SENSE AND SENSIBILITY
“Your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.” “And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is willfully to misunderstand them.” Pride and Prejudice
1) SENSE and SENSIBILITY: Jane Austen: Character and Human Nature
"Jane Austen doesn't mock them; she doesn't criticize them; she just reveals them." (Biography: Jane Austen)
Literary Society Literature:
Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Sanditon, Jane Eyre
(Even though Frankenstein is a gothic novel from the Romantic period, we chose to read it during the fall).
Pickwick Portfolio Focus:
Regency England
(see more about this below)
THE WELL-EDUCATED MIND BOOKMARKS
We based our year plan on the idea in Susan Wise Bauer's book,The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had--that a person can educate themselves according to the trivium:
Grammar—learn the facts
Logic—analyze them
Rhetoric—express your opinions about them
I made three bookmarks, one for each stage of reading, according to Bauer's prescription for a classical education.
Here are the front and back of one girl's Grammar stage bookmark. The Logic and Rhetoric stage bookmarks provide provocative questions which forced each reader to discover her own thoughts about each book. This proved to be much more than just a book discussion, but a time to delve deeply into the heart of each book and person.
This was a simple year, with few field trips, but many book discussions which always ended with a tea. I have few photos our actual book discussions.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
WRITERS WORKSHOPS AT HOME
Writer's workshops were mini lessons where we learned and practiced writing skills.
Some things we learned or reviewed: starting sentences with weak or strong clauses, grammar, punctuation: hyphens, dashes, colons, semi-colons, commas, capitalization, ellipsis, quotation marks, parentheses, apostrophes, run-on sentences.
Write out paragraph with mistakes
Sometimes I wrote a quote for the day on a whiteboard, with deliberately misplaced or omitted punctuation, and misspelled words. The girls took turns correcting one error at a time until the paragraph was corrected.
I gave the girls page from the newspaper and asked them to highlight a certain part of speech. These were some easy ways to review grammar.
PICKWICK PORTFOLIO
One of my dreams for the year was to form our own Pickwick Society and have the girls write and edit editions of their own Pickwick Portfolio. The name is taken from the society that Louisa May Alcott wrote about in her novel, Little Women, which was patterned after Dicken's Pickwick Papers characters. We showed the Little Women movie clip of the Pickwick Society at our opening day, and explained what their own Pickwick Portfolio could be like.
This is our paper inviting the young ladies to write articles for the Pickwick Portfolio.
At one point there were supposed to be four families of girls in this school year with us, and the four mothers adopted the names of the four gentlemen in the Pickwick Papers, which were also adopted by the four March daughters: Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Tupman, Mr. Snodgrass, Mr. Winkle. In the end, Mr. Winkle left our group, but the rest of us kept our names. I was Mr. Pickwick, though I still haven't read the book!
Each girl was given the opportunity to edit and publish the Pickwick Portfolio. Some of the skills learned or practiced were: typing, editing, computer literacy, graphic design, and analyzing. (The editor was not required to revise another student's writing unless there were glaring punctuation or grammar errors).
The editor collected and compiled the submitted articles and advertisements, and added quotes and anecdotes to fill in the spaces. Then she printed the portfolio and handed out individual copies at our society meetings.
Each member eagerly awaited reading the Pickwick Portfolio, and seeing her name in print! Here are a few examples from the Regency edition, volume II. 
The GETTY VILLA and NEOCLASSICISM
The Getty Villa was the perfect field trip during our study of Jane Austen. Regency England was enamored by classical Greece and Rome. After the discoveries in Pompeii the English adopted classical hairstyles, clothing, and architecture. This is the first page of one of our lessons on neoclassicism before our trip to the Getty Villa.
First we got a group photo, then the girls split up with their Journals of Discovery to explore the Villa on their own.
One classical-neoclassical style we noted was the melon hairstyle...
...which Emma Thompson as Elinor Dashwood showcases throughout the 1995 Sense and Sensibility film.
Giselle and Katy in the shadow puppet theater.
The girls enjoyed making drawings of the statues and taking notes in their Journals of Discovery. I loved hearing about Autumn and Giselle's discoveries in the museum and gardens that day. It's great to take teenagers on field trips so that we can all explore together and apart.
FRANKENSTEIN
This was the only photo I took from our book discussion and tea. Larissa and Katy added some Halloween makeup, though all of us agreed the novel was not frightening at all.
THE HUNTINGTON
My girls and I spent random days exploring, drawing, and writing at the Huntington.
We split up to explore, but I occasionally ran across the girls and took pictures. Giselle is drawing her favorite, Artemis.
It was peaceful days like this that made me fall in love with this school year.
Another candid shot as Giselle spent a quiet time reading in a garden.
Autumn drawing...
...a bust of the Bard in the Shakespeare garden.
I went off to my favorite spot--the mausoleum.
Ahh! Another lovely day at the Huntington!
SANDITON
Reading Austen's unfinished Sanditon was a new experience for all of us.
During the discussion the girls shared what they hoped would be the real ending of the story.
Ending with a tea was always a fun part of the meetings. Some of the girls enjoyed making Regency-style foods for our teas.
We also had fun experimenting with Regency-style coiffures...
CLOSING DAY
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY COMPONENT
JANE EYRE BOOK DISCUSSION
This is a page from my journal of discovery. On the bottom left of the page is a needle case I made for everyone. Jane made a needle case for her niece, so...
Suzanne always set a beautiful tea table.
The girls never talked about dress colors, but they all matched splendidly!
Giselle and Haley performed some piano pieces for us, like Lizzy does in Pride and Prejudice.
This was a wonderful component, and now the girls were ready to move into Victorian England and big, puffy dresses!
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