WRITE NOW • WODEHOUSE

Write Now: advancing students' engagement with literary texts Question 1 • Wodehouse based several short stories at the fictional Castle in the real county of in the West Midlands of England. The county borders the “Celtic” country of Wales (see map on left), with the boundary being known as the Marches. To appreciate the assigned tale, you need to understand who’s who in the world of Blandings. Clarence Threepwood is the paterfamilias or male head-of-household, and his family has possessed the Earldom of and its seat, , for multiple generations. In fact, Clarence is the Ninth Earl of Emsworth. In the English system of nobility, also called the peerage, the pecking order (after king and prince) is duke, then marquess, then earl. Other ranks follow below earl, but earl is the third- highest rank. What is the Earl of Emsworth’s relationship to each of the following individuals: (a) Frederick or Freddie; (b) Beach; (c) Angus McAllister; and (d) Robert Barker? Which of the four men sports a red beard, and what is his country of origin (note: it is not England)? • Question 2 • Appearing originally in 1924, the version of “Custody” that we are reading is one Wodehouse altered slightly for republication in 1935. The story offers insights into early twentieth-century leisure interests. What caused the Earl to purchase a telescope, an instrument particularly associated with Galileo, Newton, and other figures of the Scientific Revolution, also known as the Enlightenment or Age of Reason or Rationality? One notes that the Earl does not always use the rational mind. At one juncture in the story, the narrator remarks on his having “expelled” reason “violently” when dealing with a particular issue. • Question 3 • While this tale belongs to the genre of light literature, it nevertheless demonstrates awareness of advanced literary and intellectual matters. The narrator’s remark that Freddie resembles “a Theocritan shepherd” is a reference to pastoral (or countryside) poems called Idylls by Theocritus, a Greek writer from the third century before Christ. To which well-known Shakespearean character does the unidentified narrator compare Freddie? The contrast between the modern city and the traditional countryside that we identified when reading “The Telegraph Girl” and You Never Can Tell is also profoundly present in “The Custody of the Pumpkin.” While London is presented as “the Metropolis,” Blandings Castle is associated with “simple meadow flowers.” Both the quoted phrases come from page 14, which also contains the phrase, “the cloistral seclusion of Blandings.” Too often, when students in literature courses read unfamiliar words, they fail to look them up. Using and citing a reliable source (such as the Oxford English Dictionary), offer a definition of cloistral, as well as the following four words from elsewhere in the story: messuages (page 11); escucheon (page 18); omnibuses (page 21); and nonce (page 25). Do not give the first definition you find for a given word. Instead, ensure that the definitions you provide make sense in the context of Wodehouse’s short story. • Question 4 • Both “The Custody of the Pumpkin” and James Joyce’s “The Dead” make reference to an incident in fifteenth-century English history. On page 15 of the current story, that event is identified as the “smother[ing of] the young princes in the Tower.” Using and citing a reliable source, explain in one or two sentences the basic details of that happening (which remains something of a mystery). On page 17, the narrator invokes another consequential occurrence, from 24 June 1314. Why would it be that Angus McAllister “has not forgotten Bannockburn”? • Question 5 • From page 15, we encounter a young woman, Aggie Donaldson. For what reason did her parents give her the name Aggie, and in what way is she musical? What family connection exists between Aggie Donaldson and Angus McAllister? • Question 6 • When studying W. Somerset Maugham’s “P&O,” we identified a discourse on social class: the first-class passengers feel they must act inclusively towards the second- class passengers because the rise of democracy reduces tolerance for aristocratic privilege. Explain how this (or a fairly similar) anxiety manifests itself in the paragraph on page 17 of “Custody” that begins, “Lord Emsworth did not grind his teeth....” One remarks that the Earl does not lack pride in his patrician family. He desires a first-place award for the Blandings Castle pumpkin at the county show because the Emsworths haven not yet attained that goal. • Question 7 • What period of notice—number of days or weeks—does Lord Emsworth give McAllister? When reading Anthony Trollope’s “The Telegraph Girl,” we remarked on how it reflects changes in communications technology. By what means do Lord Emsworth and McAllister correspond with one another between the countryside and city? Later—on page 25—what older form of communication features? On page 23, the narrator identifies “Blandings Hope” as the name by which the pumpkin is generally known. Freddie is not so reverential, however. What name does he give the monster vegetable? The name, incidentally, is the same as that of a character, known by the nickname Hotspur, in one of Shakespeare’s history plays: Henry IV, Part 1. In that drama, Hotspur demonstrates great promise, but is killed when still young—a fate that Lord Emsworth hopes will not befall his pumpkin. • Question 8 • Continuing our discussion of urban-rural difference, one could describe Kensington Gardens (a park of over 100 acres in central London) as the countryside in the city. What “[black] type of evildoer” does the park-keeper take Lord Emsworth to be? What type of flower is the subject of the earl’s interest? In Europe in the 1630s, that plant was the subject of mass-mania, an occurrence explored in an influential 1841 book (by Scotsman Charles McKay) on the behavior of crowds. In the Kensington Gardens portion of “The Custody of the Pumpkin,” what does the narrator have to say about a crowd or crowds? • Question 9 • Aggie’s father, Donaldson—who resembles “a Roman emperor” (page 29)—has trained himself to convey authority. By what means (detailed somewhere between pages 29 and 32) did he attain that ability? How much does this Scottish-American entrepreneur reckon himself to be worth? Even though Lord Emsworth is an earl, his monetary recourses are far from limitless. Identify two phrases or incidents prior to page 29 that show the earl (a member of the Senior Conservative Club) to have a conservative approach to spending and/or a consciousness of his financial obligations. • Question 10 • Which United States politician does Donaldson invoke by name? Which policy or initiative associated with that individual does he mention? To which northeastern United States community would Freddie have to relocate to learn Donaldson’s business, and what is that business? If economic matters are looking up for Freddie, the same is true for McAlister. How is that so? •••