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UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Summer Examinations 2015
North American Women Writers – Finalists
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Time allowed: 2 hours.
SEEN Examination Paper
There are TWO sections to this paper. You must answer ONE question from EACH section.
Read carefully the instruction on the answer book and make sure that the particulars required are entered fully on each answer book. Do not substantially repeat material between sections of the exam.
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Section A: Write a critical analysis and interpretation of ONE of the following passages, paying particular attention to the author’s use of language, and deployment of themes, and narrative strategies, in relation to its cultural context.
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1.
“Don’t you know that slavery was outlawed?”
“No,” the guard said, “you’re wrong. Slavery was outlawed with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons.”
I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth Amendment to the
Constitution says:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so many Black people can’t find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know how. Once you’re in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don’t want to work, they beat you up and throw you in a hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions…
Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren’t planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third
World people.
Assata , Assata Shakur
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2.
‘Please,’ Ms Jenkins said, closing the door behind her as she gestured for me to sit.
‘Call me Doris.’
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I lowered myself slowly into a chair, and Ms Jenkins sat across from me, so close that
I could see the thing’s tongue sliding over her neck. I answered her questions quickly, wanting the hour to be over, wanting to stick my fingers in my ears and not listen to its whisperings.
‘Do you think,’ she asked me halfway through our first and last session, ‘that maybe these ghosts you dream about aren’t really ghosts, but are your attempt to deal with death?’
‘No,’ I said.
Her wide, blue eyes fixed on me. ‘Then you believe ghosts exist?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
It turned its bony head to me. The room was still and warm. The air conditioning in the hospital wasn’t working very well. Sunlight glinted in Ms Jenkins’s hair, the colour of the highlights fascinating – a tawny-gold, a light red, deep eggplant. ‘Are you sure?’
The thing unwrapped its arms from Ms Jenkins and drifted across the room, hovering over me. It hummed like a high tension wire.
‘Yes,’ my mouth moving by itself, my body not moving at all. I couldn’t take my eyes from it.
‘Why?’
The thing bent its head, its lips near my ear. ‘For attention, I guess.’
‘Good, this is good, Lisa.’
Monkey Beach , Eden Robinson
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3.
Along the paths and underneath the trees were many, many yellow flowers the size and shape of play teacups, or fairy skirts. They looked like something to eat and something to wear at the same time; they looked beautiful; they looked simple, as if made to erase a complicated and unnecessary idea. I did not know what these flowers were, and so it was a mystery to me why I wanted to kill them. Just like that.
I wanted to kill them. I wished that I had an enormous scythe; I would just walk down the path, dragging it alongside me, and I would cut these flowers down at the place where they emerged from the ground.
Mariah said, ‘These are daffodils. I’m sorry about the poem, but I’m hoping you’ll find them lovely all the same.’
There was such joy in her voice as she said this, such a music, how could I explain to her the feeling I had about daffodils – that it wasn’t exactly daffodils, but that they would do as well as anything else. Where should I start? Over here or over there? Anywhere would be good enough, but my heart and my thoughts were racing so that every time I tried to talk I stammered and by accident bit my own tongue.
Mariah, mistaking what was happening to me for joy at seeing daffodils for the first time, reached out to hug me, but I moved away, and in doing that I seemed to get my voice back. I said, ‘Mariah, do you realized that at ten years of age I had learnt by heart a long poem about some flowers I would not see in real life until I was nineteen?’
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As soon as I said this, I felt sorry that I had cast her beloved daffodils in a scene she had never considered, a scene of conquered and conquests; a scene of brutes, masquerading as angels and angels portrayed as brutes.
Lucy , Jamaica Kincaid
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4.
My grandmother lived to rejoice in my freedom; but not long after, a letter came with a black seal. She had gone "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."
Time passed on, and a paper came to me from the south, containing an obituary notice of my uncle Phillip. It was the only case I ever knew of such an honor conferred upon a colored person. It was written by one of his friends, and contained these words: "Now that death has laid him low, they call him a good man and a useful citizen; but what are eulogies to the black man, when the world has faded from his vision? It does not require man's praise to obtain rest in God's kingdom." So they called a colored man a citizen ! Strange words to be uttered in that region!
Reader, my story ends with freedom; not in the usual way, with marriage. I and my children are now free! We are as free from the power of slaveholders as are the white people of the north; and though that, according to my ideas, is not saying a great deal, it is a vast improvement in my condition. The dream of my life is not yet realized. I do not sit with my children in a home of my own, I still long for a hearthstone of my own, however humble. I wish it for my children's sake far more than for my own. But God so orders circumstances as to keep me with my friend Mrs
Bruce. Love, duty, gratitude, also bind me to her side. It is a privilege to serve her who pities my oppressed people, and who has bestowed the inestimable boon of freedom on me and my children.
It has been painful to me, in many ways, to recall the dreary years I passed in bondage. I would gladly forget them if I could. Yet the retrospection is not altogether without solace; for with those gloomy recollections come tender memories of my good old grandmother, like light, fleecy clouds floating over a dark and troubled sea.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl , Harriet Jacobs
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SECTION B: Answer ONE of the following questions. Your answer should be based on a discussion of TWO or THREE texts on the module. Do not attempt to cover more than three texts at length.
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1.
Compare and contrast how two or three novels from this module represent the potentials and pitfalls for sisterhood across lines of power (mistress/slave, thirdworld/first-world, etc.)
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2.
Many of the novels we have looked at this year focus on the desire to own a house.
Compare how two or three texts analyze the politics of home ownership.
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3.
Investigate women writers’ treatment of violence towards the female body. Make sure to consider which female bodies are more prone to violence and why.
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4.
Examine how two or three novels studied on this module cite, quote, or make use of other novels in their own work, and to what ends.
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5.
What kinds of strategies have writers used to “queer” the notion of the family?
Choose two or three texts that we have read on this module.
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