Vous trouverez ici le dossier sur lequel vous avez travaillé:
http://www.jcmullen.fr/1120DMMEEF.pdf
M1 MEEF DM Women’s liberation documents. Comments on
common mistakes and omissions
I will be putting most of my comments here, addressed
to you collectively, since I think this will be the most useful to you. The
mistake you did not make this time, but someone else did, you might make next time.
Incidentally, congratulations on surviving the pandemic so far – vaccination
should slowly make the situation better over 2021.
I have preferred to make extensive comments, rather
than write a “corrigé” you would be unlikely to be able to match, and I have
preferred to write in English, partly for my own convenience, but mostly to
help you. In these notes, I will be dealing with a number of elements you could
, should or should not have put in your answers. Remember there are dozens of
ways of writing a good answer on this set of documents, and I will present here
far “too much” information for any one answer. This information may well be
useful for you for another set of documents, at exam time.
I have already recommended to you a number of sources
on the complex history of UK women. If you search for “women” or for “feminism”
on this blog using the search engine at the top of the page, you will find many
useful links which I have put up here over the last 15 years.
Note: words in quotation marks are example of correct
English, unless they are preceded by an asterisk (*). In that case they are
examples of mistakes (in English or in analysis).
Choosing yourself a notion.
As you know, you are expected to choose a notion which
the set of documents is linked to. Here are your set of notions. You are not
allowed to invent new ones. You must be precise. One otherwise excellent piece
of work announced it was going to focus on the notion “past and present”. This
will annoy the jury – be precise.
Thème des programmes de collège - Voyages et
migrations Axes d’étude des programmes de lycée - Art et contestation -
Diversité et inclusion - Le passé dans le présent - Utopies, dystopies
When you announce your notion, it is best to say
explicitly in one or two sentences why you have chosen this one. More
importantly, you are not supposed to announce the notion and then forget it.
The notion you have chosen must be mentioned two or three more times during
your work, and definitely in the conclusion.
It seems to me that “inclusion et diversité” is the
easiest of the notions to plug into. Pankhurst is struggling for women to be
included in the body of judges and in the body of electors. Bakewell is
explaining how she was not included in the serious programming and in the respect
accorded high level journalists, and the Reclaim the Night network would like
walking around the town after dark not to be reserved to men (they also decide
to include men in the people who should protest, by inviting “all genders” to
come along). It may be possible to justify using another notion, provided
you can briefly justify it at the beginning, and meaningfully mention it again
a couple more times, and definitely in the conclusion. Students often did
not do this, but simply chose a notion without justifying it, and never
mentioned it again.
My impression is that some students did not have a
clear idea of exactly what was meant by the notion “le passé dans le présent”.
The website Clé des langues explains quite well.
Le passé dans le présent
La persistance du passé est au cœur-même de la perception du présent, et le
poids de l’histoire, est omniprésent. Cette donnée incontournable peut susciter
des réactions opposées : le désir de s’opposer aux traditions ou à l’inverse la
volonté de les célébrer. Le retour au passé peut traduire une crainte
d’affronter les incertitudes de l’avenir. Le rétro, le néo ou le kitsch
cultivent le rapport au passé, de même que certains styles vestimentaires comme
le gothique. Le rapport au passé peut être mis en scène à travers des
cérémonies costumées, des jeux de rôle ou encore par la fréquentation de musées
ou de parcs thématiques, qui recréent les sensations éprouvées autrefois. Il
peut être fondateur dans la constitution de l’identité. Les lieux de mémoire se
sont multipliés, ils invitent à considérer que l’acte de mémoire est un devoir.
Comment cette articulation du passé et du présent se manifeste-t-elle dans une
aire géographique ? Quelle est la place du passé et comment lui fait-on une
place dans le présent ?
Nevertheless, there were students who wrote very good
answers based around the notion of “le passé dans le présent”.
Structure/problématique
It is best to choose a structure around ideas which
interest the student of the anglophone world. “How the women’s liberation
movement has changed” is a good focus. “How the women’s liberation movement’s
tactics have developed” is very good. “How women’s liberation activists dealt
with problems concerning women’s personal lives” is excellent. It is best not
to structure around excessively obvious ideas – “I will show that women are
still not treated equally” is not a very good focus, because no one seriously
disagrees with this. “I will show feminism is very important” has the same
weakness.
I am delighted to hear that students are enthusiastic
about improving the situation for women. However, activist style “The fight
must go on” is not appropriate in university exams.
Conclusion
The conclusion should be a conclusion about what we
specifically learn from studying these documents, bearing in mind our chosen
notion. It should not be a philosophical conclusion about the importance of action
in human life, the evil of women’s oppression etc.
General points on method:
-
It is very dangerous indeed to only
speak about two of the three documents. Even a not-very-inspired section on the
document you find most difficult is far better than nothing, and will be seen
in that way.
-
Take time to think about the objective
of the author of each document: this needs to be at the centre of your
analysis. Talk about the objective of each document from the very first time
you mention it.
-
Do not give the impression that you
think that progress in women’s rights came automatically and inevitably. This
is not the case.
-
Make sure you highlight those
elements of each document which place it clearly at a particular point in
history. For example, the note on the poster (“All genders welcome”) would have
been impossible in the previous wave of activity in the 1970s, since there was
practically no consciousness of the situation of trans people.
-
Make the most of the para-text. If
you know, say in so many words what “speech from the dock” means.[1]
Explain briefly what kind of newspaper The Guardian is.[2]
-
It is absolutely essential to leave
time at the end to re-read your work. Basic errors (“she protest” instead of
“she protests” as two people wrote) are very heavily sanctioned. Th examiner
does not say “Oh well, anyone can make a little mistake!” They say, “If this
person cannot form the simple present of a verb, do I want them to be teaching
English in our high schools?” For similar reasons, make sure you do not spell
wrongly proper names which appear in the documents: such errors are taken very
seriously.
Several students quoted the documents too much. This
takes up a lot of valuable time. You may quote from the documents a
particularly important phrase, or a particularly difficult phrase, to help you explain. It is
not a good idea to quote dozens of phrases.
Reading the
documents
The
questions you always need to ask yourself for each document, before you begin
to write your commentary, are the following.
WHO? (is
expressing themselves)
TO WHOM?
(are they trying to communicate)
WHEN? (What
is important about the fact that it was at this time and not another?)
WHAT? (is
the essential content of the document? Also, what do they NOT say which we
might expect them to say?)
WHY? (are
they saying all this: what is their objective?)
HOW? (do
they try to reach their objective? Irony? Mockery? Rhetorical devices?)
WHAT
HAPPENED AFTER? (If the document promises, or predicts or warns, did these
elements come true?)
HOW TYPICAL
IS THE DOCUMENT? (Is it an innovative declaration of a new movement, or one
more cliché from that time period, or what?)
WHAT
DIFFERENCE DID IT MAKE? (Where does the document fit in to longer historical
processes?)
In any
exercise for the CAPES you are unlikely to find something to say on each of the
above questions for each document, but the list gives you an idea of where you
should be looking.
Small but useful hints
Dates
Anyone can forget a date – remember you only need to
make sure your information is useful to the reader. If you are not sure of the
exact date the Women’s Social and Political Union was formed, it is fine to say,
“At the very beginning of the twentieth century”.
Numbers
In English we write numbers out in full much more than
one does in French. Especially numbers under thirty. So it is best to write
“twentieth century”, “twenty-five people” and so on. In addition, if a large
number comes at the beginning of the sentence, we will write it out in full.
“Two hundred thousand people attended”.
Initial warnings
There are a few things which immediately signal to the
examiner that your work is not up to the standard required.
-
Do
not use contractions. In written English, these are very informal.
-
Similarly, avoid excessively informal
English such as *”They were pretty angry.” *”This turned out to be way too
difficult”. *”Women received way less respect than men”.
-
Do not use French quotation marks
like these « ».
-
Do not use examples from the United
States or from France when writing about Britain (unless you give three British
examples then one US example – that then becomes acceptable). If you use other
examples instead of British ones, you are signalling to the examiner that you
know nothing at all about that particular topic as it pertains to the
United Kingdom. Do not begin with a quotation from a successful American woman
– this means you do not know any British ones. Similarly, although there are
excellent quotations from great French figures, this is not the time to use
them.
-
Analysis of vocabulary/ style/ lexical
fields. These can sometimes be useful to help explain the objective of a
document and how that objective is attained. However, listing words used
without saying why this is useful is a mistake:
-
**”When referring to a
woman, she uses: ''womanly'' (line 1), ''feminine'' (line 1), ''daughter''
(lines 5 and 15), ''women'' (lines 14, 15) .When referring to a man, she
says ''men'' (line 2) or ‘’sir’’ (line 13). ”
This is not good, because obviously she uses this kind
of words – we are not in any way surprised. Listing these words does not help
explain what she is trying to do. Similarly, a paragraph about which negative
prefixes were used by Pankhurst did not seem to me at all convincing.
-
Journalistic English often makes a
paragraph with just one sentence. In a university essay, this is not sufficient
- a paragraph should have at the very minimum three sentences. On the other
hand, I just corrected a script where the student had used a paragraph which
was 54 lines long (893 words). This is much too long for a paragraph, and it
could easily have been cut in three or four.
-
Some words and concepts to use carefully
Violence:
When the US wanted independence from Britain, they
eventually formed an army. When Irish militants wanted to save local peasants
from being evicted in the second half of the 19th century, they shot
a few landlords “pour encourager les autres”.
The suffragettes, very determined to get the vote for women, did not
shoot any ministers or plant bombs in parliament. They carried out a large variety
of actions, such as burning letter boxes, smashing windows, interrupting
meetings and sporting events, and occasionally even burning a few houses. To
use the word “violence” without qualification is therefore unhelpful to
understanding. I suppose one might say “violence against property”, although I
personally prefer “destroying property” and “disrupting the usual political
activities”. I also think “violent words” is better replaced by “radical words”
or “angry” or perhaps even “aggressive”.
Feminism
The Pankhursts and their allies were generally
referred to as “suffragettes” at the time, and not as “feminists”. The name of
their newspaper was “The Suffragette” until they changed it to “Britannia” once
the First World War was under way. It is better to be precise and speak of the
Pankhursts using the word which was habitual at the time.
In the 1970s in the UK, the word “feminism” was not
coterminous with the women’s liberation movement. Many, but not by any means
all, activists for women’s liberation in the 1970s considered themselves
“feminists”. I see that the most influential magazine of the second wave, Spare
Rib, almost never featured the word on its front page (https://www.bl.uk/spare-rib# ) “Women’s
liberation movement” is a good alternative when speaking of the 1970s. In the
21st century, the word became far more popular, though it did not
generally refer to a mass movement.
Movement
It is best to use “movement” for networks involving
many thousands of people. Smaller organizations and initiatives can be referred
to as “networks” or perhaps “campaigns”.
In every decade of the 19th and 20th, and 21st
centuries there were networks and campaigns dealing with different aspects of
women’s liberation. From time to time, and most notably in the 1910s and the
1970s, there were important movements.
Pacifist
In English the word “pacifist” is used to refer to
people who believe that all war is always wrong and there are no exceptions.
This is no doubt not the word you are looking for in writing this assignment.
Basic objective and contents of each document
In the first document the well-known suffragette,
Emmeline Pankhurst, is using her trial as a platform to explain the political
objectives and tactics of her movement, since she knows her words will be
reported in the newspapers. She protests at the fact that all judges are male,
and uses the example of the notorious case of Daisy Lord, an unmarried woman
who had killed her baby and was sentenced to death (but later this was commuted
to prison). Pankhurst maintains that all-male judges cannot understand the
desperate situation of this woman. Pankhurst speaks in a solemn style,
underlining the crucial importance of these questions on the lives of women.
The second document is an activist poster calling “all
genders” to protest against “gender-based violence” by joining a night-time
rally. They are mainly angry at violence against women, but the vocabulary used
reflects the fact that modern protest networks of this kind want to underline the
fact that they are also thinking about gender minorities such as trans people
and non-binary people.
The third document relates the personal experience of
a Guardian journalist, who had learned to be a feminist early in life, and
found that, although many things had moved forward for women, the
discrimination was still strong. She was not treated the same as the men, not
given the same salary, not allowed to do the most serious programmes, and
comment was always concentrated on her attractive appearance. The women’s
movement helped her have more confidence in herself, and because she was
earning enough money to be independent, she was able to decide to leave her
husband. It is written in a chatty, even entertaining, style.
References and other aspects in the three
documents
Document one
Historical background
By 1908, it is probable that the majority of the
British population was generally in favour of women’s suffrage (although for
many it did not appear to be particularly a priority). A number of leading
politicians, however, were very much
opposed. Some in the Liberal party were convinced that women would vote more
Conservative than Liberal (this turned out to be true for a number of years)
and so were determined that women should not get the vote – or in any case this
was an additional reason to add to the ideas that it was “unnatural” for women
to be interested in politics. The very different roles which women played
during the First World War persuaded some of these politicians to change their
mind, and so not block the proposal in 1918 to extend the suffrage to all men,
and to women over thirty. In 1908 at least a third of men could not vote,
because there were property qualifications.[3]
Emmeline Pankhurst
Some students correctly took a brief look at the
nineteenth century to show that the vote was not the only important campaign,
and also to indicate that some progress had been slowly made, even though
Pankhurst’s campaign of the beginning of the 20th century under the
slogan “deeds not words” was an expression of frustration at the snail-like
progress. Unfortunately, some students included false information, for example
about the right of married women to own property. This right was won in 1870.[4]
It is not sufficient to say that Emmeline Pankhurst
was “a British suffragette”. This is a bit like saying “Shakespeare was a man
who wrote plays”. You might say “the historic founder and leader of the British
suffragette movement”.[5]
In the para-text, we see “speech from the dock”. Pankhurst
is on trial and is speaking to the judge. She is aware, naturally, that what
she says will be reported in the newspapers. This is why she spends time
explaining her political positions and tactics, although there is of course no
chance at all of persuading the judge.
“ without the advantages we have had “
Emmeline Pankhurst came from an elite family. When she
was in prison, she says, it made her think about what prison must be like for
women from poor families who have not had the education and comfort she has
had. It must, she says, be even worse. Indeed, she insists that some poor women
end up in prison because they do not have the education to react appropriately
to accusations (“who are there because they have been able to make no adequate
statement”. [Although you cannot explain every sentence in every document, it
is useful to show you have understood some of the more complex ones].
Votes for women is a
newspaper, as can be seen by the fact that its title is in italics, and that
the date of publication is precise.
Document two
“Reclaim the night” is an
initiative established in various British towns in the 1970s[6].
It was intended to protest against the fact that many women do not feel safe to
go out into the streets alone when it is dark.
Night-time marches, often torchlight processions, and often reserved for
women, were organized to highlight this problem and sometimes to demand
specific reforms such as better street lighting. The initiative is an example
of how the women’s liberation movement tried to interest itself in all aspects
of women’s lives, not just political rights (such as the right to vote the
suffragists and suffragettes had fought for, or equal pay for equal work, which
trade unions had gradually taken up as a demand). The initiative might remind
us of the 1970s slogan “the personal is political” – that is, to oppose women’s
oppression it is necessary to think about personal lives – the experience of
women in couples, in the family and so on.
Sex workers
In the last twenty years or so, the term “sex workers”
has come into use to refer, mostly, people who would previously have been
called “prostitutes”. Those who use the term consider that it is a term which valorises
the people involved, since it considers their activity as work. Other groups of
people, including other feminists, consider that prostitution should disappear
because it is always connected to women’s oppression. The question of
prostitution, along with the question of trans identity, are no doubt the two
questions which most divide supporters of women’s liberation in the UK today.
All genders
It is important to explain this expression. In the
1970s, most people thought that everyone was a man or a woman and that this was
decided before birth. Today, there is widespread recognition that “man” and
“woman” are genders which are very much socially created (although this idea
goes back at least to Simone de Beauvoir’s “On ne naît pas femme, on le
devient”). Radical movements today often wish to underline that they welcome
people who have changed gender, or who identify as “non-binary” and so on. This
is the reason for this term. It is better to try to define this term, even if
you are not sure, rather than to avoid the question and hope that the examiner
does not notice.
“Reclaim the night” marches in the 1970s were often
for women only. This one explicitly says that “all genders are welcome”. It is
necessary for the organizers to say this because many sympathetic men might
otherwise assume that they were not invited. Some feminist organization today
include men. The Fawcett Society,[7]
one of the better-known networks active in Britain today, has a few men on its
steering committee as well as many women. Feminist networks today are far
smaller than in the 1970s, but including men is more common. The Fawcett
society, indeed, organized a campaign a few years back which involved getting
many celebrities, men and women, to wear a T shirt announcing, “this is what a
feminist looks like”.
Document three
The Guardian can
be described as “ a centre left daily newspaper”. Although it has generally
supported the Labour Party rather than the Conservative party, it is not *“a
newspaper from the Labour Party”.
Newnham College[8]
Cambridge University, like Oxford University, is made
up of a few dozen colleges. Almost all of these, for many decades, only
admitted men, until they gradually opened up from the 1970s on. A couple of
colleges, including Newnham, were for women only for a period of many decades.
The Cambridge Union
The Cambridge Union, like the Oxford Union, is a
prestigious student organization, one of whose most well-known activities is
organizing formal debates. It is quite common for UK prime ministers and other
leading politicians to have learned debating techniques (and social networking)
at the Oxford Union of the Cambridge Union.
Footlights
Footlights is a well-known comedy theatre group at the
University of Cambridge.[9]
Labour party peer
The author is a member of the House of Lords. After
1958, in addition to the hereditary Lords, who were Lords because their father
had been a Lord, and a certain number of Anglican bishops, it became possible
for the government of the day to have “ Life peers” appointed, who sat in the
House of Lords but who did not pass their position onto their children. These
life peers could be men or women. In 1997, the government of Tony Blair reduced
massively the number of hereditary Lords in the House, and “life peers” are now
the large majority. A Labour Prime minister asked for this journalist to be
made a peer, because of her life’s work, but also because she was close to
Labour ideas.
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique[10]
transformed our working lives. In the 70s, feminist writing came thick and
fast: Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch[11],
Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics[12]
and Elaine Showalter’s Towards a Feminist Poetics[13]
…
The women’s movement involved very varied activities
and ideas – marches, demonstrations, magazines, consciousness raising groups,
specific campaigns for equal pay or cheaper creches and nurseries, artistic
initiatives, and many more. Here are mentioned some of the most influential
books on women’s liberation in that period. You are unlikely to know all of
them but if you could say two or three sentences about one of them, that would
definitely gain you some marks.
Fleet Street editors
Until at least the 1980s almost all the well-known
newspapers had their headquarters in Fleet Street, a street in London. The
expression was therefore used, by metonymy, to refer to the national press.
Just as we sometimes write “Matignon” to mean “the French Prime Minister”,
people would write “Fleet Street was surprised” to mean “the national
newspapers were surprised”.
Thinking man’s crumpet[14]
“Crumpet” is a sexist word, also rather bourgeois and
out of date, to speak of a sexually attractive woman. The author is complaining
that people thought of her appearance and not of her work.
Some misunderstandings of the content of the
documents
Document one.
A few students referred to the jury. There is no
indication that a jury is present – these trials for “minor” crimes are
presided over by judges or by magistrates.
Infanticide
Infanticide is the killing of a baby after it was
born. It is not referring to abortion. Poor and desperate women killed their
babies much more frequently a century ago.[15]
Vera Drake
Although it is perfectly reasonable to mention other
struggles for women’s rights, such as the fight for the right to have an
abortion, finally won in 1967, note that Vera Drake is a fictional character
from a film, not a historical person.
Language questions
Vocabulary
Stake or at stake
These words are often best avoided when you are
writing about politics and you are wanting to translate the French word “enjeu
(x)”. See the following errors:
*Here, not only women are at stake ...
*In a first part *In a second part
These expressions sound very French.
Famous
All French students use the word “famous” too much.
Zidane is famous, Madonna is famous. It is used to mean “universally known” and
generally reserved for show business or similar (we do not say “Emmanuel Macron
is a famous politician”.) Now people like Posy Simmons or Lucien Freud or the
newspaper The Guardian are not *famous, but they are “well-known”. “Well-known”
is often the word students need instead of “famous”.
Biased
This is a very negative word, suggesting malevolent
ignoring of objective facts. Pankhurst’s speech, and the poster must not be
described as biased. The speech is an activist’s speech, the poster is a
political initiative.
Grammar
-
In adjectival position, nouns are not
made plural. The following are correct: “A ten-man team” “a three-week
holiday”, “the suffragette movement”.
-
Definite article. The name of the
document is treated as a proper name, so you must write “document A” and not
*”the document A”.
Capital letters
Although we use more capital letters in English than
in French, students often use too many. There is no reason to capitalize
“women’s liberation” or “public relations”.
J. Bakewell etc.
In French it is quite common to refer to people in
articles using their first initial and their last name (E. Macron, K. Marx, S.
Freud, S. Royal). We do not do this in English, so to refer to the author of
the third document, you may only say “Joan Bakewell” or “Ms Bakewell” (or even
“Bakewell”).
[1] dock
n an enclosed space in a court of law where the accused sits or stands
during his trial
(C16: from Flemish dok sty) (from Collins
dictionary)
[3] What
change din 1918 ? See here : https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/1918-centenary-votes-for-some-women-and-all-men/
[6] A very
short history here.
[8] It’s
fascinating history is sketched out here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newnham_College,_Cambridge
[9] Recent
offerings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CluqXIOcIvY
[14] ♦ a piece of crumpet Slang a sexually desirable woman (from Collins dictionary).
[15] Much
more detail here http://www.midlandshistoricalreview.com/20200513_badormad/
