For years, I’ve really struggled with how we go about teaching writer’s intent when exploring fiction. I have no problem with telling students what the writer intends from the start, but there does come a point when we want students to formulate their own opinions about the writer’s intention. That’s what we see at the top in GCSE English Literature. Not fancy words. A complex understanding of the writer’s intent.
For a while, we’ve boiled it down to verbs. Dickens attacks… Shakespeare challenges… Priestley questions …. Words alone don’t do the thinking. They present a kind of thinking, but they don’t actually get students to think around texts and what the writer is doing. Verbs centred around the writer’s intent sound good but often they fall flat. A bit like that student that tries to fit ‘halcyon’ or ‘petrichor’ in their writing. They look snazzy and fancy, but unless they are used with thought and meaning they sit like dead flies in a bowl of soup. Words need understanding and thought.
The biggest problem, as I see it, is that we see intent as knowledge to be linked in a sentence rather than an inference to be made. We get, in English, that we need to make inferences about character, but what we don’t get is that we make inferences all the time about other things. We make inferences around the mood. We make inferences about how readers react to a text. We make inferences about what the writer is doing, thinking or feeling. We’d happily infer a complex backstory around a character’s traumatic childhood or how Rosabel’s buying eggs and violets is a symbol of her frustration to break the shackles of the class system, but we rarely make that many inferences around the writer. Instead we construct them around the knowledge we know of the writer. Dickens had a sad childhood. Therefore, he is attacking the way children are treated because he had a sad childhood and he doesn’t want others to experience the same thing he did. Now, that’s all fine and dandy with a writer like Dickens who is so well documented in history that every line of his writing can be cross-referenced to his life. But, the problem comes when you look at writers like Shakespeare. A man that is so transient you cannot pin anything down to precise contextual facts. Ummm it refers to a tree and that reflects his time spent in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
The problem is that the text is rarely used as a source for inferences around the writer’s intent. Instead, we foreground everything with perceived notions or knowledge of intent. Dickens does this because of X and Y. Look class - Dickens has used Tiny Tim. How does Tiny Tim link to X and Y? What is Dickens attacking? We use knowledge as a source of intent and construct things in a backwards way. We bring the intent to the text, rather explore how the text shows us intent. I might be pedantic, but in doing that we miss a massive step in understanding.
Personally, I think we don’t build up a mental construction enough of the writer with students. In my head, I have a mental image of Dickens or Shakespeare. My reading of anything they write just helps and adds to build to my mental construction of the writer. I see them as really living people and like the text messages I get from family members I use the plays and novels to help me understand them better. What makes them tick? What annoys them? What do they really mean? What do they think? I construct a version of them. A person. In the same way I construct a character and try to get under their skin, I do the same to writers. They are real people, or were, and not two-dimensional figures. They love, hate, joke, cry and yet we don’t build this view of the writer up in their heads. This real person. Dickens thinks… Dickens hates … Dickens is upset when … In fact, it reminds me of something.
‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.’
Because we place so much emphasis on the writer’s context, we remove the student away from understanding that the writer is like them. A thinking, feeling person. Instead, we present a notion of a person with experiences so far removed from them that it must seem like holding a seance every time they are trying to work out the writer’s intent. Sir, my dad wasn’t in a debtor’s prison and I never worked in a boot blacking factory so how can I possibly understand what he is thinking. Neglecting the person and the human behind the writer is problematic. No wonder students struggle so much, when they struggle to empathise with a context so alien to them. We draw attention to the uniqueness of their context and neglect the commonness of their context. The human condition. The human.
So, how can we start to address this? For a start, I think building concepts and ideas around the person. I’ve talked before about using the words ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ to talk about writers. What does Dickens need readers to feel? What does Dickens want the reader to do after reading ‘A Christmas Carol’? We could also add to that layer by discussing a writer's fears and dreams. What is Dickens' dream for society based on ‘A Christmas Carol’? What does Dickens fear about society based on the novel? Questions around understanding the person’s drive really helps to explore inferences around the character.
We can do further by looking at the writer’s perspective, such as optimism and pessimism. What is Dickens hopeful about in society? What does Dickens believe is hopeless in society? Or, we can take it a different way and explore what is a writer romanticising and what he/she isn’t. What is Dickens presenting as flawless? What is Dickens presenting as flawed? We can even go one further in terms of perspective and look at it from the writer’s point of view. Which character in ‘A Christmas Carol’ does Dickens identify most with? Which character is most unlike Dickens in ‘A Christmas Carol’? Or, we can go from a tone angle. Which character does Dickens find funny? Which character does Dickens find serious?
But, for me, the easiest questions, above all, when exploring are: Who does the writer love? Who does the writer hate? They are simple, but complex questions. They can take you down a number of paths, but essentially they characterise the writer as a sentient being and not a faceless figure. They are so open to interpretation that they can take you down different paths. Who does Shakespeare love at the start of the play? Who does Shakespeare love by the end of the play? How do you know they love them? I personally think Shakespeare loves the characters of Mercutio and the Nurse because of the use of humour. They get the best jokes and I always want to see more of them in the story. Why then does Shakespeare love these characters? Well, maybe it is because both of these have a practical view of relationships. They love but they don’t need to wrap it up behind language and metaphor. They have a true and honest form of love. That’s just my interpretation.
But, we can go further with love and hate and explore characters further. What aspects of Capulet does Shakespeare love? What aspects of Capulet does Shakespeare hate? Shakespeare loves the Capulet we see in Act 1. A father so proud, so pleased and so protective of his daughter. Shakespeare hates Capulet in Act 3 when he forces Juliet to marry against her wishes. Why does Shakespeare change from liking to hating Capulet? For me, the change is when Juliet’s position in her father’s mind changes. She moves from being a person to being an object to do as he sees fits. Shakespeare hates how parents remove a child’s voice and agency in decisions. Their lack of empathy or consideration for his daughter is what Shakespeare hates in the story. Shakespeare’s golden intent behind most plays is to show how something we think is simple is complex. Or, how something so complex is quite simple when you look at it. Seeing things from the perspective of emotion shows you what Shakespeare is siding on an issue or concept. Shakespeare sides with Romeo’s sensitivity and thoughtfulness but opposes Tybalt’s dogmatic and simplistic view. Shakespeare teaches us how complex males are and how society dangerously narrows men into set stereotypes.
Now, this might seem simplistic but it teaches students that writers are people. Rarely do we talk about writers in terms of feelings. We talk about writers in terms of thoughts, yet thoughts and feelings are inextricably connected. Writers feel in equal measure to thinking, yet we all tend to associate characters and readers as the sole gatekeeper for emotions.
Constructing a sentient, and emotional, working model of the writer is key to understanding how texts work. Some knowledge can help to ‘hot wire’ the thinking, but the text tells you what a writer thinks of people and parts of society. We just need students to get better at inferring the writer’s feelings. Maybe, the start of that process is asking them questions around the writer’s feelings.
Thanks for reading,
Xris
