English 322, Summer 1995

FINAL EXAMINATION

Two and a half hours, open book. Answer any two questions. Show detailed knowledge of at least three novels.

1. Knightley says of Emma’s likeness of Harriet: “You have made her too tall.” (75) Discuss, in any novel or pair of novels, the problem of seeing people as they “really are.” Consider, in your answer, the role played by the author’s distinctive prose style.

2. “In the old England, the curious blood-connection held the classes together. The squires might be arrogant, violent, bullying and unjust, yet in some ways they were at one with the people, part of the same blood-stream. We feel it in Defoe or Fielding. And then, in the mean Jane Austen, it is gone. Already this old maid typifies 'personality’ instead of character, the sharp knowing in apartness instead of knowing in togetherness, and she is, to my feeling, thoroughly unpleasant, English in the bad, mean, snobbish sense of the word, just as Fielding is English in the good, generous sense.”

D.H. Lawrence, “A Propos of Lady Chatterley’s Lover”

As usual, Lawrence’s criticism is brilliant, sweeping, and unfair. Give your response, beginning with the words: “Yes, but . . . ”

3. Imagine that Clarissa Harlowe files a complaint against Lovelace with the magistrate Henry Fielding; provide a court report of the preliminary hearing, with both Clarissa and Lovelace present.

4. Compare Tom Jones and Frank Churchill: their adoption into a wealthy family, their love affairs, their eventual fate.

5. Consider the strategies adopted by Moll Flanders, as a woman facing an uncertain and dangerous world; compare her with another heroine, to show how the status of women has changed, for better or worse.