Start Date
4 October, 2024
There will be 3 monthly sessions, Friday 4 October, Friday 1 November, & Friday 6 December, 11am - 2pm
Overview
This course aims to look at 3 distinctive novels linked by the theme of female communities, with other points of comparison in terms of education, morality, gender and identity.
‘A world in itself’ is how Elizabeth Bowen describes the setting of Antonia White’s novel, Frost in May, about a young Catholic convert’s education at the Convent of the Five Wounds. Equally distinctive environments are found in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, a small town, ‘in possession of the Amazons’ and Dorothy L Sayers’s Gaudy Night, a conflicted love letter to a women’s College in Oxford.
White’s novel is intensely focussed and highly autobiographical; Gaskell’s work is generous social comedy; and Sayers’s detective story (featuring Lord Peter Wimsey) is a romance celebrating the intellectual endeavours of women.
All 3 stories define cultures with distinctive hierarchies and ideals; explore what it means to be an insider or outsider; and create vivid and memorable characters, most notably, Nanda Gray, Miss Matty Jenkyns, and Harriet Vane. This course would appeal to anyone interested in developing their knowledge of literary fiction of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. No prior experience required.
Syllabus
Students will be expected to read each text in advance of the seminars:
4/10/24 Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, 1853
1/11/24 Antonia White, Frost in May, 1933
6/12//24 Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night, 1935
Please note that the ‘last date available to book’ date is only a guide. We reserve the right to close bookings earlier if courses are over- or under-subscribed. In order to avoid disappointment, please be sure enrol as soon as possible. Registrations will not be processed until the following day if received after 3pm.
Course Lecturer: Dr Shirley Jones
At Continuing Education, I currently run courses on contemporary women's writing, nineteenth-century writing, and the thematic strand, The Monthly Novel. Previously I have also taught courses on classic authors, such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Dorothy Wordsworth. My Ph.D was a study of the Victorian writer, Margaret Oliphant. Outside of Continuing Education, I am a member of a writers' group and I run community writing workshops at the VG&M and the Lowlands centre in West Derby
Courses fees: Full fee £70/Concession £35.
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