Students were asked to read carefully an excerpt
from Lady Windermere’s Fan, a play by Oscar Wilde, produced in 1892. Then, in a
well-organized essay they were to analyze how the playwright reveals the values
of the characters and the nature of their society. Although the prompt deviated
from recent practice in that it came from a play, nevertheless the materials
were present for students to delineate character, interpret situation, apply
analytical skills to representative nineteenth-century literary language, and
link their close-reading skills to a discovery of theme.
**I read a part of the play, I’m not sure it was the
part that the test takers were given, none the less I am still using this
prompt.**
Using a dull topic such as the one in act one, Wilde
shows that each of the characters has different values, and ultimately represents
different parts of society.
Although Lady Windermere is barely of age, she is
head strong against complements. She states “I Don’t like complements, and I
don’t see why a man should think he is pleasing a woman… when he says… a whole
heap of things that he doesn’t mean.” This
is a radical wave of thinking for the time that this play was written. We see
in this excerpt that lady Windermere is a more turn of the century character.
Lady Windermere is seen as a new age thinker from
the beginning, her hatred of complements, blunt honestly, and upfront
confrontation with other characters proves this to be true time and time again.
We can see this fully in her speech: “I like you very much… But I shouldn’t
like you at all if I thought you were what most other men are.”
On the other hand, Lord Darlington thinks that her
hatred of complements is ridiculous, proving him to be a more aged thinker. His
use of constant complements and small talk is closer related to the
interactions commonly seen in 1892, when the play was written.
The line spoken by Lord Darlington: “ I wish I had
known it was your birthday… [the flowers] are made for you.” Hints at a potential
relationship between the two characters, this is also seen as a older value due
to Lord Darlington’s age.
Through his use of language, Oscar Wilde warns the
reader about the dangers of a shallow society, and stresses the need for
individualism and true friendship.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteFirst, just to clarify, I am going to write some stuff I noticed. So not that this matters now but this was a closed prompt, right? If so I think you did a great job coming up with the solution of reading a similar excerpt, I would have probably just given up and chose a different question so good job! Next I want to say you have great points and back them up with solid textual quotes. My only note is that this essay is a bit short, you could elaborate more on each of your topics and then this would be perfect. I am not sure why this is shorter than most essays, maybe because of time, maybe because of laziness (lets face it we have all been there) or maybe because you ran out of ideas but I think I may be able to help in the aspect of time. For me the 40 minutes goes by so fast but I have been able to elongate my essays now because of the 5 minutes in between reading and writing I use to draw a brief outline, emphasis on brief. Usually this is just a couple of scribbled down words but it helps keep me on track and writing fast. So I would try that if it was because of time. I hope this is helpful and don't worry you wrote a great essay besides the length!
Yours Truly,
Ana
Rachel, I think this prompt may have been for a closed prompt, I think open prompts are when it asks a broad question and then using your background and knowledge of novels you answer the prompt, I think? However, I think you still did a great job of answering this prompt because luckily you had read parts of the play that the students were given an excerpt of. I think you did a good job of providing supporting textual evidence to the points you concluded and that you were consistent with your ideas throughout your essay. There is not much I have to say that could be changed, however I think this essay could be strengthened by emphasizing earlier on in the essay the importance of individualism and true friendship. You display that Lady Windermere is somewhat feminist however it is a bit unclear of her individualism. Everything else is well supported though and your language is structure is good, nice work!
ReplyDeleteHi Rachel,
ReplyDeleteSo, as my other peer reviewers noted, this is a closed prompt. Also, right off the bat, I noticed that your essay was one giant blob of text, so be sure to separate your work into paragraphs so the grader can see an organized flow of ideas. Your response is also surprisingly short, so try and elaborate on your ideas more next time. In addition, there is no clear introduction, so I have no context to go off of as I look for your arguments, so be sure to have a clearly separated thesis next time. Also, the prompt says "how" the playwright reveals the values, not the values he reveals. I believe that this question was actually asking you to look for techniques that Wilde uses in characterizing the characters as opposed to describing those traits to the reader, so you might want to pay stronger attention to the wording of the prompt next time. In addition, there are way too many details in this essay, and I do not see any clear analysis of how that evidence is linked to your brief statement of meaning in the end. Even if you left your response from first semester as a closed prompt, I am sure Ms. Holmes would not mind if you actually chose another open prompt to respond to, since that is the goal of these posts.