A2 Lit

1. LITA3 Practice Paper: Jan 2011 – example answerto question2
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Q2. Write a comparison of the ways in which the pains of love are presented in
these two extracts.
Both texts present characters who experience the pains of love. The
source of the pain is the prospect of separation – but the cause of this
separation in these two extracts is very different. In Item C Olenska
and Archer find themselves unable to defy social convention. Ellen
Olenska admits the impossibility of their relationship at the end: ‘I
suppose this had to be. But it doesn’t in the least alter things.’
Wharton, writing in the more liberated 1920s, sets her novel fifty
years earlier, enabling her to perhaps explore Victorian hypocrisy, but
perhaps also to criticise aspects of her own times. Perhaps she
explores the fact that social position and financial security still
determined marriage choices, and one’s place in “good” society had to
be maintained; this idea is also apparent in ‘The Great Gatsby’ (written
five years after this novel). Once Daisy and Jay are reunited, at his
house Jay entertains her and has Ewing Klipspringer play ‘Aint We Got
Fun’: ‘In the morning, in the evening / Ain't we got fun!/ Got no money,
but oh, honey /Ain't we got fun!’. This is bitterly ironic, as Daisy
originally rejected Jay for his lack of wealth and status. Fitzgerald and
Wharton both explore and satirise the narrow upper-middle class world
and present its emotional restrictions and painful restraints.
While Wharton presents the pains of love on an intimate, painful level,
Shakespeare’s tragedy presents noble lovers destroyed by a single
character flaw – their passion for one another. Theirs is a public
separation: Antony is “heav’d aloft” to Cleopatra in full view of her
attendants. The setting would evoke the impression that their love is
Establishthe comparisonstraightaway – try to indicate similaritiesand
differences(AO3)
Compare
AO4, if
possible
Establishing
a debate
(AO3ii)
Use comparison
as a topic
sentence (AO3i)
AO2 analysisto
supportpoints

2. LITA3 Practice Paper: Jan 2011 – example answerto question2
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something devastating and monumental, and the image of Antony being
raised to Cleopatra suggests the nobility of their love elevates his
death from mere sadness and into tragedy.
Wharton’s third person narrative privileges Archer’s perspective,
providing less access to Olenska’s feelings. Wharton’s naturalistic
exchange details Archer’s changing emotions: embarrassment (‘Archer,
changing colour, stood up’), disappointment (‘he saw nothing that would
ever lift that load from his heart’) and exasperation (he is ‘flushed and
resolute’). Archer is presented as emotionally pained; Wharton uses the
powerful simile, ‘It seemed to Archer to be crushing him down like his
own gravestone.’ The image suggests the inevitable, inescapable sense
of defeat, while the word ‘crush’ connotes complete defeat, and
irresistible destruction. The gravestone image might also be
interpreted as symbolising the powerful force of society’s expectation:
the individual, Archer, feels powerless to resist social constraints, and
the censure that will ensure if he follows his heart. Archer succumbs
to the weight of social pressure, much like Anne Elliot in ‘Persuasion’.
Anne, we are told, ‘had been forced into prudence in her youth, she
learned romance as she grew older – natural sequence of an unnatural
beginning.’ A Marxist reading of both leads to the idea that society
constrains and restricts 'natural' desires- and produces pain.
The pain of loss is evident in the powerful dialogue deployed to
complement the action onstage in item D. The grandeur of Cleopatra’s
apostrophe, ‘O sun, / Burn the great sphere thou mov’st in; darkling
stand / The varying shore o’th’world!’ underlines her sense of pain at his
prospective death – death will be the end, bringing a momentous
darkness to her. The drama of exclamations and a flurry of instructions
Commenton
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3. LITA3 Practice Paper: Jan 2011 – example answerto question2
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increase tension in the audience: ‘O Antony / Antony, Antony! Help
Charmian; help Iras, help!’ The audience realise, through this sense of
urgency, that Antony might die at any moment. Shakespeare makes use
of other techniques to create pity and underline the pains of love which
the characters experience. The physical elevation of Antony to
Cleopatra on the stage’s balcony could symbolise his ascent through
suffering to true nobility, and the stage image of the dead Antony in
Cleopatra’s arms might be poignantly reminiscent of a pieta to
audiences familiar with the story of Christ’s crucifixion.
Both writers deploy imagery of darkness and light to suggest hope and
the pain of despair. Wharton’s imagery of light and darkness (an ‘arrow
of light’ tears through darkness, then later Archer stares ‘into utter
darkness’) underscores Archer’s rising and falling hopes. Shakespeare
also makes use of similar imagery: Cleopatra directs her women, ‘Ah
women, women! Look / Our lamp is spent, it’s out.’ The metaphor of the
lamp again recalls grand, biblical images – Antony, like Christ, is “the
light of the world”, for Cleopatra. This use of light and dark imagery is
a recurring trope in Shakespeare’s tragedies: in Romeo and Juliet,
another tragedy about lovers separated by inevitable circumstance,
both lovers describe each other in such terms. Romeo says of his lady,
‘O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright,’ an image suggesting her
unparalleled brightness and attraction, qualities which the lamp image
also evoke.
Cleopatra’s lament after Antony’s death suggests the anger that the
pains of love and loss provoke. She rails, ‘It were for me, / To throw my
sceptre at the injurious gods, / To tell them that this world did equal
theirs / Till they had stol’n our jewel.’ The sense of breath having
A
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4. LITA3 Practice Paper: Jan 2011 – example answerto question2
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brought and ending, and the anger and desire of the mourner that all
stops and ends with the death is also explored by W. H. Auden in his
elegy beginning ‘Stop All The Clocks.’ Just as Cleopatra dares the gods’
wrath with her destructive impulse, so the speaker in the poem does
not see the worth of life continuing: ‘The stars are not wanted now, put
out every one; / Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;’ The speaker,
like Cleopatra, suggests that ‘All’s but naught’ without one’s lover.
A kiss is used by both writers to bring the encounters to a climax:
Cleopatra kisses Antony with the desire that he ‘Quicken with kissing’,
while Wharton presents the kiss between Archer and Olenska as a
moment of hope dashed almost in the instant: ‘She gave him back all his
kiss, but after a moment he felt her stiffening in his arms, and she put
him aside and stood up.’ The act of putting him aside and standing
marks Olenska as the one in control of the relationship; both text C
and D present dominant female characters. However, despite this
power and attractiveness, both writers ultimately explore how the
relationships in both texts are impeded by social or political barriers.
Key words
Wider reading
Relevant
WR (AO3i)
Developed
comparison
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ConcludingusingAO4