Thursday, September 23, 2004
A moment of squee.
OMG MY PROF IS LETTING ME WRITE FANFIC FOR AN ESSAY!!! SQUEE!!
Ahem.
Now that I've got that out of my system, here's the deal: Dr. Kevorkian, when discussing his essay guidelines and expectations today, mentioned casually that he would allow fictional or narrative responses in place of an essay.
After a few of us perked up noticeably at this bit of information, he stressed three things: one, he didn't want to see fiction for every paper we turned in; two, it should still incorporate textual evidence and make good use thereof; and three, it wasn't something that could be done easily and would be a risky venture. But he did say that he had, in fact, had a precious few previous students who successfully created a response in fiction.
After class we briefly discussed what exactly he meant by "fiction" -- basically, I think the successful fiction responses he's had in the past have twisted the monologue of the essay into a dialogue between new fictional characters. But I asked him whether "what if" scenarios, or explorations of a character or alternate plot development through a new but similar character/situation might not also be acceptable. He said yes. Then he suggested something, and I had the Idea.
The Idea was so exciting that I had this moment of squee right there in front of my professor. He laughed. I must have looked like the biggest English dork on the face of the planet.
The Idea involves Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette. In a nutshell, the novel is about Eliza Wharton, a lovely social butterfly who wants everything her way, refuses a good offer of marriage, flirts with the bad boy and ends up sleeping with him, gets pregnant, runs away, has her baby and dies of shame/heartbreak. It's an epistolary novel -- so all throughout the story Eliza writes to her female friends, who give her good advice which she very seldom follows. Meanwhile Sanford -- the bad boy of the story -- also writes letters to his friend, Charles Deighton, revealing all his plans for seducing Eliza.
Except... Deighton never writes back.
The missing Deighton letters really bothered me when I read the story. So, the Idea -- if you haven't already guessed -- is that I'm going to write Deighton's replies to all of Sanford's letters. It will be very academic fanfic, really. I get to make up this guy's character -- see, the whole book cries out against the evils of seduction, and talks about how "rakes" and seducers and people of suspect virtue can never be reformed -- even after marriage, as Sanford proves. BUT, when Eliza finds herself in dire straights, she's protrayed as seeing the error of her ways and begging forgiveness from her friends, family and God. Sure, she still ends up dead -- but why is it that a coquette can be reformed (or at least come to realise that she's messed up and vow not to do it again), and a rake cannot?
So, my theory: Deighton's got to be a reformed rake. That's why we don't see his replies.
This is going to be SO MUCH FUN. Plus at the end I'll put a twist on it and pair him up with the spunky-but-virtuous Julia Granby. Deighton/Julia OTP!!!
| 11:50 PM |
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