Instructor: Prof. Cecilia Liu  

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Take-home Midterm Exam

Modern/Postmodern English Literature 

This test is also a test of the depth as well as the scope of your knowledge in the texts. Think carefully before you answer the questions. Illustrate your answers with specific examples from texts.

Choose four from the following and answer each with a well-developed essay that includes a thesis statement and topic sentences. Keep the given sequence.

1. First, discuss the conjugal relationship between Susan and Matthew Rawlings and show how the modern marriage is presented in ¡§To Room Nineteen.¡¨  Then, discuss the motif of Susan's journey in the story and show how it leads Susan's death. Could you suggest any way out for Susan?

2. In what way does "Rocking-Horse Winner" call forth the pity and fear of the reader? How is the tragedy caused? 

3. What is the "Waste Land" Eliot describes?  What other kinds of physical settings does Eliot use?  How do they influence the messages of his poems?

4. Why is Eliot so fascinated with death imagery?  What does the recurring imagery of drowning symbolize?

5. In Mrs. Dalloway although the characters are continually criticizing each other, there may exist a strong bond between women in spite of differences and hostility. For instance, Clarissa acclaims her love with Sally for its ¡¥purity¡¦ and ¡¥integrity,¡¦ which are impossible in a relationship with a man, which always becomes domination by the latter. Bonds with men, especially their culmination in marriage, are a menace to the freedom of women. Take another example from the old woman opposite Clarissa¡¦s window. The old woman is a mirror image of herself in her attic, a symbol of both independence and isolation in patriarchal society. With ¡¥a room of her own¡¦, she lives up to the demands of Woolf¡¦s major feminist tract. Even between Clarissa and Miss Kilman there is a bond.   Comment on the women¡¦s comradeship in Mrs. Dalloway.

6. Many critics describe Septimus as Clarissa's doppelganger, the alternate persona, the darker, more internal personality compared to Clarissa's very social and singular outlook.  What¡¦s your opinion?  Discuss and comment. 

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