Keep your secrets
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Tema: Reading comprehension
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Espanya > Anglés > 3r ESO > Comunicació
Enunciat
Read the text from The Fairy Tales' Book, by Angela Carter, and answer the following questions:
Keep your secrets
(West Africa)
A certain girl was given by her parents to a young man in marriage. She did not care for the youth, so she refused and said that she would choose a husband for herself. Shortly after there came to the village a fine young man of great strength and beauty. The girl fell in love with him at first sight and told her parents that she had found the man she wished to marry, and as the latter was not unwilling the marriage soon took place.
Now it happened that the young man was not a man at all, but a hyena, for although as a rule women change into hyenas and men into hawks, the hyena can change itself into either man or woman as it may please.
During the first night the two newly married ones were sleeping together the husband said: ˜Supposing that when we go to my town we quarrel on the road, what would you do? The wife answered that she would change herself into a tree. The man said that he would be able to catch her even then.
She said that if that was the case she would turn into a pool of water. Oh! That would not trouble me, said the hyena man, ˜I should catch you all the same".
˜Why, then I should turn into a stone",replied his spouse. "Still, I should catch you", remarked the man.
Just at that moment the girl's mother shouted from her room, for she had heard the conversation: ˜Keep quiet, my daughter; is it thus that a woman tells all her secrets to her man?" So the girl said no more.
Next morning, when the day was breaking, the husband told his wife to rise up as he was returning to his home. He bade her make ready to accompany him a short way down the road to see him off. She did as he told her, and as soon as ever the couple were out of sight of the village the husband turned himself into a hyena and tried to catch the girl, who changed into a tree, then into a pool of water, then into a stone, but the hyena almost tore the tree down, nearly drank all the water and half swallowed the stone.
Then the girl changed herself into that thing which the night before her mother had managed to stop her from betraying. The hyena looked and looked everywhere and at last, fearing the villagers would come and kill him, made off.
At once the girl changed into her own proper form and ran back to the village.
1. Why didn't the girl marry the first time?
2. Why did she like the second man?
3. Why did the mother shout from her room?
4. What is the last thing the girl changes into?
5. What do you think the moral behind the story is? Write 10 lines.
Observacions i context
- On the occasion of this text, we can propose to reflect on the concepts of fable and moral, and then ask our students what moral they draw from the text.
- Students can be asked to look for other short stories with a moral by Angela Carter and to explain them briefly and orally to the rest of the class.
- Alternatively, they could be asked to write a short cautionary tale.
- Angela Carter resisted being identified with any group. Carter was interested in deconstructing the typical roles and structures that mark our existences, especially those of gender.
Her innovative narrative procedures and her frequent intertextual references link her to Anglo-Saxon postmodernism, as well as to French authors such as Sade and Bataille. She is often associated with magical realism, but this does not really make much sense outside South America.
She was influenced by cinema, psychoanalysis, surrealism, the second wave of feminism and Japan, among others. In The Bloody Chamber (1979) she revisits fairy tales in a way that might remind us of Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve (Beauty and the Beast).
In Spain, other authors have done similar things, such as Carmen Martín Gaite and Ana María Matute.
Other contemporaries of Carter's are, for example, Doris Lessing, who received the same prize as Carter ten years earlier and whom she admired. Another important writer who worked with fantasy combined with subversion at the same time was Margaret Atwood. In her feminist thinking, she can be linked to Simone de Beauvoir, as both saw femininity as a social construct.
Descripció
This is a reading comprehension activity. In this activity our students have to read a short story from the book Fairy Tales by Angela Carter.
In this case, it is an original West African story about a woman and her husband. After reading the text, they will answer questions and reflect on the meaning behind the story. The aim of the activity is for them to practise their reading comprehension and learn new vocabulary.
Look for general meaning, essential information, main points.