Lesson Overview 

The Quiz 

There are two quizzes here.  One for Chapters 1 to 6 and one, for Chapters 1-3.  Each of these has a matching Power Point for a Vertext type discussion.  The chapters are short - but you are the best judge of how much your students can read in any given amount of time.

Class Discussion - A Vertext

Vertexts are important quotes to be put up on the classroom screen - which the students read aloud and comment on.  They are a great way to get a discussion going, keep it text-centered, and student-centered as well.  See my page on Class Discussion Methods for more on this.   Often when doing a Vertext - I will start at one end of the room and have students read the quote aloud - we will discuss it - then the next person in the row reads the next quote.  However, if I feel everyone isn't speaking - or in an incredibly important discussion, like today's, I will ask that the student who read the quote aloud - also starts the discussion off on that quote.  This assures that everyone's voice and thoughts will be heard during the lesson.

      Vertext 1 - Chapters 1 to 6

 For the Chapters 1 to 6 Vertext there are a total of 32 quotes (and a song) in the presentation .   Here is a summary of the quotes and the ground covered for this Vertext:

In this Vertext of the opening six chapters of Persuasion, the lesson begins with Lily Allen's song "22," about a young woman whose promising future has slipped away as she nears thirty. It sets up Anne Elliot, who turned down Charles Musgrove at twenty-two and is now twenty-seven and overlooked. The Chapter 1 slides then take apart the Elliot household. Sir Walter reads nothing but the Baronetage, ranks beauty just below a baronetcy, and asks helplessly whether the family can "retrench." A slide asks students to think about what Anne is doing while her father amuses himself with that empty history. Two quotations are paired on purpose. The first shows the late Lady Elliot softening her husband's failings for seventeen years. The second, pulled forward from Chapter 6, suggests a woman of real understanding could have improved Charles Musgrove. Together they raise what a capable woman might make of a man. At the center of the chapter is Anne herself, whose "word had no weight," who was "only Anne," and whose bloom faded early.

From Chapter 2 on, the slides give students moral tests to carry through the book. Lady Russell's line that whoever runs up debts must pay them is meant to be applied to every character they meet. Austen's dry remark about how quickly reasons appear for approving what we like is another. Students are also asked whether Anne dislikes Bath for some reason beyond the place itself. Chapter 3 covers Sir Walter's scorn for sailors, who he claims age badly and get weather-beaten, and Anne's quiet thought that "he" may soon be walking there. Chapter 4 reveals the broken engagement to Wentworth. It shows Lady Russell's horror of imprudence and Anne's sense that she gave him up for his own good. It ends with the line at the heart of the novel: Anne was "forced into prudence in her youth" and "learned romance as she grew older." The Chapter 5 and 6 slides return to how little Anne counts. Elizabeth says no one will want her in Bath, Mary claims she can't do without her, and at Uppercross everyone confides in her and pours out their complaints. The lesson ends on two telling details: Anne has not been truly listened to since her mother died when she was fourteen, and Austen describes the Musgroves' "good fortune" in losing their troublesome son Dick.

      Vertext 2 - Chapters 1 to 3

As with the last iteration, this Vertext also begins with the Lily Allen song, and this one includes a total of 29 slides - so just a few shy of the Chapter 1 - 6 version, so obviously, this one goes into much more depth and also takes an entire period (40 to 50 minutes) to go through.  Here is a summary of that Vertext:

Where the 2014 Vertext moved through six chapters in about thirty slides, this 2017 version covers only the first three, lingering over Chapter 1 and adding page references, a lesson on Austen's narrative technique, and a few new passages. More than half the deck belongs to Chapter 1. After the same Lily Allen opening and the familiar quotations on Sir Walter and the Baronetage, the slides add Austen's verdict that "vanity was the beginning and the end" of his character, along with fresh attention to the late Lady Elliot, whose only lapse in judgment was the "youthful infatuation" that made her Lady Elliot. Lady Russell is also introduced, a steady widow with no thought of remarrying. The key addition comes with two lines about Sir Walter's daughters: he would give up anything for Elizabeth, and his other two children "were of inferior value." Here the slide defines free indirect speech, showing students how Austen lets a character's own voice and judgments slip into the narration. That idea helps explain "only Anne," Elizabeth's feeling of being ill-used, and Sir Walter's belief that he is "blameless" while he goes deeper into debt. New slides also cover Elizabeth's disappointment in the heir, William Walter Elliot, and Anne's awareness that her father now turns to the Baronetage to escape his tradesmen's bills.

The Chapter 2 slides keep the moral tests from 2014: Lady Russell's rule that debts must be paid, the question of why Anne really dislikes Bath, and Austen's remark about how quickly we find reasons for what we like. To these the 2017 deck adds Mrs. Clay, whom Lady Russell sees as an unequal and dangerous companion. Chapter 3 opens with Austen's observation that "consequence has its tax," the talk and curiosity that follow important people. It is paired with a line from Twelfth Night on how the lesser prattle about what the great ones do. Sir Walter's contempt for sailors follows, now joined by the full exchange about Admiral Croft, a Trafalgar veteran whose face Sir Walter assumes must be as orange as his servants' livery. Because the deck stops before Chapter 4's account of the broken engagement, it ends on Anne's quiet thought that "he" may soon be walking there. This leaves students with the mystery of who "he" is rather than the answer.

Solo Work

Once again, I wish to reiterate that Solo Work should be considered as only a last resort for this Chapter.  Here is a summary of the Solo Work (like a Group Work but done by individual students):

This Solo Work turns the Vertext quotations into seven written questions that each student answers alone and hands in by the end of the period. The early questions ask students to connect Austen to other works from the course. Sir Walter's pleasure in the Baronetage is linked to Macbeth's "If chance will have me king," to ask what Anne must do to survive while her father trusts in chance. His ranking of beauty just below a baronetcy is tied to a prologue from The Canterbury Tales as a reversal of the usual views of men and women. Lady Elliot's years of softening his failings are then connected back to both answers.

The later questions look at Anne herself. Students find the irony in pairing the Chapter 6 line about the improving wife Charles Musgrove missed with the Chapter 1 line calling Anne "only Anne." They connect Anne's early loss of bloom to Lily Allen's "22." They consider how the strikingly modern word "retrench" applies to Anne's life as well as to her father's money. The last question applies Lady Russell's rule that debts must be paid to Sir Walter, to Anne, and finally to Lady Russell herself.