Love through the ages
Henry: Yes. Well, I remember, the first time I succumbed to the sensation that the universe was dispensable minus one lady - Debbie
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- Carol Ann Duffy (1955 - )
- Jeanette Winterson (1959-)
- ENGLISH LITERATURE (SPECIFICATION A) LITA3 Unit 3 Reading for Meaning 2 hours 30 minutes
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Answer both questions 1
- The Reading Extract A
- Ask Me No More by Thomas Carew
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Answer both questions 1
- The Reading Extract A
- The Crack’, Vicki Feaver
- Extract C Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (1881) Henry James
- Extract D Edward Albee, from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962) Edward Albee
Henry: Yes. Well, I remember, the first time I succumbed to the sensation that the universe was dispensable minus one lady - Debbie: Don’t write it, Fa. Just say it. The first time you fell in love. What? Henry: It’s to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so and so. Carnal knowledge. It’s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of the self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other vision of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy… we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What’s left? What else is there that hasn’t been dealt out like a deck of cards? A sort of knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what’s shared - she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she’s everybody’s and it don’t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it’s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it’s gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain. Post-modernism – 1945- present Post-colonialism – 1950s - present Wendy Cope (1945 - ) C 
ope is an award-winning contemporary English Poet, writer, television and literature critic and editor of several anthologies of comic verse. Cope’s poetry is comical with insightful views into human nature, much of her work being parodies of others. Her style is often compared to that of John Betjeman and Philip Larkin. She is widely admired by both critics and the general public. Flowers Some men never think of it. You did. You'd come along And say you'd nearly brought me flowers But something had gone wrong. The shop was closed. Or you had doubts - The sort that minds like ours Dream up incessantly. You thought I might not want your flowers. It made me smile and hug you then. Now I can only smile. But, Look, the flowers you nearly bought Have lasted all this while. Feminist Criticism (1960’s – present) seeks to separate the human experience from the male experience and counter the viewpoints of gender and society which are traditionally associated with the patriarchal society which dictates our views.
Post- Colonialism – 1950’s - present
T 
he current Poet Laureate, Duffy is a Glasgow born poet and playwright. She is the first woman and also first Scot to hold the post. She is the Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester University. She is known for using accessible language in her poetry, making her popular in schools. She covers themes such as oppression, gender and violence and is often thought of as a feminist poet. Anne Hathaway from The World’s Wife (1999) "Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed." (from Shakespeare's will) The bed we loved in was a spinning world of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas where he would dive for pearls. My lover's words were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme to his, now echo, now assonance; his touch a verb dancing in the centre of a noun. Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste. In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on, dribbling their prose. My living laughing love - I hold him in the casket of my widow's head as he held me upon that next best bed Queer Theory – 1980’s – present – seeks to show that traditional gender roles and sexual identity are socially constructs rather than fact. Post-modernism – 1945- present Magical Realism – 1935 - present Post- Colonialism – 1950’s - present Jeanette Winterson (1959-) 
Jeanette Winterson is an English novelist and journalist. She began writing in 1985 after leaving home at the age of 16 and financing herself through a degree at Oxford University. She is known for challenging gender stereotypes and sexual identities within her writing which often deals with the subjects of love and relationships. She is perhaps best known for her novel ‘Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit’. Written on the Body (1992) Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid. It is no conservationist love. It is a big game hunter and you are the game. A curse on this game. How can you stick at a game when the rules keep changing? I shall call myself Alice and play croquet with the flamingos. In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland isn’t it? Love makes the world go round. Love is blind. All you need is love. Nobody ever died of a broken heart. You’ll get over it. It’ll be different when we’re married. Think of the children. Time’s a great healer. Still waiting for Mr Right? Miss Right? And maybe all the little Rights? Magical Realism combines realism with dream-like fantasy to create situations that are imagined but have their base in reality. Authors such as Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson are known for this. It’s the clichés that cause all the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression. If what I feel is not precise then should I call it love? It is so tarrying, love, that all I can do is shove it under a dump bin of pink cuddly toys and send myself a greetings card saying ‘Congratulations on your Engagement’. But I am not engaged I am deeply distracted. I am desperately looking the other way so that love won’t see me. I want the diluted version, the sloppy language, the insignificant gestures. The saggy armchair clichés. It’s all right, millions of bottoms have sat here before me. The springs are well worn, the fabric smelly and familiar. I don’t have to be frightened, look, my grandma and granddad did it, he in a stiff collar and club tie, she in white muslin straining a little at the life beneath. They did it, my parents did it, now I will do it won’t I, arms outstretched, not to hold you, just to keep my balance, sleepwalking to that armchair. How happy we will be. How happy everyone will be. And they all lived happily ever after. M    OCK PAPER 1
ENGLISH LITERATURE (SPECIFICATION A) LITA3 Unit 3 Reading for Meaning 2 hours 30 minutes Please read this advice carefully before you turn to the material. 1. Reading. - Here are the materials taken from the prescribed area for study, Love Through the Ages. You will be using this material to answer the two questions on the page opposite. - Read all four pieces (A, B, C and D) and their introductions several times in the light of the questions set. Your reading should be close and careful.
The questions test your wider reading in the prescribed area for study, Love Through the Ages. In your answers, you should take every opportunity to refer to your wider reading. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Answer both questions 1 Read the two poems (Extract A and B) carefully. They were written at different times by different writers. Basing your answer on the poems and, where appropriate, your wider reading in the poetry of love, compare the ways the two poets have used poetic form, structure and language to express their thoughts and ideas. (40 marks) 2 Write a comparison of the ways Woolf and Williams present unrequited love You should consider: - the ways the writers’ choices of form, structure and language shape your responses to these extracts - how your wider reading in the literature of love has contributed to your understanding and interpretation of the extracts. (40 marks) The Reading Extract A Nii Ayikwei Parkes, a Ghanaian writer, is also a performer and has led workshops in Africa, the Americas and Europe. He writes mainly in English, but occasionally in French and his native Ga. His first collection of poetry, Eyes of a Boy, Lips of a Man was published in 1999. Since then he has written jazz-inspired poems and short stories and was a 2005 associate writer-in-residence for BBC Radio 3. Sometimes I like it to rain Heavy, relentless and loud, So you burrow into me like pain, And inhale me slow and free. I like the clouds to stretch And darken, and shadow the world As water mimics prison bars, And we bond like inmates. For at these times the sun Restrains its prying eyes, Neighbours melt in the gloom, And we are alone in love It is morning, But neither day nor night; You are neither you nor I I am neither prisoner nor free. Extract B Thomas Carew (1594/5-1640) was influenced by John Donne, for whom he wrote an elegy, published with Donne’s poems in 1633. His own poems were published in 1640. He was favoured by Charles I and, along with his friend Sir John Suckling, became one of the major Cavalier poets. Ask Me No More by Thomas Carew Ask me no more where Jove bestows, When June is past, the fading rose; For in your beauty's orient deep These flowers, as in their causes, sleep. Ask me no more whither do stray The golden atoms of the day; For in pure love heaven did prepare Those powders to enrich your hair. Ask me no more whither doth haste The nightingale when May is past; For in your sweet dividing throat She winters and keeps warm her note. Ask me no more where those stars 'light That downwards fall in dead of night; For in your eyes they sit, and there Fixed become as in their sphere. Ask me no more if east or west The Phoenix builds her spicy nest; For unto you at last she flies, And in your fragrant bosom dies.
This extract is from Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Waves’ (1931). Virginia Woolf was boldly experimental in her writing, at the forefront of the Modernist movement. Conventional plotting and characterisation are replaced by impressionistic writing and subtly indirect narration. Woolf suffered bouts of severe depression during her lifetime, and in 1941 she drowned herself in the River Ouse. In ‘The Waves’, Woolf tells the life stories of six different characters from childhood to maturity. Their inner lives are the focus of the novel, depicted through each person’s ‘stream of consciousness’, the outpouring of every thought, feeling and sensation as it occurs. Here, at the beginning of the novel, the six young children are playing outside. Susan sees Jinny kiss Louis. “'I was running,' said Jinny, 'after breakfast. I saw leaves moving in a hole in the hedge. I thought "That is a bird on its nest." I parted them and looked; but there was no bird on a nest. The leaves went on moving. I was frightened. I ran past Susan, past Rhoda, and Neville and Bernard in the tool-house talking. I cried as I ran, faster and faster. What moved the leaves? What moves my heart, my legs? And I dashed in here, seeing you green as a bush, like a branch, very still, Louis, with your eyes fixed. "Is he dead?" I thought, and kissed you, with my heart jumping under my pink frock like the leaves, which go on moving, though there is nothing to move them. Now I smell geraniums; I smell earth mould. I dance. I ripple. I am thrown over you like a net of light. I lie quivering flung over you.' 'Through the chink in the hedge,' said Susan, 'I saw her kiss him. I raised my head from my flower-pot and looked through a chink in the hedge. I saw her kiss him. I saw them, Jinny and Louis, kissing. Now I will wrap my agony inside my pocket-handkerchief. It shall be screwed tight into a ball. I will go to the beech wood alone, before lessons. I will not sit at a table, doing sums. I will not sit next Jinny and next Louis. I will take my anguish and lay it upon the roots under the beech trees. I will examine it and take it between my fingers. They will not find me. I shall eat nuts and peer for eggs through the brambles and my hair will be matted and I shall sleep under hedges and drink water from ditches and die there.' 'Susan has passed us,' said Bernard. 'She has passed the tool-house door with her handkerchief screwed into a ball. She was not crying, but her eyes, which are so beautiful, were narrow as cats' eyes before they spring. I shall follow her, Neville. I shall go gently behind her, to be at hand, with my curiosity, to comfort her when she bursts out in a rage and thinks, "I am alone." 'Now she walks across the field with a swing, nonchalantly, to deceive us. Then she comes to the dip; she thinks she is unseen; she begins to run with her fists clenched in front of her. Her nails meet in the ball of her pocket-handkerchief. She is making for the beech woods out of the light. She spreads her arms as she comes to them and takes to the shade like a swimmer. But she is blind after the light and trips and flings herself down on the roots under the trees, where the light seems to pant in and out, in and out. The branches heave up and down. There is agitation and trouble here. There is gloom. The light is fitful. There is anguish here. The roots make a skeleton on the ground, with dead leaves heaped in the angles. Susan has spread her anguish out. Her pocket-handkerchief is laid on the roots of the beech trees and she sobs, sitting crumpled where she has fallen.' 'I saw her kiss him,' said Susan. 'I looked between the leaves and saw her. She danced in flecked with diamonds light as dust. And I am squat, Bernard, I am short. I have eyes that look close to the ground and see insects in the grass. The yellow warmth in my side turned to stone when I saw Jinny kiss Louis. I shall eat grass and die in a ditch in the brown water where dead leaves have rotted.'”
This extract is from Tennessee Williams’ ‘The Glass Menagerie’ (1941). In this extract Tom, instructed by his mother, brings a gentleman caller home for Laura. It is Jim, for whom Laura has nursed a quiet passion since their last years at school together. When the pair are left alone, Jim coaxes the gentle and reclusive Laura out of her shyness. She begins to blossom, but Jim is not a free man... JIM It's right for you! -You're -pretty! LAURA In what way am I pretty? JIM In all respects--believe me! Your eyes--your hair--are pretty! Your hands are pretty!
You think I'm making this up because I'm invited to dinner and have to be nice. Oh, I could do that! I could put on an act for you, Laura, and say lots of things without being very sincere. But this time I am. I'm talking to you sincerely. I happened to notice you had this inferiority complex that keeps you from feeling comfortable with people. Somebody needs to build your confidence up and make you proud instead of shy and turning away and – blushing – Somebody - ought to - Ought to - kiss you, Laura!
I shouldn't have done that-- That was way off the beam. You don't smoke, do you?
Would you--care for a--mint? She doesn't seem to hear him but her look grows brighter even. Peppermint--Life-Saver? My pocket's a regular drug store--wherever I go . . . He pops a mint in his mouth. Then gulps and decides to make a clean breast of it. He speaks slowly and gingerly. Laura, you know, if I had a sister like you, I'd do the same thing as Tom. I'd bring out fellows and - introduce her to them. The right type of boys of a type to - appreciate her. Only – well - he made a mistake about me. Maybe I've got no call to be saying this. That may not have been the idea in having me over. But what if it was? There's nothing wrong about that. The only trouble is that in my case - I'm not in a situation to - do the right thing. I can't take down your number and say I'll phone. I can't call up next week and - ask for a date. I thought I had better explain the situation in case you - misunderstood it and - hurt your feelings. . . . Pause. Slowly, very slowly, LAURA'S look changes, her eyes returning slowly from his to the ornament in her palm. AMANDA utters another gay laugh in the kitchen. LAURA Faintly. You - won't - call again? JIM No, Laura, I can't. He rises from the sofa. As I was just explaining, I've - got strings on me. Laura, I've - been going steady! I go out all of the time with a girl named Betty. She's a home-girl like you, and Catholic, and Irish, and in a great many ways we - get along fine. I met her last summer on a moonlight boat trip up the river to Alton, on the Majestic. Well - right away from the start it was - love! LAURA sways slightly forward and grips the arm of the sofa. He failsto notice, now enrapt in his own comfortable being. Being in love has made a new man of me! Leaning stiffly forward, clutching the arm of the sofa, LAURA struggles visibly with her storm. But JIM is oblivious, she is a long way off. The power of love is really pretty tremendous! Love is something that - changes the whole world, Laura!
Huh--I'm a stumble-john! He flops back on the sofa. The holy candles in the altar of LAURA'S face have been snuffed out. There is a look of almost infinite desolation. JIM glances at her uneasily. I wish that you would--say something. She bites her lip which was trembling and then bravely smiles. She opens her hand again on the broken glass ornament. Then she gently takes his hand and raises it level with her own. She carefully places the unicorn in the palm of his hand, then pushes his fingers closed upon it. What are you--doing that for? You want me to have him?-- Laura? She nods. What for? LAURA A – souvenir... M ock Paper 2
ENGLISH LITERATURE (SPECIFICATION A) LITA3 Unit 3 Reading for Meaning 2 hours 30 minutes Please read this advice carefully before you turn to the material. 3. Reading. - Here are the materials taken from the prescribed area for study, Love Through the Ages. You will be using this material to answer the two questions on the page opposite. - Read all four pieces (A, B, C and D) and their introductions several times in the light of the questions set. Your reading should be close and careful.
The questions test your wider reading in the prescribed area for study, Love Through the Ages. In your answers, you should take every opportunity to refer to your wider reading. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Answer both questions 1 Read the two poems (Extract A and B) carefully. They were written at different times by different writers. Basing your answer on the poems and, where appropriate, your wider reading in the poetry of love, compare the ways the two poets have used poetic form, structure and language to express their thoughts and ideas. (40 marks) 2 Write a comparison of the ways Henry James and Edward Albee present aspects of married life and love. You should consider: - the ways the writers’ choices of form, structure and language shape your responses to these extracts - how your wider reading in the literature of love has contributed to your understanding and interpretation of the extracts.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) lived for several years as an invalid. She then mat and fell in love with Robert Browning, who was already married at the time of their meeting. They later married in secret and spent the rest of their married life in Italy. Rather than declining into an isolated death as an invalid, in this poem, the poet embraces the joys of married life on earth with her lover. XXIII. "Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead..." by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1850)
Wouldst thou miss any life in losing mine? And would the sun for thee more coldly shine Because of grave-damps falling round my head? I marvelled, my Belovèd, when I read Thy thought so in the letter. I am thine--- But . . . so much to thee? Can I pour thy wine While my hands tremble? Then my soul, instead Of dreams of death, resumes life's lower range. Then love me, Love! look on me---breathe on me! As brighter ladies do not count it strange, For love, to give up acres and degree, I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange My near sweet view of Heaven, for earth with thee! Extract B Vicki Feaver was born in Nottingham in 1943 and has won many awards for her poetry. Her metaphors compel the reader; in particular, she employs classical myth in order to shed light on the female condition in dramatic monologues such as ‘Medusa’ and ‘Circe’. This poem appears to materialize out of nowhere like a crack in the wall. ‘The Crack’, Vicki Feaver cut right through the house – a thick wiggly line you could poke a finger into, a deep gash seeping fine black dust. It didn’t appear overnight. For a long time it was such a fine line we went up and down stairs oblivious of the stresses that were splitting our walls and ceilings apart. And even when it thickened and darkened, we went on not seeing, or seeing but believing the crack would heal itself, if dry earth was to blame, a winter of rain would seal its edges. You didn’t tell me That you heard at night its faint stirrings like something alive. And I didn’t tell you – until the crack had opened so wide that if we’d moved in our sleep to reach for each other we’d have fallen through.
misfortune. Was the fault in himself, or only in the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This mistrust was the clearest result of their short married life; a gulf had opened between them over which they looked at each other with eyes that were on either side a declaration of the deception suffered. It was a strange opposition, of the like of which she had never dreamed—an opposition in which the vital principle of the one was a thing of contempt to the other. It was not her fault—she had practised no deception; she had only admired and believed. She had taken all the first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had suddenly found the infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley, with a dead wall at the end. Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression, where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and served to deepen the feeling of failure. It was her deep distrust of her husband— this was what darkened the world. That is a sentiment easily indicated, but not so easily explained, and so composite in its character that much time and still more suffering had been needed to bring it to its actual perfection. Suffering, with Isabel, was an active condition; it was not a chill, a stupor, a despair; it was a passion of thought, of speculation, of response to every pressure. She flattered herself, however, that she had kept her failing faith to herself—that no one suspected it but Osmond. Oh, he knew it, and there were times when she thought that he enjoyed it. It had come gradually—it was not till the first year of her marriage had closed that she took the alarm. Then the shadows began to gather; it was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights out one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and she could still see her way in it. But it steadily increased, and if here and there it had occasionally lifted, there were certain corners of her life that were impenetrably black. These shadows were not an emanation from her own mind; she was very sure of that; she had done her best to be just and temperate, to see only the truth. They were a part of her husband’s very presence. They were not his misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing—that is, of but one thing, which was not a crime. She knew of no wrong that he had done; he was not violent, he was not cruel; she simply believed that he hated her. That was all she accused him of, and the miserable part of it was precisely that it was not a crime, for against a crime she might have found redress. He had discovered that she was so different, that she was not what he had believed she would prove to be. Extract D Edward Albee, from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962) Edward Albee (born 1928) is an American playwright. His works are considered well-crafted, often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. This play, set in a small town American university campus, this play dissects two marriages. George and Martha are playing games with the younger couple, Nick and Honey. Here George takes centre stage, with Honey and Nick as his audience. Honey begins to grasp the full meaning of the tale he tells. GEORGE: How They Got Married. Well, how they got married is this...the mouse got all puffed up one day and she went over to Blondie’s house, and she stuck out her puff and she said...look at me. HONEY: (white...on her feet) I...don’t...like this. NICK: (to George) Stop it! GEORGE: Look at me...I’m all puffed up. Oh my goodness, said Blondie. HONEY: (as from a distance)...and so they were married. GEORGE: ...and so they were married... HONEY: ...And then... GEORGE: ...and then. HONEY: (hysteria) WHAT? And then, WHAT? NICK: NO! no! GEORGE: (as if to a baby) and then the puff went away...Like magic...pouf! NICK: (almost sick) Jesus God. HONEY: ...the puff went away... GEORGE: ...pouf NICK: Honey...I didn’t mean to...honestly, I didn’t mean to... HONEY: You...you told them.
NICK: Honey...baby...I’m sorry...I didn’t mean to. GEORGE: (abruptly and with some disgust) And that’s how you play Get the Guests. M OCK PAPER 3
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