Part 1: Read “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth” and respond to

Part 1: Read “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William Wordsworth” and respond to one of the following questions (1 full page response). 1. The first line presents “a cloud” as a metaphor (or, to be more precise, simile) for loneliness; explain the logic of this simile: how does a cloud represent loneliness? 2. Explain these contradictions: how can the poet instantaneously–“all at once,” “at a glance”–apprehend something infinite, a “never-ending line,” “continuous” as “the Milky Way?” How can he reduce this endless continuity to a finite number, “ten-thousand?” 3. The poem includes several other terms for large quantities, “crowd,” “host,” “company;” how do these terms compare with a discrete number like “ten-thousand,” on the one hand, and to evocations of endlessness–like “never-ending” or “continuous as the Milky Way”–on the other? 4. Witnessing the dancing flowers makes the poet “gay” in the present but brings him much more joy in retrospect; why? How does the experience of solitary reflection and memory relate to the experience of reading? Is reading a solitary or communal experience? 5. Is the music video below faithful to the poem? Does the fact that it is a tourism ad undermine is fidelity? 6. Lucy is compared to “A violet by a mossy stone / Half hidden from the eye,” and to “a star, when only one / Is shining in the sky.” These metaphors are each individually very complex; they’re even more complex in juxtaposition with each other: why compare Lucy to a half hidden violet instead of a fully visible one? And to a single visible star among all the other invisible ones? 7. Explain the relation between proper names and pronouns in the poem: why is Lucy referred to as “she” at first and properly named only in the final stanza, well after the river is identified as “Dove?” Part 2: Regarding Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Respond to one of the following questions below (full page response). 1. The opening sentences of the novel question the privilege of aristocratic men by ironizing the notion of “property” on which that privilege is based, suggesting a way in which such men might actually be the “rightful property” of women: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.” An analogous reversal is suggested later in regard to aristocratic “pride.” Miss Lucas seems to share Edmund Burke’s view that prejudice is a virtue worth affirming for its own sake (Reflections, 15); of Mr. Darcy she says, “One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, every thing in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud.” Elizabeth agrees that he has this right, but not on the same grounds as Miss Lucas, suggesting that she herself has this right no less than he, although she lacks his social rank and wealth: “That is very true,” replied Elizabeth, “and I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine” (p. 15, ch. 5). The injustice of patriarchy–the fact that the inheritance of the Bennet home goes to the male cousin before the daughters–is the premise of Pride and Prejudice; the scene of Collins’s proposal to Lizzie suggests how this injustice informs the institution of marriage. But do the examples above of women turning the tables on men also show how courtship and marriage can provide means of questioning and resisting patriarchal privilege? Can you find other examples in the novel where women use conventions of courtship to subvert male privilege? 2. What do you make of the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet? Austen says of Mrs. Bennet that “the business of her life was to get her daughters married” (p. 5); what is the business of Mr. Bennet’s life? He says he considers her nerves his “old friends”(p. 4), but is he actually fond of her? 3. What do you think of Charlotte Lucas’s view of marriage? “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar before-hand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always contrive to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life” (p. 16, ch. 6). What do you think Austen thinks of this view? What would Charlotte think about romance novels? 4. Why is Darcy “mortified” (p. 16, ch. 6) to discover Lizzie’s beauty? Why hadn’t he noticed it earlier? 5. In chapter 18, Lizzie is serially embarrassed in front of Darcy by Mr. Collins, Mrs. Bennet, and Mary. “Elizabeth was in agonies. She looked at Jane, to see how she bore it; but Jane was very composedly talking to Bingley” (p. 69). What embarrasses Lizzie exactly and why does she take it so hard, while her sister hardly notices? 6. How would you characterize Mr. Collins’s proposal in chapter 19? 7. Charlotte says that she is “convinced that my chance of happiness with [Mr. Collins] is as fair, as most people can boast on entering the marriage state” (p. 85, ch. 22). By contrast, Lizzie is convinced “that it was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had chosen” (p. 86, ch. 22). How do you explain this discrepancy? Who do you think is right?

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