The two women who found freedom
Personajes:
Tema: Vocabulary, frequently used expressions and idioms (reception). Phrasal Verbs
Competencias
Competencia en Comunicación Lingüística
Competencia Plurilingüe
Competencia Personal, social y de aprender a aprender
Competencia en conciencia y expresiones culturales
Materias y cursos por Sistema Educativo
España > Inglés > 3º ESO > Comunicación
España > Inglés > 3º ESO > Plurilingüismo
Enunciado
ACTIVITY 1:
Read the story by the writer Angela Carter and do the following activities:
The two women who found freedom
Innuit
Once there lived a man who had two wives. His name was Eqqorsaq. And he was so jealous of these wives that he would keep them locked up in his hut. He would thrash them if they did not behave themselves. Or he would thrash anyone who happened to lay eyes on them. He killed a man named Angaguaq because rumour had it that Angaguaq had slept with one of the wives. Which he hadn’t done. Eqqorsuaq was a somewhat mean-spirited person.
Finally, the two women got a bit tired of their husband. They left him and fled along the coast until they were all worn out and hungry. When they could go no further, they saw the huge carcass of a whale washed up on a beach. They crawled in through the mouth and hid inside this carcass. The smell was foul, but better a foul smell than another thrashing.
Now Eqqorsuaq was in a furor. He searched high and low for his wives. He questioned everyone in the village and threatened not a few. But no one seemed to know about the missing women. At last, the man paid a visit to the local witch doctor, who told him:
‘You must look for the body of a big whale which is on the Skerry of the Heart-Shaped Mountain’
And so Eqqorsuaq set out for the Skerry of the Hear-Shaed Mountain. He sang old drum-songs all along the way, for he looked forward to the pleasure of thrashing his wives. At last, he arrived at his destination and saw the dead whale. But the stench was so awful that he could get nowhere near it. He called out again and again for the women, yet there came no answer. Perhaps they were no longer here. Eqqorsuaq camped on the beach for three days and then went home, determined to thrash the witch door.
Meanwhile the two wives lived on inside the whale. They had grown so accustomed to the stench that it did not bother them. They had plenty of food to eat, however rotten, and a warm place to sleep. It is said that they were very happy in their new home.
- Exercise 1: Match the phrasal verbs underlined in the text with their definition:
- To make someone extremely tired __________
- To start a journey _________
- To make a building or room safe by locking the door and fastening the windows _________
- To appear on land because the ocean or a river or lake left it there _____________
- To feel pleased and excited about something that is going to happen _____________
- An occasion when someone is asked to come to a person’s home or to a particular place in order to do a job, help someone, etc. __________
- Exercise 2: Answer the following questions:
- Why did the women flee their home?
- Why did they decide to stay inside the whale?
- Who told the husband where his wives were?
- Why didn’t the husband find the women?
- How many days did the husband wait at the beach?
- Exercise 3: Write a summary of the story in 5-10 lines.
Observaciones y contexto
- We may find a few vocabulary terms complicated for third grade. As a suggestion, before the second reading as well as the Phrasal Verbs activity we can introduce the concept of Phrasal Verbs and start a list in our class. Finally, we can ask our students to write a short summary of 5-10 lines.
- This reading may be a bit difficult for some third-grade groups. It can always be used with fourth grade.
- 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.
Descripción
In this activity we work on one of the traditional stories compiled by Angela Carter in her book Fairy Tales, through reading comprehension. In this case, this short story has an Innuit origin, and we will use it to help our students learn new Phrasal Verbs. Once they have understood the text, they will answer some short questions to check their comprehension.
- The objectives of the activity focus on practising our students' reading comprehension, as well as helping them to become familiar with new terms (Phrasal Verbs).
- Oral and written comprehension strategies.