Monday No-Obligation Book Club Study Questions!

W007!

Listen, Benedict loves my study questions.  He told me so himself.

Chapter 2: Autumn- a time to plant your winter garden

1) the chapter begins in the fall, which is the best time to begin your winter garden, or to plant
trees. How is this significant to the story, or to the relationship between Gilbert and Mrs.
Graham?
2) Why do you think the men went hunting, as opposed to showing the men at work, at the
pub, etc.?
3) Why is the name and history of “Wildfell” important?
4) How does the description of Wildfell reflect on Mrs.Graham?
5) The opening of gardens and closing of iron gates with her first conversation with Gilbert:
how is this reflective of Mrs.Graham?

Chapter 3: Setting Boundaries

1) mrs. Mark ham and mrs. Graham really get into it in the beginning of this chapter. mrs. Mark
ham states her position as,” But my dear, I call that doting. You should try to suppress such
foolish fondness, as well to save your so from ruin as yourself from ridicule…” “…he should
learn to be ashamed of it (apron strings)Why do you think she feels this way? How does it
reflect the nature of the small, rural community in which she is raising her children?
2) How is mrs. Graham setting boundaries around her home, and her son, in particular? After
her stance on wine is exposed, what do you think is her motive for her boundaries?
3) Old views of parenting vs. new views of parenting?
4) Mrs graham has distinct views on virtuous ness. “Girls are prone to sin, while the nobler sex
there is a natural tendency to goodness, superior fortitude, further developed” “I would not
send a girl unarmed into the world, ignorant of the snares; nor will I guard her, till deprived of
self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will…” Where do you think she
came up with these ideas? Do you think she is trying to form a cultural rebellion, or is it for
self-preservation?
5) Gilbert admits in the end that, “perhaps I was a little spoiled by my mother and sister.” Why
do you think the author included this?

Chapter 4: Study of Persons

1) The party begins on November 5th. This is a pretty significant date for Britain. Why did the
author plant this date in the story?
2) The party politics were interesting, but familiar. Why is it interesting that the persons at this
party are the same type of persons who we find at parties now, as well?
3) Piano: “there was plenty of skill, but precious little feeling.” Why is it interesting that this
would be important to Gilbert to notice?
4) Why do you think Eliza’s father wanted a moderation of dancing?
5) “As artful a little hussy as anybody need wish to see.” Gilbert’s mother doesn’t like Eliza.
Why not? Do you think this is contradictory to what she claims to espouse as well tempered
people?
6) How does Gilbert respond to his mothers opinions of Eliza?

Chapter 5: Mrs. Graham, exposed

1) Rose and Gilbert visit Wildfell Hall, and first see an easel. Why is this interesting?
2) What is the significance of Fernley Manor?
3) She admits she is under cover. What does this mean?
4) Who do you think the man is who arrived “suddenly”?
5) Who do you think the portrait of the winking man is?) Is it significant that she apologizes? Why?
7) “When a lady condescends to apologize, there is no keeping ones anger.” How is this
important to Gilbert’s relationship with mrs. Graham?

I was about to type up the study questions for Chapter 2 of “Tenant of Wildfell Hall”

…but I just learned about Robin Williams, and the book club will have to wait.

Learn to Draw a Platypus (.com or something)

You’re welcome.

I saw this on Pinterest, and it was just a quick science project we could have going during the day, so we gave it a shot!

Walking Water!

It’s pretty (ridiculously) easy:  You need 3 cups, 2 paper towels and some food coloring.  The goal is to watch the water “walk” up the paper towels and transfer into the middle cup.

caveat: This projects takes forever.  For. Ev. Er.  So, it’s not only a lesson in physics, but also one in patience.

1) Take the cups and put them next to each other.  Put a few drops of food coloring in the outside cups and stir in some water.  We did yellow and blue so we could make green!

2) This is after about half an hour.  It’s fun to watch the water walking across the paper towels.  You’ll find yourself saying things like: “I’m so glad this is working.”

3) This is after about 2 hours.  It takes a while.

4) This is after 3 hours…we are finally starting to get some green in the middle!

5) This is after a couple hours…maybe 5.  I stopped checking exactly a few hours ago. I’m just glad we’re getting a puddle in the middle cup at this point.

6) I took this picture before I went to bed at 11pm, so it has been about 12 hours by now.

7) This is when I woke up…I think this is all we’re going to get.  The blue transferred itself over more than the yellow for some reason, but we have a nice emerald green in the middle!  

Anyway, this is a fun project to do with the kids  🙂  Here are some lesson sheets on diffusion vs. osmosis if you want to ramp it up!

(link)

(link)

I have a backlog of essays lined up, ready to go…you have been warned.

Cheers!

The first time I saw Lauren Bacall was in “How To Marry A Millionaire,” which my Dad had given to me on VHS.

The movie had 3 knockout women playing the leads: Betty Grable, Marilyn and Lauren Bacall.

I knew Betty Grable, thanks to a “Going Steady With Betty” marathon sometime in the 90s.  She’s super sweet, and you can’t  not love Betty.   And, of course, Marilyn.  Marilyn is Marilyn…you don’t need many words for her.

But this other woman I didn’t know just stole the movie and made it her own.  She had this husky voice I think she stole from a woodland nymph in the depths of German  Black Forests, piercing blue eyes that could peel the flannel off a lumberjack, and a confidence I’m sure Gen. Patton would have shrank from….I loved it.

(credit)

 But when I looked into her biography, I loved her even more.

“On September 16, 1924, Lauren Bacall, the only daughter of Jewish immigrants, William Perske (a relative of former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres) and Natalie Weinstein-Bacal was born in New York City. She was christened Betty Joan Perske. Even until today, her close friends still address her as Betty.

They were a middle class family with her father working as a salesman and her mother as a secretary. For the first five years, Betty lived in Brooklyn with both parents, but her world changed when her parents divorced. Her father got into his car and left the house for good.” (laurenbacall.com)

She didn’t give a rats behind what anyone thought about her.  When she married Bogart, she stopped working as often so she could stay home and raise their kids.  Bogart said they didn’t even talk about it at the time: they were both “old fashioned people” and they walked in step with each other throughout their marriage.

“I put my career in second place throughout both my marriages and it suffered. I don’t regret it. You make choices. If you want a good marriage, you must pay attention to that. If you want to be independent, go ahead. You can’t have it all.”  -Lauren Bacall

“During her marriage to Bogart, Lauren Bacall starred in only one film per year. The pair co-starred in three more films (The Big Sleep, Dark Passage, and Key Largo), and had two children together, Stephen and Leslie. In 1957, Bogart died of lung cancer. Bacall was devastated. After a brief and disastrous fling with Frank Sinatra, including a very brief engagement, Bacall went east to return to her very first love, the theatre. “I finally felt that I came into my own when I went on the stage,” she says.” (biography.com)

I just love that she was always pursuing “coming into her own” during her life.  This meant marrying a guy 25 years older than she, because it was the right thing for her, or even that it might have stunted her career because she was now “Bogie’s wife” to the studios.

Bacall was a force.  A force of woman.  A woman who had a career, a marriage, children and an identity of her own.  How can you not love and admire all of this.

“Before long, Bacall again placed her focus on her personal life. She married again in 1961, this time to Jason Robards, Jr. The couple soon had a son named Sam. During her second marriage, Bacall starred in relatively few films. Bacall and Robards were divorced in 1969, and, shortly after, Lauren Bacall was approached to play the lead role in a new Broadway musical, Applause, which was based on the 1952 film All About Eve. Despite not being a singer, Bacall accepted the role. She was a great success, and earned a Tony for Best Actress. She won her second Tony in 1981 for a semi-autobiographical role in the play Woman of the Year.(biography.com)

What gets me the most about Bacall is her opinions.  Because a lady has two things: good shoes, and radical opinions:

“She told Vanity Fair that “I don’t think anybody that has a brain can really be happy. What is there really to be happy about? I had a good growing-up life, I would say, but I wasn’t really happy, because I was an only child, and I wasn’t part of a whole family—what we in America consider the proper family, a father and a mother and child, which, of course, is a big crock, we know—and yet I had the greatest family anyone could wish for in everyone on my mother’s side. So what you think is happy? Happy shmappy.”” (biography.com)

She just cracks me up.

I like a woman who knows herself.

(credit)

1. The story starts very firmly in the summer of 1827.  What are some things that were happening in Britain in 1827?  How was the social landscape, at the time?

2. Why did the story start out with “My father”?

3. The narrator spent a good, long paragraph in the beginning telling the reader what his father wanted him to do in life.  How do you think this might set the tone for the rest of the book?

4. It is interesting that the narrator would then spend the rest of the chapter describing his sister, and what she looked like, and his mother, and what she was doing.  It seems to me that the female perspective of the author overcomes the male perspective of the narrator in this sense.  What do you think?

5. After the mother spoke with Mrs. Graham, she said Mrs. Graham “betrayed a lamentable ignorance on certain points, and had not even the sense to be ashamed of it…On household matters, and all the little niceties of cookery, and such things, that every lady ought to be familiar with.”  What do you think about this?

6. In the church, the “old family pew” of Wildfell Hall had “faded crimson cushions and lining which had been unpressed and unrenewed so many years, and the grim escutcheons, with their lugubrious borders of rusty black cloth, frowned so sternly from the wall above.”  How does this description set the tone for Mrs. Grahams entrance into the story?

7. The narrator spent a good amount of time describing the rest of the characters after church.  Why would he do this?