Godiva

At the start of this lesson we looked at who we think rules the world? men or women.
The ideas we gathered were; that no gender is superior or inferior to the other. We live in a patriarchal society where men are domineering and women are trying to get a fairer chance.

We drew a world with the word 'diegesis' in the middle, meaning the world of the story or narrative. Along with this word we learnt two other words:
*homodiegetic narrator - a narrator who is also a character in the world of the story he tells. (for example, amir in the kite runner)
*heterodiegetic narratore - a narrator who is outside of the world of the story he tells. (for example, morgan freeman in shawshank redemption)

In this lesson we looked at the narrative poem, Godiva (written in 1842), who is the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia. Leofric was an evil man who raised the taxes but then the people in the town would be left starving, Godiva who felt sorry for them, asked her husband to lower them. He challenged her to ride around the town naked and then he would lower them. He didn't think she would go through with it but when she did she was known as a top figure of Coventry.

We noticed that Godiva was a framed narrative as it is a story within a story, it starts with a prologue with a narrative voice with retrospective phrases. Then the second part sets up the narrative for a second time with a concurrent version.
*retrospective - past
*concurrent - present
The prologue; sets up the narrative, the place and the characters.
"I waited for the train of Coventry;
I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge,
To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped
The city's ancient legend into this:"
It creates a narrative gap of mystery as it doesn't reveal a lot and ends with 'this'. We discovered that it could have been Tennyson who wrote the prologue.

Throughout the poem, Godiva is shown to be a powerful woman through the language. We determined that Godiva is different from The Lady of Shallot and Mariana. Godiva does things that she believes in and doesn't let anything get her down. Whereas, The Lady of Shallot and Mariana were victims to patriarchy and didn't seem to be strong women like Godiva. leofric is shown throughout the poem as a manipulative man who sees Godiva as his possesion.