Finishing School

1.The Finishing Schoolbegins, "Last night I dreamed of Ursula DeVane," which is reminiscent of the beginning of Daphne du Maurier's novelRebecca: "Last night I dreamed of Manderley." Is a dream a good starting point for a story? Imagine one of your own dreams. How would you develop it? How does Godwin proceed? (I count nine different tacks she takes in the first six pages before preparing herself for the mantra "Fourteen. Be fourteen again.")2. On page 3, the narrator admits, "I won't hire a detective to go in search of a real seventy-year old woman . . . But I will attend to what her image, playing its role in last night's dream, came to tell me." real personhas its function." Can you imagine any characters with whomJustin might have engaged but whom Godwin weeded out? Are there any characters she included whom she could have left out?3. When Aunt Mona dives to pick up a piece of food that Jem, Justin's brother, had dropped at dinner, Justin gives her mother a look to distinguish "Our Way of Life" from "Theirs." You can gain insight into the way of life represented in a novel's universe by asking yourself what the book or its characters have to say about a variety of key topics: religion, politics, the arts and literature, mass media, social class, race, gender, aging, the natural world, human nature, sex, current events, community, crime and punishment, etc.4. Adolescents do not write many great novels, so we have to trust adults to create adolescent states of mind retrospectively. How accurately does Godwin do it? What aspects of adolescence would an Justin's awareness of and involvement with sexuality, starting with the Cristiana poltroon farm.5. When Justin receives her grandmother's pearl necklace, initiating her into womanhood, she muses, "There was a lonely, mysterious side of myself I was just beginning to know, a side neither masculine nor feminine but quivering with intimations of mental and spiritual things." Does the focus on sex stunt other developmental needs in teenagers?6. There are some good passages for studying the nature of Justin's confusion. On page 79, you read that Justin goes up to the old farmhouse and paints an Ursula-like figure whom she then consults as an oracle. Upon returning home and being swallowed by circumstances there, her painted figure begins to look like one of the mindless milkmaids on her wallpaperher newly forming self, she thinks. Can a person see his or her fate? How clearly does Justin do so?7. Also, look at page 99. Justin senses the magic of her visit to the DeVanes draining from her as Aunt Mona defends her. How many people are fighting for Justin's allegiance? Who is Justin if she is not any of the people others think she is? On page 105, Justin thinks she might be a monster manipulating others in order to get her mother to move back to Virginia. Could she be a monster? Where does her goodnesslie? This is a question that the grown-up Justin asks on page 106 as she looks back at her fourteen-year-old self.8. Make a list of the music cited in the novel, get the recordings, and play them. How do they affect your experience of reading and remembering the novel, if at all?9. Satire lovers, how much satire can you take? How much satire is there inThe Finishing School? Does it serve its role well? Would you want more? If there were more, how would that change the novel? Can you think of a novel that has a lot more satire in it? What is that novel missing thatThe Finishing Schoolhas? Look at the first instance of satire inThe Finishing School, on pages 23 through 35. (Also, see other satiric passages on pages 146, 200201, 21Godwin, Gail is the author of 'Finishing School' with ISBN 9780345431905 and ISBN 0345431901.