Learning From The Classics Podcast: Symbolism

Today we're looking at symbolism.

And symbolism,

Well symbols are everywhere.

So what we need to consider is our everyday experiences and those subliminal messages we are getting in our experience.

And they are subliminal,

But of course they affect us greatly.

If we are talking about the weather,

The weather can affect our mood greatly and in terms of symbolism it symbolises something that is either going to make our day or break our day,

Right?

It's really very significant.

The weather,

The time of day,

The environment we're in,

Whether it's very busy,

It's noisy,

All of these things are symbols that we can use in our work and when we're reading and listening to literature we can appreciate that the author has slotted in to your reading experience in order to inject some subliminal message.

And what I'm trying to do with Book Club is I'm trying to open our eyes to that.

Open our eyes to the subtle nuances,

The contextual information that is sitting between the lines.

And of course everybody's clever until they're not,

Right?

We all know what we know but we can never know enough of any one thing.

So it's up to us to share our knowledge so that we can see the world through new eyes as a child sees it.

When we learn about elements of literature,

Of books that we have loved but we're not really sure why or that have resonated with us and we come to understand the hidden meaning behind many of the literary devices,

We can then go back to the same stories and we can enjoy them so much more.

Almost as though it's for the first time and if they're great novels,

If they're classic novels,

There's so much meat on that bone.

So we're going to look at Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre is,

And I said it right at the beginning,

It is my favourite Bronte novel.

It's very passionate.

It's not like Austen's work,

For example Pride and Prejudice,

Where it's almost distanced and controlled and it's a societal take on life.

It's an observation but it's observed satirically and that's why it's so fantastic.

But it's actually almost the opposite.

So Charlotte Bronte said in the first editions of her novel,

This is an autobiography.

So she had trodden in Jane Eyre's footsteps.

She had felt excruciatingly the suffering that Jane felt and she put that down in prose.

But immediately we open the book,

The first symbolic element is the environment of Gateshead Hall.

Now she uses cleverly words or names,

Give names to her settings in order to underline the feel of that environment,

Gateshead Hall.

A gate suggests or symbolises something that can be closed,

An enclosure,

Something that is restrictive and cheerless.

Something that from a child's point of view is holding them back,

Which is exactly what Gateshead was for the young Jane Eyre.

Now for those,

I am going to assume we know something of Jane Eyre,

But let's just imagine we've only ever heard of this story.

So we've got a young child who's living in her aunt's house,

Not her paternal aunt,

So it's the sister of her father who died.

So she's an orphan,

She's looked after by Mrs Reed,

Who is her paternal aunt,

Who is very cruel to her.

She has cousins and she's ostracised from the whole familial context,

She does not take part in family life really at all,

She's always on the outside looking in.

So she's unloved,

She's a ten year old child in an unloved situation and everyone keeps suggesting that she's lucky because the house is well to do and her family are well to do,

But of course she doesn't feel like that whatsoever.

So there is no possibility of going for a walk that day.

Right from the beginning we see through the eyes of a child she'd rather be outside than in.

Outside is so much freer.

The gates are open,

She can be free.

And we're getting that sombre mood right from the beginning of the story.

Okay so we've got 38 chapters in total and if we look at each setting we can gauge the mood right from the beginning from the name of the setting and then what happens there.

Okay so Gateshead Hall,

The name is symbolising something.

And then within Gateshead Hall she is,

Young Jane has been accused falsely of something that she didn't do and she's thrown into the red room.

And of course the colour red symbolising anger,

Danger.

And that's the beginning of the story so it doesn't bode well.

She's starting off in a dark place.

But Gateshead,

Gateway to a new life,

Where does she go from there?

Lowood School,

Oh dear,

Gets worse.

Lowood,

What does that tell us?

Well that tells us this is one of her lowest points.

She's a young girl,

She's put into this school.

It's an unforgiving environment.

And her best friend Helen Burns dies there in fact.

There's disease,

There's illness.

So yes this name is echoing the mood.

It's symbolising again something dark.

And in fact if you listen to my chapters you can hear that in the first few chapters.

You can hear that darkness in the words that are spoken between her and the other characters.

So then we move on to Thornfield.

Thorn again,

Something piercing.

But Field is a natural environment.

And Charlotte Bronte,

The Bronte sisters,

Living in Yorkshire.

Surrounded by the natural world.

And of course that was their everything.

And that becomes Jane's everything.

So we have a stark contrast there.

We've got your Thorn,

Something that's going to be prickly.

And it's going to scratch when you least expect it.

And the Field,

Well there is good to come of this too.

Again symbolising or foreshadowing what is to be expected.

So as we know in Thornfield Jane is proposed to by Mr Rochester.

She plans to marry him.

But unfortunately he's already married to this mad woman in the attic called Bertha Mason.

So the Thorn is symbolic because we have the Field,

This beautiful place.

And Thornfield is a lovely home.

And then right in the heart of it,

Hidden away,

Is the something that is going to pierce her.

To cut her.

And she will have to leave,

Even though she's fallen in love with the main character.

The main male character.

So from there she moves to Moor House,

Which is the name of the Rivers home.

We've got St John Rivers and his two sisters.

And as it transpires,

We've heard in recent chapters,

Jane is actually related to these characters.

But she doesn't realise it when she runs away from Thornfield.

To all intents and purposes,

She is homeless.

She's sleeping in ditches and she's chosen the natural world away from Thornfield.

Even though she could live there as Rochester's mistress,

But she says,

No,

That's not right for me.

And Moor House,

Well,

The use of the word Moor,

Of course,

Has links to the Yorkshire Moors,

Nature and something being wild and free.

And this is Jane's emancipation.

It's a breakthrough from the chains and restrictions that were put upon her in Thornfield Hall.

She needs to forge her own identity.

And in fact,

In Moor House,

When she,

As we've heard in later chapters,

She has some very good news and she learns that she is to inherit.

OK.

And she's to become a rich woman.

So finally,

That freeing,

Nature again has been used in a way to symbolise freedom.

Fantastic.

What a moment.

She's finally free from the shackles.

Further on in the book,

Not to give too many spoilers,

We have Fern Dean Manor,

Which is Rochester's manor.

He ends up living there and it later becomes more familiar to Jane.

Fern Dean again with a nod to nature.

So.

We can also see the use of colours.

As with any Gothic novel,

And the Victorians loved the Gothic,

We can see links between colours and moods and feelings.

Now,

If we look at their interior design,

Their architecture,

The Victorians,

It was quite austere.

I personally really like it,

But it's.

It's quite dramatic in its colouring.

Very rich colours used,

Highly ornamental,

Highly embellished.

And Brontës used the colours red and black to symbolise connotations of death,

Fire,

The devil,

Hell,

The supernatural.

And this all underpins that Gothic narrative that Jane Eyre is so famous for.

And we can,

As a reader,

Then sympathise with what Jane is going through without realising it.

All of these elements to a good story enable us as readers,

Listeners,

To empathise with the main character.

And that essentially is the author's raison d'etre.

It's the reason for them doing what they're doing.

What they're trying to do is draw you in and make you feel what they feel.

And this is why I love Jane Eyre so much,

Because we are drawn into Charlotte's own plight.

Her own experience.

And I've noted on all my lives,

And I will continue to do so until finally it's published.

Hoping for next week now.

There have been a few audio issues.

But with my writing course,

Us writing our own story over three lessons,

A short story about an exciting moment that we experienced and learning how to use these literary devices to really draw ourselves back into the experience.

Relive it and come to terms with it.

Essentially,

This is why Jane Eyre was written.

For such experiences,

Such extreme experiences for a human to go through.

It's a cathartic process.

It was a cathartic process for her to write that down and make sense of it.

Okay,

So I talked a little bit about the settings.

And we can also see when she was a young child,

Jane Eyre.

Right from the beginning,

We see her escape from the restrictive family setting and hide away in this window seat and close the curtains and her refuges,

Her books.

They're her escape.

It's raining,

She can't go outside,

So she's going to read instead.

And we see her reading about birds,

Berwick's History of British Birds.

And this book talks about storms,

Shipwrecks,

Disasters,

The Arctic,

Desolation,

Alpine Heights.

These images are symbolically expressing Jane's own bewildered state.

They are underpinning that.

So when we're writing a story,

We can use elements to emphasise the emotional state of the protagonist.

Okay,

So these books aren't there for no reason.

When you watch a film,

When you listen to a story,

Any kind of dramatisation,

And especially if it's a performance and it's done well,

Every element in that setting is there for a reason.

It's not coincidental.

So look for the fine detail.

If you're watching,

My favourite genre of film is film noir.

And in the 50s,

These films were just masterpieces,

Right?

And if you look closely at the setting,

You absorb yourself in the experience because these films,

You can't really watch them with one eye.

You have to really absorb yourself,

Just as you do with this literature.

And if you absorb yourself in it and actually immerse yourself in the experience,

You can see all the elements that have been placed there to support and emphasise the mood.

Okay,

So that's the power of symbolism.

Then Jane Eyre,

Going back to Jane Eyre,

She's looking at Gulliver Travels.

So she's thinking as a child beyond the world in which she's in.

And we also have Arabian Nights that she looks at that's introducing her to the idea of magic and the supernatural.

These all help with her imagination,

And she needs an imagination,

Of course,

For her to be able to come to terms with and get through,

Survive the trouble she has,

The things she experiences.

Another symbol is when she does her drawings and paintings for Mr.

Rochester.

Paintings from her imagination and her inner life,

The polar regions,

The cruel sea.

She's always escaping,

And maybe the character in your story needs to escape too.

Okay,

So we've looked a little bit about,

Obviously,

Throughout.

It's such a huge novel,

But we've also looked a little bit at the settings.

We've looked a little bit at different elements.

For example,

There's a chestnut tree that's hit with lightning,

Foreshadowing or telling us,

Predicting that something terrible is going to happen before,

Indeed,

We find out.

She finds out that Mr.

Rochester is also married.

Something majestic,

A tree that is broken.

Just as is the majestic love and experience she has for this man is just about to be destroyed.

And,

Of course,

We have the fire.

Although I'm not going to give you any spoilers if you haven't read or listened to Jane Eyre before,

But there's a huge fire,

And,

Of course,

That's a massive symbol in itself.

And we also see the moon.

There are many references to the moon within the story.

And the moon is reflecting her mood and what is about to happen.

It's foreshadowing what's about to happen in the story.

For example,

The night Rochester proposes to Jane.

It's a key symbol at that point.

Okay,

And,

Of course,

We have Bertha Mason,

Who symbolises everything that is wrong.

Okay,

Bertha Mason,

The shunned wife who turns mad,

Who is hidden up in the attic.

And she symbolises the weakness of Rochester.

A relationship he's dived into foolishly,

Hasn't thought it through,

And initially is based on a kind of lust and desire,

Which conflicts with this Christian narrative that Charlotte Bronte has in her work.

And we also see the appearance of the character symbolising something.

So where Jane is helped by kind characters,

They tend to be less dark in appearance and foreboding.

They don't have the sort of blackness in their eyes,

As opposed to Jane's green ones,

Which symbolise reflecting nature and also symbolising that sort of creativity and innocence that she has.

So what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to relate all this to our own work and to suggest that through understanding the use of symbolism,

That actually we can inject that into our own ideas,

Whatever they might be.

Now,

My writing course is really,

I suppose,

About journalling,

But the reason it's a narrative or a storytelling course is because we are writing about somebody else.

So what I suggest we do is we write in the first person,

I,

Me,

As Charlotte Bronte did,

But it's actually about another character.

So I,

For example,

Writing the story,

Will be writing about myself,

But call myself someone else,

As though I stepped away from that and I'm looking at this person,

Because that will help me make sense of their plight and it will detach me from the painful experience so that I can look at it objectively.

I can craft out that narrative using my literary devices,

Using the structure that I give you in the lessons and just sticking to that.

And that will enable anybody who undertakes the course not to get,

Because it's very easy to get caught up in the emotion and then lose sense of the structure of how we come to terms with it.

So you will be,

If you do the course,

You will be feeling the emotions.

Experiencing everything again,

Just like Charlotte did when she wrote Jane Eyre.

But you will be able to make sense of it and put it down in a structured way and almost seal it up in this box so that it's,

It's not living and breathing inside of you and cutting at you every day.

This is the power of writing.

It's empowering and that's why the course is named the way it's named.

It's empowering.

And when we're going back to classic literature,

When we look at classic literature,

We can see these are empowering moments for the authors.

And what I'm trying to do is enable you to have your empowering moment and write your story.

Our story is really important,

But sometimes it gets lost in the pain of it.

We can lose,

We can become detached from it.

We can just remember a memory.

Obviously the brain's designed because we need to survive.

It's designed to remember the bad.

Channel it,

Channel the voice,

And we structure our ideas and our memories.

We can bring in the good too.

We can,

We can look at it more objectively.

So that is what I'm going to be talking about next week.

I'm going to be looking at my Tales of the New World and my Blethingwood Hall,

Which is just about to come out.

And I'm going to be looking at how I've used literary features.

Now,

Tales of the New World are just fun little fantasy stories,

But Blethingwood Hall is autobiographical.

And it is related to the New World.

Okay,

I'm not going to give too many spoilers,

But I'm going to break that down,

The first chapter of that.

And I'm going to talk about how I have personally structured my experiences into a workable novel.

Because the way I teach is through inspiration,

So I haven't ever taught anything that I haven't done myself.

And that's the key.

If you're going to be a good teacher,

A successful teacher,

You need to have walked the walk,

Right?

Yeah,

So that's what I'm going to do.

It's been great to see you.

I would really appreciate if you would join my group.

I have a group,

Stephanie Poppin's Original Stories,

I think it's called.

And then anyone undertaking the course,

Or visiting my lives where I talk about the course,

Because that can also help you.

We can then start working on our ideas together.

And we will continue to reference classical literature,

The stories that I produce,

That I perform.

And hopefully you will really get something from that,

Even if it's just opening your eyes to what's going on.

That's what book club is all about.

I've put a lot of work into it.

I've been teaching for a long time now,

But it's never been adults.

It's been young adults up to about 21,

22 years old.

But the idea is now for me to put my energy,

Not into the classroom anymore,

But into this room,

Where we all choose to be,

Where we all have the time to be,

And look at it in a more relaxed way,

And a more cathartic way.

So within the process of a while,

I'm not just teaching English as something that needs to be taught,

But for the love of it,

For the love of teaching.

And let's get together again next week.

Let's talk literary devices.

And if you want to bring along,

If you want to just listen great,

If you want to bring along a notebook to make notes about anything you think,

Ah,

I might be able to use that in some writings that I have or do,

Then please do.

It'll be great to be doing this together.

If you can join the group,

That would be great too.

And we'll start talking literature.

We'll start talking our own stories,

Saying them out loud.

And embracing who we are,

Right?

I'll see you next time.