Coursework essay proposal

A2 COURSEWORK ESSAY PROPOSAL PRESENATION

Chosen texts for study

TEXT 1: (Core text)

A Streetcar Named Desire

Play by Tennesse Williams


TEXT 2:

Lolita

Novel by Vladimir Nabokov


TEXT 2:

Miss Julie

Play by August Strindberg

Desire

Destruction THEMES

Morality

Essay title

Using your knowledge of the contexts in which these texts were written and the reactions of

readers over time, compare the ways in which Tennessee Williams in ‘A Streetcar Named

Desire’, August Strindberg in ‘Miss Julie’ and Vladimir Nabokov in ‘Lolita’ present

transgressive behaviour of characters leading to their downfall.

Accessing

the

AO’s

Essay points Point 1: Fate is ultimately at blame for the downfall of characters as it is fate that fuels their desires.

Point 2: Women are treated as the main instigators or culprits of transgressive behaviour.

Point 3: Transgressive behaviour in the eyes of the main characters, leading to their blindness and subsequent collapse.

Point 4: Desire is the route cause of transgressive behaviour. Point 5: Transgressive behaviour of women is deemed far more serious than

that of men.

Point 6: The downfall of characters, is not only due to their transgressive behaviour but the influence of social laws on them.

Examples of

essay points plans

Essay points Point 1 AO1 AO2 AO3 AO4 A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams

Fate is ultimately at blame for the d o w n f a l l o f characters as it is fate that fuels their desires..

“They told me to take a street-‐car named Desire, and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks and get off at—Elysian Fields!”

the play shows us two people who move inexorably forward to their respecEve fates through acEons they take under the influence of a sequence of circumstances at once random and of their mutual making. Directors notes, Miss Julie

A woman’s role was not down to fate but social construct.

Lolita Vladimir Nabokov


“As for me, although I had long become used to a kind of secondary fate (McFate's inept secretary, so to speak) peQly interfering with the boss's magnificent plan.”

I can only say that Humbert’s fate seems to me classically tragic, a most perfectly realized expression of the moral truth […] Humbert is every man who is driven by desire, wanEng his Lolita so badly that it never occurs to him to consider her as a human being […]which is the eternal and universal nature of passion.

A woman’s role was not down to fate but social construct.

Miss Julie August

Strindberg


“I curse the moment I was concieved in my mother’s womb!” Miss Julie to Jean

the play shows us two people who move inexorably forward to their respecEve fates through acEons they take under the influence of a sequence of circumstances at once random and of their mutual making. – Directors notes, Miss Julie

A woman’s role was not down to fate but social construct. Strindberg’s ‘Woman’s inferiority to man and the reasons for her subordinate posiAon.’

Essay points Point 2 AO1 AO2 AO3 AO4

A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams

Women are treated as the main instigators or culprits of transgressive behaviour.

‘Yep, it was pracEcally a town ordinance passed against her!’ Stanley to Stella Scene VII

‘She [women] could take him without giving herself into his power. Rather she could use this sex thing to have power over him.’ Lady Cha_erlys Lover D.H. Lawrence

By having a sexual relaEonship with women of superior status, the male transgressors bring themselves to conquer the females of high society, bringing them disgrace and ruin. Sex is thus the means to leverage social hierarchies and social inequaliEes. Gender conflict in Strindberg’s Miss julie, Chung Chin Yi

“Hysteria was historically considered a

female disease, and in the late-‐nineteenth century was defined as an

illness brought on when a woman

failed or refused to accept her sexual desires and did not become a sexual

object”



‘I would shed all my masculine pride—and literally crawl on my knees to your chair, my Lolita!’

Miss Julie August

Strindberg


‘And when I’d seen you returned home, I was determined to die.’ Jean to Miss Julie Ballet

AO1 AO2 AO3 AO4 A

Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams

Transgressive behaviour in the eyes of the main characters, leading to their blindness and subsequent collapse.

‘I’ll tell you what I want. Magic! […] I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, let me be damned for it!’

‘Not even her moral code, […]admirable as far as it goes, qualifies her as a symbol of transcendence so much as her piEful a_empts to combat actuality do. And, ironically and tragically enough, it is her very preference for soulful illusion and for magic over actuality which paves the way for her voyage to the madhouse.’



"Oh Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe’s and Bea Dante’s, and what li_le girl would not like to whirl in a circular skirt and scanEes?"

‘the great promised’ can only exist in the imaginaEon and can only be infinite in the imaginaEon. Reality is decepEon and change. The consummaEon of desire quenches its source.’

Virginia Poe was Edgar Allan Poe’s 1st cousin and wife. She was 13 when she married 27 year old Poe. His poem Annabel Lee is said to be inspired by her. Likewise, Dante was infatuated by Beatrice PorAnari who features in his Divine comedies.

Essay points Point 3

Miss Julie August

Strindberg


‘my mother decided to bring me up as a child of nature and, what’s more I had to learn everything a boy has to learn, so that I might serve to demonstrate that a woman was just as good as any man.’

‘the great promised’ can only exist in the imaginaDon and can only be infinite in the imaginaDon. Reality is decepDon and change. The consummaDon of desire quenches its source.’

''Woman, being small and foolish and therefore evil . . . should be suppressed, like barbarians and thieves. She is useful only as ovary and womb.''

THANK YOU

Education

Coursework essay proposal