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DARTs Literary Analysis and Wuthering Heights.doc
I teach some students with special needs and I found one particular technique really useful when tackling Pre-Twentieth Century Literature recently.
To put the lesson in context, I try to enter my autistic students for GCSE English examination as soon as possible.
This gets them used to the system and the particular demands of the syllabus, particularly in coursework and the examination itself.
Some students thus take the examination as early as Year 8 or Year 9 in the first instance.
Results have been remarkable with typical progressions from D, to C to B grades or E, to D to C grades over the past few years for many of my students.
I know that such achievements would not be apparent if I just allowed them to take their GCSEs solely in Year 11. For my students, familiarity does not breed contempt, it breeds success.
The Approach
Below, I will exemplify one technique I have used to boost success in English with reference to Wuthering Heights.
1. First, I will show how an autistic student approached an essay on a set text.
2. Secondly I will outline my “intervention?.
3. Thirdly I will show you the end product.
This technique was used to produce a piece of GCSE coursework but it could be employed to prepare candidates for the controlled assessment too.
As is the norm with my students who initially have an aversion to text, particularly with such an intimidating tome, I used a DVD of Wuthering Heights to familiarise the students with the material.
I found the ITV 1998 version particularly useful for this purpose because it includes the Lockwood Rahmenerzählung or “frame story? found in the original novel and it proves to be very accessible by the students I teach on a daily basis with its gutsy performances.
We analysed the action in class and I spent a good deal of time discussing the infamous “Nellie, I am Heathcliff? scene, which in the novel takes place in Chapter Nine.
Realising that we needed to do a bit of VAK (visual/auditory/kinaesthetic) reinforcement of my teaching points we then “visualised? a pivot in class, using a 30cm ruler and a lump of clay. We rocked the ruler back and forth over this clay pivot and we decided that it looked a lot like a seesaw.
I then asked them to see Chapter Nine as a “pivot” in the novel, suggesting that the action up to this point was a love story, but after this PIVOTAL point it becomes more of a story of revenge.
I handed out printed copies of Chapter Nine which I had downloaded for free off the internet via the Gutenburg Project and asked the students to underline important sections to prepare them for an essay the following lesson.
I thought all the students had understood what I meant but obviously I had to revise my opinion of this when I received the following sad and limited written response to my lesson.
Title: Why do you consider Chapter Nine is so important in the novel Wuthering Heights?
Response 1 | Pre-Intervention
My opinion is that I thought it was a fantastic chapter which made me want to read on to chapter ten. My page had to be the very first page. It was as good as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which means it was great.
I think that Emily Bronte (Ellis Bell) had a fantastic imagination. My fave character has to be Nellie. I love her attitude as a servant. She is not threatening or rude like Catherine. It was a great book but I wouldn’t buy it. I loved it but I can’t think of any more to say. Thank you Sir.
You can imagine my response! Oh, dear. Back to the drawing board. This particular student had obviously missed the point entirely.
I thought I might make use of DARTs to help her get back on track. DARTs!... Directed Activities Related to Texts. It was worth a go.
To explain simply, DARTs are ways of making text more multi-sensory, more engaging or more interactive. We all know that some people read in bed to calm the brain or send themselves to sleep but DARTs make reading more vital, more lively. The last thing you want to do in a well-crafted DART is to go to sleep. Scans of people using this technique prove that the brain is a hive of activity. It makes the brain buzz.
My question here was, would it make an autistic brain buzz?
Using an old essay on this very topic of the significance of Chapter Nine that was completed by a former pupil of mine, I cut it up and rearranged it on an A3 sheet of paper for my student to look at.
Below, you can see what it looked like. It was jumbled and did not flow. My DART was simple. I wanted my student to make sense of it. She could use scissors to cut up the text and play with Blutac or glue to rearrange it until the argument did make sense.
Feel free to print this out and do the same. Even if you have not read Chapter Nine of Wuthering Heights in great detail, the theory suggested that you might ENGAGE with the text more thoroughly than just reading the original essay.
To help you, I have added emphasis (bold, colour, headings, etc.) to the title and the conclusion of the essay. Just rearrange the other paragraphs into a convincing argument.
DART | Directed Activities Related to Texts
The chapter closes where Nellie has been made to leave The Heights and accompany Cathy to Thrushcross Grange; she leaves behind young Hareton which saddens her as she had just begun to teach him his letters.
I think Nellie has got caught up in the middle of Cathy’s emotional entanglement with Heathcliff and at times you could feel sorry for her. As for Cathy, she is egocentric. Just look at her when she says “I don’t want your permission to marry?. I think it does not matter what Nellie might say as I think Cathy will go ahead and marry Edgar regardless of any advice.
Cathy is sometimes blinkered and bound by the present which means she only looks at what is going on in the here and now rather than what might happen in the future. She is rather naïve in this respect.
In conclusion, we can see that Chapter Nine is indeed a crucial part of the novel. It is pivotal. This is reflected in Cathy’s actions and speech and the reciprocal actions of Heathcliff. Significantly, Heathcliff only heard a portion of Cathy’s conversation to Nellie. Had he heard all she had to say on the matter I am fairly certain he would not have disappeared into the night on his quest for fortune, nor would the latter part of the novel have been so obsessed with revenge rather than love.
In this chapter, we can see that Cathy’s sojourn at The Grange has rubbed off on her. She has returned with social aspirations of grandeur. It is painfully evident that she regards Heathcliff as beneath her.
She regards Heathcliff with disdain. One might assume their relationship is platonic. This is traumatic news for Heathcliff. Though he had suffered hard times at the hands of the violent and moody Hindley Earnshaw, he had survived knowing that his passionate love for Cathy could carry him through. By eavesdropping on this conversation, Heathcliff realises the futility of his desires.
Considering she is only a domestic servant and is thus a menial below Cathy, Nellie is far too assertive in this section. She forgets her place, telling Cathy what to do. I think the reason for this is because she has looked after her since she was young and has unwittingly taken on the role of surrogate mother, so even tough she was a hired hand, she does not stop at doling out advice. If it is remarkable that Cathy takes on airs and graces above her station in response to her time at Thrushcross Grange, then it is also revealing here that Nellie is seemingly adopting a curious role.
In accepting the process, Cathy is being far too dispassionate and unemotional. She is dealing with relationships like tokens on a chessboard. Cathy tries to be cold and calculating, suggesting she can marry Linton in order to advance Heathcliff. She will prostitute herself in order to pull her soulmate from his lowly social condition.
However, Cathy is not entirely sure that accepting Edgar’s offer of marriage is the right thing to do. She has a guilty conscience and this is why she goes to Nellie for advice. She uses Nellie as a sounding board, detailing her misgivings with her confidante. Unfortunately, Heathcliff leaves the scene before Cathy reveals her misgivings on the matter and their relationship never recovers.
Many readers of the novel have seen much mileage in the last response and have seen the servant as a villain of the piece as a consequence. Some people have also seen Nellie as the third protagonist because of the central and important role that she plays in explaining the cuckoo tale involving Cathy and Heathcliff.
The chapter is written in the first person and is narrated by Nellie Dean to the tenant Lockwood, which means she accounted word for word the conversation she had with Cathy and is retelling it her way.
Cathy has never openly spoken of her feelings since coming back from The Grange and this is why Heathcliff is so confused by what he has to hear. He had earlier confronted his friend with a diary or log of her time with the Lintons and himself to prove to her that she was favouring them but Cathy had dismissed this talk out of hand. In Chapter Nine there are no such denials. Cathy has been misleading Heathcliff and this is clearly evident here.
What is more interesting in this chapter is that Nellie tells lies. These lies play a significant part in the action of the novel as a whole. One of the lies is in the first few lines. Cathy asks “Are you alone Nellie?? to which the servant replies “Yes? then Cathey asks where Heathcliff is and Nellie tells her he is about his work in the stables.
Why do you consider Chapter Nine is so important in the novel Wuthering Heights?
Cathy fools herself into thinking that by marrying Edgar she will be able to help Heathcliff out of the mire. In this she is short-sighted. In a sense she will marry money so her friend can hold on to her coat tails and elevate himself from his lowly position. Perhaps Emily Bronte here is acknowledging that some women of the time did in fact marry for monetary reasons rather than love a soul mate.
Fortunately she realises in the later sections of her talk with Nellie that her love for Heathcliff is far from platonic.
The final paragraph is of Nellie looking at the time piece over the chimney in amazement on seeing the time. Cathy has gone to rest and Nellie follows with aching head and limbs.
Nellie knows full well that Heathcliff is in the next room.
The first section of this chapter highlights the violence that surrounds The Heights. Hindley is on the rampage and Nellie and young Hareton are on the receiving end. Nellie gets a knife stuck in her mouth and Hareton is thrown over the banister and down the stairs. Eventually, the action zooms in on Cathy and Heathcliff.
Heathcliff does not really say anything in Chapter Nine and you wish he would have stayed around to hear Cathy say how she really felt about him.
If you look closely at Chapter Nine in the novel, I think it sets the stall out for the rest of the action. It is a crucial and pivotal moment in the story and is a catalyst for the breakdown of the relationship of the two central protagonists.
Why Nellie chooses to conceal this fact we can only guess. Is she forgetful? Is she afraid that Cathy might not talk to her? Is she stirring mischief? Also, when Heathcliff leaves noisily Nellie deceives Cathy by telling her that Joseph is coming and that Heathcliff will come with him.
End,
So, by playing with and rearranging the essay into some form of rational argument, I hoped that my student might engage deeper with the material.
Response 2 | Post-Intervention
Below is the response I got from her the next day.
Why do you consider chapter nine is important in the novel Wuthering Heights?
In Chapter Nine I found Cathy’s dark side which shows her as an egocentric character. In this part of Wuthering Heights Cathy shows her total disdain of Heathcliff, this a traumatic turn for Heathcliff.
Heathcliff has had a lot that had happened to him cruelty from Cathy’s brother and then finally Cathy herself who had turned from a decent person to a rather mean person.
She thinks that her long suffering ex-soul mate might be willing to prosper at her expense.
Cathy is at sometimes blinkered and bound by what’s happening in the present, which means that she only seems to live in the moment ,she ignores the past and the future. She only looks in the future in a rather naive way.
She seems to only consider her life at this very second. Cathy still in the small part of her mind has special feelings for Heathcliff yet she thinks she can sacrifice him to fulfil her total plan. I think she wants social advancement above all else here.
Because of her selfish actions, Heathcliff will change from the protagonist to the antagonist (villain). Cathy decides to use the two men 1 st one heathcliff the 2Dd Edgar. She uses them and those two men seem to not be oblivious at the fact she’s just using them to advance herself.
Edgar has fallen for her and has asked her to marry him, she seems a bit upset and happy. The happy bit is she gets to get married but the upset bit is she’d leave her soul mate. Her dilemma is a very hard one she has to decide which one she’d live with either Heathcliff or Edgar but as she says, marrying Heathcliff would “degrade? her.
She picked Edgar not for love but for money surprise ,surprise that’s what most Victorian women did, this left Heathcliff devastated and heart broken.
As the chapter comes to a close Cathy seems to go to Nellie for advice but of course as her new self Cathy ignores her and does what she likes anyway. To her Nellie’s opinion doesn’t really matter.
Meanwhile a heartbroken Heathcliff is off and plotting revenge. She didn’t think Heathcliff was eavesdropping but he only seems to hear the cruel horrid things that she said and after hearing that he fled before he could hear the positive things that she had to say. The chapter is pivotal in that they story from here willchange from a love story to one of revenge.
In conclusion I can tell that Chapter Nine is one of the most crucial parts of the story it had gone from love to hatred and revenge. This chapter is full of shocks on every hurdle. We see that Cathy’s decision to give herself to Edgar for the sake of her soul mate will have dire consequences in the long run.
I think the transition from her first attempt to the second is quite phenomenal. The DART allowed the student to focus on the task in hand and the improvement is clear to see.
The result was not simple plagiarism but real engagement with the chosen chapter. There are further teaching points, of course. The lack of quotations are easy to spot but the transformation from vague “stab in the dark? approach to literary study to real analysis of theme and character is notable.
I hope you see the possibilities.
Happy DARTing!
Notes| Experimenting with DARTs
Sequencing
The task above can be categorized as sequencing.
This is very useful when attempting non-chronological writing or formal essays.
You can reveal introductions to young darters and ask them to map out possible following sections or offer them a number of possibilities.
I use pieces created by one class of students to show to others to show them there are a number of ways to crack a nut. The whiteboard is obviously very useful to carry out such work.
Filling Gaps
You can delete words from a passage in a variety of ways.
You could select a number of verbs or adjectives to engage readers or simply remove every tenth word. These gaps can be left blank or you can offer cards with possibilities to encourage students to use more ambitious vocabulary.
The computer program ClozePro will do this automatically and offer statistical analysis of results too if required.
Collaborative Reading
Reading does not have to be a solitary activity. Asking darters to work on a collaborative task encourages team work and adds to the stimulus of the activity.
Each darter round a table could hold one paragraph and offer it to the group to create a collaborative sequencing exercise. They “play? their card when they feel it is appropriate.
“Jokers? can be included in this activity by including rogue texts that have little or nothing to do with the main activity. This should encourage careful selection of material.
Prediction
You can withhold paragraphs or pages and ask readers to predict what might happen next.
You could spice this up by including graphic clues or possibilities in order to encourage your young darters to articulate sequences, dialogue or denouements.
Alternative Representation of Texts
You can ask darters to reconstruct text in a variety of other formats such as graphics, diagrams, tables or flow charts. Asking students to draw a picture of the most important event in a poem, story or play can be very revealing.
You can also ask students to sum up each paragraph in one word or a short phrase or subheading or to put a ring round the most important word in a section of text. This is particularly useful on an interactive whiteboard.
