving Myrtle Wilson, Myrtle rejects her husband since he couldn’t buy the suit he was married in and seems drawn to Tom first of all by his clothing. Her affair itself is betrayed by the diamond-studded dog-collar she leaves lying about in the garage. The vacuous edge of all the main characters – Daisy, Tom, Myrtle, Daisy, even Gatsby – is captured in their lack of any vocabulary to talk about their inner life or to show their love. Whether it’s Gatsby’s “Absolutely”, Daisy’s “I’m awfully glad to see you again”, Tom’s confession of how much he cried seeing “that damn box of dog-biscuits sitting there on the sideboard” after Myrtle’s death, none of the major actors in the drama of the book has a vocabulary of love, relying entirely on the magnificent gestures of things, vaulted ceilings, cascading flowers, billowing curtains to cloak in outward splendour emotions that seem rote-learned and half dead.

When TGG is read in comparison with EBB’s Sonnets, the flawed nature of American 1920’s aspirations becomes apparent. EBB in the Sonnets writes both a narrative of a real love affair, the story of her growing love for Robert Browning, and a personal, spiritualised portrayal of her aspirations for what a shared, fulfilled love should be. While Gatsby is drawn to Daisy by her good looks, her smile, her voice that is “full of money”, her status as “the golden girl”, Sonnet XIV insists that the lover should not love her for “her smile –her look-her way/Of speaking gently” but only “for love’s sake”. While Gatsby defines love as taking possession of Daisy, that he is going to look after her from now on, Sonnet XXII insists that it is the two souls together who “stand up erect and strong”. Ironically, though EBB’s Sonnets are the much earlier text and TGG comes from a supposedly liberated era as typified by the flapper golfer Jordan Baker, the Sonnets give a far stronger portrait of woman as having the right to her own aspirations and identity. EBB marks in Sonnet I that this sequence, though rooted in the male-dominated tradition of love poems and pastoral poems going back to Theocritus, is to be her own story, reflecting “The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,/Those of my own life”, and in Sonnet XIII remarks “Nay, let the silence of my womanhood/Commend my woman-love to thy belief”. It says much about the flawed nature of Gatsby’s aspirations that Daisy is portrayed as a weak, indecisive figure, far too conscious of her own appeal, a spoilt girl who moves from her father’s control to Tom’s, swept up in her fling with Gatsby only to drift back to

Tom’s protection. In contrast EBB posits that love and aspirations and the forging of an identity must be based on a “dauntless, voiceless fortitude”.

Aspirations and identity are largely explored by EBB in terms of her idealised portrayal of mutual, unconditional and ecstatically erotic love that includes a strongly religious dimension. The Sonnets XXII and XLIII are the strongest representations of this. In Sonnet XXII the paired lovers are, as so often in these Sonnets, “souls” whose “lengthening wings break into fire/At either curved point”, angels whose fulfilment is intensely physical and here on earth, content to forge “A place to stand and love in for a day,/With darkness and the death hour rounding it.” If money and material possessions provide the metaphors for love and aspirations in TGG, angels, religion, saints, birds and the great Sonnet tradition of Petrarch and Shakespeare provide the language for love in EBB. Given EBB’s Christian framework even death is not seen as the end of the lovers but certainly only the death-hour can limit their love, whereas in TGG social conventions and practicalities (“Poor boys don’t marry rich girls”) have the final say. Daisy’s frantic cry “You want too much” and her insistence that she “loved Tom too” suggest that Gatsby’s aspirations are hopelessly anachronistic in such a materialistic world. Even the song Fitzgerald inserts into the story, providing a romantic backdrop to Gatsby and Daisy’s first meeting after five years, give a jarringly cynical tone to their encounter (“In the meantime, in-between time, Ain’t we got fun”, “The rich get richer And the poor get- children”.)

The Sonnets provide a narrative of love. In the first poem the speaker who has lived dominated by “melancholy” and a “shadow” at first mistakes the entry of a new force into her inner life for the arrival of Death. This pairing of Death and Love dramatises the way love is experienced as a force beyond our control that can reshape us. EBB uses a sparse simple vocabulary, largely monosyllabic, rich in alliteration and rhyme, to weave her story. It is in many ways a timeless view of love, of our aspirations to love, as a profound experience, the same in Petrarch’s age or Shakespeare’s age as in mid-nineteenth century England where EBB wrote the sequence. Shakespeare writes “Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s Day/Thou art more lovely and more temperate”; EBB “And wilt thou have me fashion into speech/The love I bear thee, finding words enough” – in diction (the archaic “thou”), cadence, style, EBB sounds like an echo of Shakespeare – the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution seem never to have happened – a far-cry from Fitzgerald’s acute sense of modernity and the need to catch the slang and speech of his own time. Nevertheless, EBB pours individual experience and individual perceptions into this highly traditional frame. Her ecstatic appeal to the lover to repeat over and over “Thou dost love me” provided there is also a silent love present in the soul is heartfelt and real. Likewise, the Sonnets “And wilt thou have me fashion into speech” and “My letters! All dead paper, mute and white” present the paradox of her being both inside and outside the experience, both living this love and recording it. In Sonnet XIII she laments “I cannot teach/My hand to hold my spirit so far off/From myself”

to reveal a love hidden “out of reach”. (Typically this is line 7-8 of this sonnet, where EBB often places a key revelation, a first volta before a second volta in the final line, demonstrating the way that, though her diction is Shakespearian, her use of sonnet form is highly original.) EBB presents the core of love, of our deepest aspirations, as a “silence” and this gives a paradoxical nature to her writing. Interestingly, Nick as the narrator of TGG is also “both within and without” the narrative, observing it all from the outside, like the stranger he imagines looking up at the lighted windows of Myrtle’s New York apartment.

A comparison of TGG and EBB’s Sonnets suggests how aspirations, especially those like love, require strong individuals capable of standing apart from materialistic social values and able to bring an intense individuality into their dreams. Thus EBB when she met Browning had already endured years of illness and the grief of loss and through her writing had forged a strong sense of herself. In contrast, the characters of Fitzgerald are like one-dimensional clones born of advertising jingles, love songs and consumerism. When the going gets tough, such vacuous souls as Daisy retreat “back intro their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together”. EBB’s religious sensibility seems to offer a firmer foundation for the growth of aspirations and an identity. It provides her with a vocabulary with which to think love whereas the characters of TGG seem mute, stranded inside their own cliches and the fake monumentalism of an America that imagined itself “a fresh, green breast of the new world”. It is the same green as the light at the end of Daisy’s dock that Gatsby leans out his arm towards, even though the real world of the novel seems divided between the vacuous playgrounds of the rich and the desolate Valley of Ashes presided over by the spectacles of Dr T J Eckleburg. Fitzgerald reminds us over and over of the grimness of the world where EBB seems to want us to aspire to something real and attainable - “the level of everyday’s/Most quiet need”, a love that is given “freely”, “purely” and “with passion”.

TGG and the Sonnets present very different perspectives on identity. In TGG most of the characters lack any strong identity but emerge more as constructs of their society and its obsession with appearances. Gatsby remains for the reader a series of puzzles as Nick sifts through the range of stories about him. How did he come to make his money? Are his stories about service in World War One true? Did he go to Oxford? Part of the structure of the book is to let us know in advance that Gatsby has vanished already and that the narrator Nick, our one guide to the book’s “hero”, is disturbed and puzzled by his inability to fix the identity of Gatsby. Likewise Daisy has at best a shadowy identity. In the book’s closing pages Nick admits his inability to understand “whatever it was” that holds Tom and Daisy together and what, if anything, is the core of his mysterious “second cousin”. Ultimately we are left with the sense that Nick admires the mystery that is Gatsby just as he feels a strong distaste for the inner emptiness of Daisy – he doesn’t “have the stomach” for such people. It is precisely the narrator Nick with his clear-sighted honesty, his lack of pretensions about himself, who emerges as having the strongest identity in the book.

In the Sonnets EBB emerges as a strong decisive identity who has endured her griefs and her “shadow” to be transfigured by love. Sonnet XXVIII, tracing the story of her love through the pile of love letters from Robert, gives an economical and powerful image of her own transformation from doubting individual to one who has experienced the intimacy of lovemaking and so discreetly remains silent on the contents of the last letter. Her honest appraisal of herself is also evident in Sonnet XXXII where she compares her no-longer-young body with an “out-of-tune worn viol”. Whereas Daisy’s identity is all in appearances and the glamour of her physical charms EBB rather sees love, even physical love, as based more on the soul’s intensity (“great souls, at one stroke, may do and doat.”)The “master-hands” of the genuine lover knows how to bring her to life and she accepts that to judge by outward appearances is to wrong the nature of love.

Both TGG and the Sonnets of EBB explore aspirations and identity through the portrayal of an intense idealised romantic love. Gatsby’s devotion to Daisy is extreme and absolute – it was the sole purpose of his life from the moment he met her and for her he makes himself into a recluse-celebrity millionaire whose mansion can take her breath away. The love EBB celebrates is likewise absolute. Sonnet XXI portrays it as an unlimited abundance – “Who can fear/Too many stars . . .Too many flowers. .?” – in terms similar to what one finds in TGG. While the Sonnets trace a growing confidence in the mutuality and reality of love, in several places the narrator of TGG suggests that the boundless dream of love in Gatsby’s heart is doomed to shrink as it comes up against the social reality of Daisy – as Nick suggests after the first meeting of Gatsby and Daisy “there must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams”. Fitzgerald carefully ends the third last chapter of the book with Gatsby standing outside the Buchanans’ house, anxious about Daisy but “watching over nothing”, as if both Daisy and the dream are suddenly “nothing”.

While there are parallels between the two texts their differences are what really deepen our understanding of aspirations and identity. At a simple level TGG offers a multiplicity of characters, viewpoints and plots to develop a complex, admiring but despairing view of the aspiration for “intense life”. The Sonnets focus on one relationship only, seen entirely from inside that relationship as it unfolds. EBB’s view of love is clearly shaped by her own living of it as well as by her intensely spiritual approach to life. Fitzgerald’s more cynical and worldly view reflects both his own life and loves and the society for whom he writes. Set together, the two texts suggest both the possibility of realising one’s aspirations for intense life and the risk of losing one’s aspirations and identity through socially-conditioned materialism and cowardice.

Module A – Texts and Contexts (Texts in Time)Sample Questions:

1. By considering The Great Gatsby and Browning’s Sonnets together, what does the reader gain in an understanding of idealised love and mortality?

2. “A deeper understanding of aspirations and identity emerges from considering the parallels between The Great Gatsby and Browning’s poetry”. Compare how these texts explore aspirations and identity. (HSC 2009)

3. “Although both The Great Gatsby and Browning’s Sonnets explore the nature of human hopes and dreams, their differences are more revealing than their similarities.” To what extent does your study of these two texts support this reading?

4. What differences did you find in the underlying values and attitudes of your two texts? What role did differences in context and form play in shaping these values and attitudes?

5. Compare and contrast Nick Carraway, as narrator of TGG, with the narrator of the Sonnets. What different values and perspectives do they offer us? Which of the two narrators did you find most compelling in their treatment of human aspirations and idealised love?

6. “Almost five years! There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.” (The Great Gatsby)

“When our two souls stand up erect and strong,Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,Until the lengthening wings break into fireAt either curved point – what bitter wrongCan the earth do us, that we should not longBe here contented?” (Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet XXII)

Using these two quotations as a starting point, explore the different perspectives on romantic love in the Sonnets of Browning and The Great Gatsby. Which of the texts did you find more convincing? Justify your answer.