Mary Barton, Chapters 4-5

Working in groups of three or four, create a googledoc, include the word “Persimmon” in the title of the doc, and share it with my gmail address. Discuss the following questions and have a different member of the group record answers for each. Be sure to list all group members' names in the doc.

1. Why do you think Gaskell has Old Alice tell the story of leaving the country and coming to the city in such detail?
2. What do you think of Mary so far? What about Margaret? Offer details from the text to characterize each of them.
3. In chapter five, we hear about the autodidact Job Legh and his interest in science. What possible purpose might Gaskell have in sharing this information with us?

Mary Barton, Chapters 1–3

Six minutes in your in-class writing googledoc:

1. How is this book different in its opening chapters from all the other books we’ve read? Try to find at least three specific ways.
2. What, generally, was your emotional response to the first three chapters of Mary Barton?

Working on Great Expectations sentences

Look over everything you noted down or wrote yesterday in our pre-Writing for a hypothetical Great Expectations response paper. Now take a stab at writing a sentence that summarizes something important about Great Expectations, something you think is not completely obvious. It’s OK if your sentence is not highly polished and eloquent right now. Spend about five minutes on this.

Once you have a draft of a sentence, read it over. If you’re highly unsatisfied with your sentence, shift gears and spend about five more minutes writing another sentence with a different approach toward the novel. If you’re more or less satisfied with your first sentence, continue to work on it and make it clearer, more specific, and more dynamic.


Later, you can #clickhere for some details related to our brief introduction to the social problem novel.

Pre-Writing for a hypothetical Great Expectations response paper

First, ten minutes:

·      Come up with five adjectives to describe Great Expectations.

·      Come up with five adjectives or phrases to characterize Pip.

·      Describe how your feelings about Pip changed over the course of the book. Sum up how Pip changed from start to finish.

·      Page through the book and find the most interesting or compelling scene in the book. Briefly describe it and say in a few words why you chose it.

·      Find two other short scenes or moments that you think are especially important in the book. List the page numbers or note them by chapter and opening/closing phrase.

·      Who seems to you the most important character, besides Pip? Why?

·      Sum up your feelings about the ending, whatever aspects of it strike you the most.

·      What is the biggest question you have about the book or the most pressing problem or issue you have with the book at this point?