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UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Summer Examinations 2015
North American Women Writers – Non-Finalists
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1.
But it didn’t last, this happiness of Helga Crane’s.
Little by little the signs of spring appeared, but strangely the enchantment of
the season, so enthusiastically, so lavishly greeted by the gay dwellers of Harlem,
filled her only with restlessness. Somewhere within her, in a deep recess, crouched
discontent. She began to lose confidence in the fullness of her life, the glow began to
fade from her conception of it. As the days multiplied, her need of something,
something vaguely familiar, but which she could not put a name to and hold for
definite examination, became almost intolerable. She went through moments of
overwhelming anguish. She felt shut in, trapped. ‘Perhaps I’m tired, need a tonic, or
something,’ she reflected. So she consulted a physician, who, after a long, solemn
examination, said there was nothing wrong, nothing at all. ‘A change of scene,
perhps for a week or so, or a few days away from work,’ would put her straight most
likely. Helga tried this, tried them both, but it was no good. All interest had gone out
of living. Nothing seemed any good. She became a little frightened, and then
shocked to discover that, for some unknown reason, it was of herself she was afraid.
Quicksand, Nella Larsen
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2.
Is this what I’ve waited almost two years for? The subdivision spills out four blocks
from the store at the corner of East Broadway and Main. Paroling to Farmington was
disappointing enough, but working for Jerry and Cris feels like losing five years and
he doesn’t see any way out. Shouldn’t he be advancing? After giving Jerry $400 for
rent he’s making way less than minimum wage, $150 a week.
Continued
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Cars and trucks he’ll never own whizzing past on East Broadway, the pawnshops and
99-cent stores right in his face.
He’s not even really making $150 a week because he has to pay for parole, twentyfive dollars a week. And then credit card restitution, fifty dollars a month . . . Where
was the future? While he was still at the Farm he’d imagined it like a movie. His life
would be only one thing, curbed into space like a screen, devoted to God and
sobriety but now that he’s out there are hundreds of other things going on, things
that shoot through your nerves and have no place to go. Paul feels these
complications erupting all over his body like scabies. Lately he’s been having dreams
about cliffs. He’s in a car with a few other people driving up Blarlock Ridge to look at
the sunset. As soon as the driver turns off the motor he knows something bad’s
gonna happen. The door opens. People push him out of the car, one of them grabs
his arm and tosses him over the cliff, he’s too weak to resist. After falling, he wakes
up in a sweat. Well. He hasn’t been to the gym or picked up the Bible since leaving
the Farm but at least he hasn’t taken a drink.
Summer of Hate, Chris Kraus
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3.
‘Slavery was not a matter of liking or disliking,’ I said, trying to speak calmly. ‘It was a
question of justice.’
‘Justice,’ she said. ‘I've heard that word. It's a cold word. I tried it out,’ she said, still
speaking in a low voice. ‘I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a
damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.’ She drank some more rum and went on.
‘My mother whom you all talk about, what justice did she have? My mother sitting in
the rocking-chair speaking about dead horses and dead grooms and a black devil
kissing her sad mouth. Like you kissed mine.’
The room was unbearably hot. ‘I’ll open the window and let a little air in,’ I said.
‘It will let the night in too,’ she said, ‘and the moon and the scent of those flowers
you dislike so much,’
When I turned from the window she was drinking again.
‘Bertha,’ I said.
‘Bertha is not my name. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by
another name. I know, that’s obeah too.’
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4.
Lindner: Our association is prepared, through the collective effort of our people, to
buy the house from you at a financial gain to your family.
Rut: Lord have mercy, ain’t this the living gall?
Walter: All right, you through?
Lindner: Well, I want to give you the exact terms of the financial arrangement –
Walter: We don’t want to hear no exact terms of no arrangements. I want to know if
you got any more to tell us ’bout getting together?
Continued
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Lindner (taking off his glasses): Well – I don’t suppose you feel . . .
Walter: Never mind how I feel – you got any more to say ’bout how people ought to
sit down and talk to each other? Get out of my house man.
Lindner (looking around at the hostile faces and, reaching and assembling his hat
and briefcase): Well – I don’t understand why you people are reacting this
way. What do you think you are going to gain by moving into a neighborhood
where you just aren’t wanted and where some elements – well – people can
get awful worked up when they feel that their whole way of life and
everything they’ve ever worked for is threatened.
A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------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.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1. Investigate the ways in which two or three authors use ghosts and the supernatural
in their novels. To what ends?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2. Compare how two texts portray the performance of gender and the process of what
Judith Butler terms “girling.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3. What kinds of strategies have writers used to “queer” the notion of the family?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4. How does the Cult of True Womanhood persist or change in the twentieth-century?
Compare Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl with one of the more contemporary
novels we have studied.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5. How has segregation changed in the US society since the time of Jim Crow? Compare
the positions of two or three writers from this module.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------End
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