Keep your secrets
Characters:
Theme: Comprensión lectora. Buscar sentido general, información esencial, puntos principales.
Competencies
Competence in Linguistic Communication
Multilingual Competence
Competence in cultural awareness and expressions
Subjects and year by Educational System
Spain > English > 3rd ESO > Communication
Enunciation
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.
unwilling: reticente
quarrel: pelea
bade: ofrecer algo a alguien
to see someone off: acompañar a alguien que se va a su punto de partida
swallow: engullir
betray: traicionar
made off: irse deprisa
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.
Observations and context
- Con motivo de este texto se puede proponer reflexionar sobre los conceptos de fábula y moraleja, para más tarde preguntar a nuestro alumnado qué moraleja extraen del texto.
- Se puede plantear al alumnado que busquen otros cuentos cortos con moraleja de Angela Carter y que se los expliquen brevemente y de manera oral al resto de la clase.
- Por otro lado también se les puede pedir que escriban una historia breve con moraleja.
- Angela Carter se resistió a ser identificada con ningún grupo. Se interesó por deconstruir los roles y las estructuras típicas que marcan nuestras existencias, sobre todo las de género.
Sus innovadores procedimientos narrativos y sus frecuentes referencias intertextuales la relacionan con el postmodernismo anglosajón, así como con autores franceses como Sade o Bataille. Muchas veces se la relaciona con el realismo mágico, pero realmente este no tiene mucho sentido fuera de Sudamérica.
Estuvo influenciada por el cine, el psicoanálisis, el surrealismo, la segunda ola del feminismo y Japón entre otros. En La cámara sangrienta (1979) revisita los cuentos de hadas de una manera que nos puede recordar a Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve (La bella y la bestia).
- En España otras autoras han hecho cosas similares, como es el caso de Carmen Martín Gaite o Ana María Matute.
- Otras figuras contemporáneas de Carter son, por ejemplo, Doris Lessing, que recibió el mismo premio que Carter diez años antes y a la que admiraba.
- Otra importante escritora que en la misma época trabaja la fantasía combinada con lo subversivo es Margaret Atwood.
- Por su pensamiento feminista, la podemos enlazar con Simone de Beauvoir, pues ambas veían la feminidad como una construcción social.
Description
Se trata de una actividad de comprensión lectora.
Buscar sentido general, información esencial, puntos principales.
En esta actividad nuestro estudiantado debe leer una historia corta del libro Cuentos de hadas de Ángela Carter. En este caso se trata de una historia original del oeste de África que trata sobre una mujer y su marido. Después de leer el texto responderá a unas preguntas y reflexionará sobre el significado detrás de la historia.
El objetivo de la actividad es que practiquen su comprensión lectora y aprendan nuevo vocabulario.