HS 3090: Short Story Classics

Mid-Semester Examination
Total Marks: 30
Guidelines: Write no more than 600 words for each response. Please do not write more than
2/3 paragraphs (approximately, no more than 2 pages in response) for each question. Each
question carries 10 Marks.
Section I
1. Gayathri Spivak states: “Between patriarchy and imperialism, subject-constitution and

object-formation, the figure of the woman disappears, not into a pristine nothingness,

but a violent shuttling which is the displaced figuration of the ‘third-world woman’

caught between tradition and modernization”.

What is your understanding of the above concept? Do you agree or disagree? Do you

conceptualise a different understanding of the identity of the woman? Discuss the nature and

thematic significance of female characters in relation to the above quote with respect to two

short story texts. [One text can be from the stories discussed in class, and the other can be

from the presentation story texts. Or both texts can be from the former category.]

2. Virocia Patea argues that “the short form renders perception in a mode close to the way in

which we experience and know the world: occasionally, in fragments”. Assess this argument.

Is it justifiable? Respond to this notion by constructing your argument by accepting, rejecting

or complicating it. Use examples from the short story texts read for the course.

Section II: Annotate the following excerpt:

“She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with pleasure, with no thought for anything, in the

triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success, in a cloud of happiness made up of this

universal homage and admiration, of the desires she had aroused, of the completeness of a

victory so dear to her feminine heart.”

Please submit the exam script on or before 4th October 2021 (before 11 a.m). Please type

out your response on a word document and send it as a word attachment. Only one file needs

to be attached.

Please email it to divya@smail.iitm.ac.in with a copy to mrithula20495@gmail.com.

If you are unable to email your exam script as a word document kindly email me asap.
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