A lesson adapted/stolen from a series of online resources

1. Assessment Objectives
• AO1 – Clear & accurate written expression. Good
vocabulary, including technical terminology. Well
structured argument.
• AO2 – Explore how the writer gets his ideas across.
How do they use structure, form and language?
• AO3 – Explore the contexts that influence the text:
biographical, setting, cultural, social: attitudes to
gender, race, social class, morality, religion.
• AO4 – Show you understand connections across
literary texts - that a text is influenced by its genre.
• AO5 – Explore different critical interpretations:
Feminist, Marxist, Psychoanalytic, Post-colonial etc.
Explore different interpretations over time.

2. Context
This poem is a description of a Marks and Spencers
shop in Larkin’s time. Since then, they have moved
further upmarket, but in the 1950s, M&S was a
shop much like the Primark of today – selling cheap,
though slightly dated, fashionable clothes.
Clothing and fashion are the themes of this poem;
watered down fashion at affordable rates. However
Larkin comments on the working class and the
illusions they have, bemoaning that they think
they're a better person if they try to dress better.

3. Structure
Structure:
The poem has an ABABA rhyme scheme
throughout, like the lives of the working class
people. It's repetitive, monotone and boring.

4. Task 1
• 1, What is the society presented in the text like? (The prevailing social
order)
• 2, How are social ideas evident (is there evidence of a Capitalist society)?
• 3, Does the protagonist accept the prevailing social order?
• 4, Is the protagonist alienated by the prevailing social order?
• 5, Is the protagonist effected by Socio-economic factors or cultural
attitudes?
• 6, At what point does the protagonist recognise the oppressiveness of the
prevailing social order?
• 7, How do they respond?
• 8, What affects the protagonists options for changing things?
• 9, What social forces effect the writer’s production of the texts?
• 10, What reception would the text originally receive?
• 11, Is anyone exploited because of their social class

5. exemplar paragraph analysing language
The language used in ‘The Large Cool Store’ is simplistic, with
predominately monosyllabic words used to evoke the look and feel
of department stores. Larkin uses the contrast in colours between
the ‘browns and greys’ of weekday clothes and the more glamorous
‘lemon, sapphire, moss-green’ of the nightwear to show how
advertising creates the illusion people can escape their drab lives in
these ‘unreal wishes’.

6. iii. alternative interpretations based on own judgments
How to form an alternative reading of your own
English literature depends a great on interpretation: readers from
different periods with different backgrounds are unlikely to read the
meaning or meanings in a text in exactly the same way. Likewise, most
texts invite readers to form their own judgments, particularly in relation
to ideas and themes where there is no clear moral position.
• Check mark scheme to see if alternative interpretations required
• Aim to give 2-3 alternative readings in an essay
• Choose significant alternative readings e.g. in Larkin’s poems closing
lines are often ambiguous, inviting alternative (contradictory) readings
• Engage with the alternative reading in your argument
• Use subordinating conjunctions to frame your alternative reading

7. Exemplar alternative reading paragraph
At the end of ‘The Large Cool Store’ the speaker
draws back from describing the clothes on
display to consider the wider impact of
advertising on human life. Whilst it initially
appears Larkin is accusing women of being
‘natureless in their ecstasies’, since they are the
ones who think ‘Bri-Nylon Baby Dolls and
shorties’ offer them the chance of a more
glamorous life, Larkin’s real target lies elsewhere.
The closing lines really critique the men whose
‘young unreal wishes’ create female desire, or
rather the consumer culture itself which feeds of
it to make money. In this way, the poem is not
misogynistic as women are ultimately victims.
Alternative
reading
Subordinating
conjunction
Own
opinion
Use
alternative
reading in
argument

8. exemplar alternative reading using literary theory
‘The Large Cool Store’ highlights the way shops rely on images of
women and femininity to sell their products and fuel consumer
desire. Larkin describes the underwear on the stands of Modes of
Night as ‘thin as blouses’ and the way the different items ‘flounce
in clusters’. The simile creates the impression that both the
clothes and the women who buy them are fragile and
unsubstantial. Likewise, the choice of the verb ‘flounce’ compares
flirtatious female behaviour with the way the clothes try to attract
the attention of customers. A feminist reading would criticise the
way Larkin’s draws upon images female sexuality to consider how
consumerism operates and suggest that the poem reinforces
ideas of women as objects used by men for men. This type of
reading would most probably consider Larkin to be a misogynist.

9. v. using critical views
Critical views
Most of the texts that are studied at A Level have been written about
extensively over the years by a number of different types of
professional writers, such as academics, teachers, reviewers and the
authors themselves. Much of what we know about texts, particularly
older plays, novels and poems, comes from other people’s research,
analysis and ideas. We refer to this writing as criticism and these
critical views can be very useful in helping to develop our own ideas.
Most criticism falls into two main categories
a) ideas and opinions about the specific text
b) ideas and opinions about the writer and their writing in general

10. • Larkin's objects to the hypocrisies of conventional sexual politics that hamper
the lives of both sexes in equal measure. Stephen Cooper
• His fury against women is not so much a declared state of siege against them
personally as it is an internal battle raging within himself.
Janice Rossen
• To call Larkin a misogynist would be an overstatement – to call him a
misanthropist might be closer to the mark. Janice
Rossen
• The argument is whether the shoppers are deluding themselves when they buy
something…or are they going beyond the limits which society sets for them?
Andrew Motion
• There is a sense of contradiction in the middle of the poem in that what lies
furthest from us - for instance the brightly coloured shop – is somehow going to
tell us how the poem will end. Andrew Motion
• Larkin sees drab houses, drab colours, drab lives and drab people during the
week trying to change by night into something they are not.
Andrew Motion
critical views relating to ‘The Large Cool Store’

11. How does Larkin present the
working classes?

12. PEAL – use for each point you want to
‘prove’
• POINT
• EVIDENCE from the text: brief quotations
embedded into your sentences.
• ANALYSIS and interpretation, explaining how
the evidence proves your point.
• LINKS to context / genre / literary theory /
different interpretations, to make your point
more convincingly.

13. Homework – context (AO3)
• Research:
• Phillip Larkin
• Early to mid 20th century England
• – social class structure
• – social class inequality
• - Education system

14. The Cool Store
by Phillip Larkin
How does Larkin explore ideas of
inequality between social classes?

15. Key Terms
• Proletariat
• Bourgeoisie
• Base
• Superstructure
• Reification
• Objectification
• Alienation
• Materialist philosophy
• Hierarchy
• Class struggle
• Oppressor
• Oppressed
• Suppressing
• Ideology
• Supports / undermines
• Economic determinism
• Capitalism
• Exploitation
• Dialectic

16. • Economic determinism is a theory suggesting that
economic forces determine, shape, and define all political,
social, cultural, intellectual, and technological aspects of a
civilization.
• Dialectic (also dialectics and the dialectical method), from
Ancient Greek διαλεκτική, is a method of argument for
resolving disagreement that has been central to European
and Indian philosophy since antiquity.
• Discussion and reasoning by dialogue as a method of
intellectual investigation; specifically : the Socratic
techniques of exposing false beliefs and eliciting truth.
• In Marxism, reification (German: Verdinglichung, literally:
"making into a thing" (cf. Latin res meaning "thing") or
Versachlichung, literally "objectification"; regarding
something impersonally) is the thingification of social
relations or of those involved in them, to the extent that
the nature of social relationships is expressed by the
relationships between traded objects . For example, in a
Capitalist society, the proletariat can be reduced to the
status of units by the bourgeoisie.

17. Things to look for
• 1, What is the society presented in the text like? (The prevailing
social order)
• 2, How are social ideas evident (is there evidence of a Capitalist
society)?
• 3, Does the protagonist accept the prevailing social order?
• 4, Is the protagonist alienated by the prevailing social order?
• 5, Is the protagonist effected by Socio-economic factors or cultural
attitudes?
• 6, At what point does the protagonist recognise the oppressiveness
of the prevailing social order?
• 7, How do they respond?
• 8, What affects the protagonists options for changing things?
• 9, What social forces effect the writer’s production of the texts?
• 10, What reception would the text originally receive?
• 11, Is anyone exploited because of their social class

18. Essay comes from ‘essayer’ – to ‘try out’
A method to ‘hit’ the AOs
• Intro – clearly stating what you will argue (AO1)
• Main Body – where you ‘prove’ what you are
arguing by reference to language, form, structure
(AO2), context (AO3), connections to other literary
texts / genres (AO4), and critical interpretations
over time (AO5).
• Conclusion – evaluation of points made, summing
up how they ‘prove’ your argument.

19. Essay plan
• P1 – Introduce text. What is the it about? (What form is it?
AO2/AO4) Give your opinion to the question you have posed (AO5).
• P2 – What society is created? (consider how language and structure
are used to present this society (AO2)
• Consider the social class of the writer and his social experiences
(AO3)
• P3 – Look at the language used. How are characters presented
(AO2)
• How much do key characters believe in the prevailing social order?
(AO5)
• How much is the character a product of the society created and the
society of the author? (AO3)
• P4 - How can ideas presented about society be interpreted from a
Marxist perspective? (AO5)
• P5 – Sum up key points and conclude your argument.