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AS Level Prose: Worksheet 7
AS Level Prose: Worksheet 7
Worksheet 7
1 Main characters with some dialogue: What impression is created of the
characters of the ‘I’ of the story and the ‘she’? Look closely at the language to
see how the writer does this. How do you respond to them? (From Emily Brontë:
Wuthering Heights.)
She was slender, and apparently scarcely past girlhood: an admirable form,
and the most exquisite little face that I have ever had the pleasure of
beholding; small features, very fair; flaxen ringlets, or rather golden,
hanging loose on her delicate neck; and eyes, had they been agreeable in
expression, that would have been irresistible: fortunately for my susceptible
heart, the only sentiment they evinced hovered between scorn and a kind of
desperation, singularly unnatural to be detected there. The canisters were
almost out of her reach; I made a motion to aid her; she turned upon me as
a miser might turn if any one attempted to assist him in counting his gold.
‘I don’t want your help,’ she snapped; ‘I can get them for myself.’
‘Were you asked to tea?’ she demanded, tying an apron over her neat black
frock, and standing with a spoonful of the leaf poised over the pot.
‘No,’ I said, half smiling. ‘You are the proper person to ask me.’
She flung the tea back, spoon and all, and resumed her chair in a pet; her
forehead corrugated, and her red under-lip pushed out, like a child’s ready
to cry.
2 Subsidiary and main character with dialogue: What does the dialogue tell us
about the intellect and attitudes of the speakers? How does this interchange
differ from drama? (From Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice.)
‘And can you likewise declare, that there is no foundation for it?’
‘This is not to be borne. Miss Bennet, I insist on being satisfied. Has he,
has my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?’
3 Setting, with imagery and symbolism: Consider the descriptive effects closely.
(From Charles Dickens: Great Expectations.)
I crossed the staircase landing, and entered the room she indicated.
From that room, too, the daylight was completely excluded, and it had
an airless smell that was oppressive. A fire had been lately kindled in
the damp old-fashioned grate, and it was more disposed to go out than
to burn up, and the reluctant smoke which hung in the room seemed
colder than the clearer air,—like our own marsh mist. Certain wintry
I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same
occurrence were important to their interests. But the black beetles
took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a
ponderous elderly way, as if they were short-sighted and hard of
hearing, and not on terms with one another.
4 Narrative: Who might the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ be in the first section? What is ‘it’
and how does it relate to the second part in Chapter XVI? Discuss the
different first persons. (From Anne Brontë: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.)
I have it now before me; and though you could not, of course, peruse it
with half the interest that I did, I know you would not be satisfied with
an abbreviation of its contents, and you shall have the whole, save,
perhaps, a few passages here and there of merely temporary interest
to the writer, or such as would serve to encumber the story rather than
elucidate it. It begins somewhat abruptly, thus—but we will reserve its
commencement for another chapter.
CHAPTER XVI
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of
the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had
been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of
country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew
on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it
was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable
gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was
unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment,
with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images
of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon
the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—
upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few
rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an
utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation
more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the
bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping off of the veil.