Why British Literature? Gender, Education, and Sense & Sensibility
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Why should you read British literature today? British literature opens up a world of creativity and inspiration. While developing skills used in today's society, the variety and traditions represented in British literature give background information for teaching and enhance cultural literacy.

Literature helps explore and analyze some of life's greatest questions and assist young people in gaining the skills required for a deeper thought process to life. Many authors create works that will be transferred into our daily lives. In this podcast, I will be discussing why gender stereotypes and education in British literature is still relevant today.

Gender identity is embedded in poetry and other literature works from the 19th century and still included today. From the many literature works we have reviewed throughout the semester, the novel Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen stuck with me because of its progressive views on women's rights and the separation between men and women. Women in the 19th century were treated as objects instead of human beings.

They could not vote, own property, or attend college. These ladies believed getting married, having children, and becoming a stay-at-home mother was the ultimate dream. Society gave women no rights to become who they wanted to be. On the other hand, men pushed themselves to become the sole provider when it came to earning money for their family. Having this responsibility turned most men against women.

They focused more on searching for a wealthy husband than their education or their own ideas for themselves. Women in this century were thought of as lesser than and were treated as such. The main characters, Marianne and Eleanor, represented many gender assumptions that are still relevant today.

From what I gather, within the two main characters displayed in Sense and Sensibility, the significance between men and women is identity. She also included extreme pressure when it came to marriage. Marianne faced backlash when it came to her outgoing and emotional nature, while Eleanor decided to step back and be refined and reserved to please society's views.

While there have been progressions regarding women's rights, we still need to remember the pain they went through. Literature is a subject enjoyed by lots of students and deserves more credit for the amount of valuable knowledge it supplies. The lessons and messages passed on in an English literature class include analytical skills and creative thinking.

British literature can also expand a student's knowledge of different writing styles. Reading these types of literature is extremely beneficial for students. The skills and ideas they read about in poems, short stories, novels, etc. can enhance their ability to comprehend information for their future careers.

As a music education major, enrolling in a British literature class has given me exceeding amounts of knowledge that I will use in my future classroom. There are many things people discover in British literature that they cannot find elsewhere. The range of vocabulary is increasingly different from other forms of literature.

No other class provides such a broad and powerful range of abilities that carry into the future through all careers, making English literature a rare and crucial subject. I have invited Kendall Ash, a freshman at Brunel, to give us some insight into her view on why British literature should still be read today. She is majoring in theater, so I believe her opinions will be of high value.

Thank you for inviting me, Sarah. I'm really excited to be a part of your podcast. So first question, how many literature works have you read that are written by British authors? Poems, short stories, novels? Um, so I don't read that much, but there are two British authors that really like resonate with me that come to the top of my mind. Um,

And the first one would be Mary Shelley, who is the author of Frankenstein. I read Frankenstein in my AP Lang class, and I thought it was really... The book itself is good, but I thought it was more interesting to learn about the author and how...

As a woman, she wrote a book when that wasn't really being done at that time. Women couldn't write books. And when people found out that, she actually published it without her name on it. And so no one knew it was written by a woman. And then later when they found that out, they didn't want to believe it. They were like, oh, this can't be written by a woman because it's so good. And a lot of people in that time, they actually thought that her husband wrote Frankenstein, which was not the case at all.

But I think it's just a cool part of history for, you know, a woman to have written such a powerful book and then not be given the credit for it while she was alive because Frankenstein didn't become popular until after she passed away. And then another really good British author that I know is Agatha Christie. She writes like a lot of murder mysteries, which I think is really cool.

And me being a theater major, that's, it's really, Agatha Christie is really cool to me because she wrote a lot of plays. And one of them we actually did last semester, which was Murder on the Orient Express. And it was really good. And, you know, we can't put on shows like that without them having been written first. So it's really, a lot of modern plays come from

you know, older British literature. So I think it's really important to keep those stories alive. Second question, do you believe that British literature relates to today's world and in what ways? Oh, I think that literature plays a huge role in social change and

addressing issues that are still discussed to this day, especially progressive things like women's rights, just like Mary Shelley. And it also allows people to learn about and reflect on the hardships that women went through so long ago, and then they can analyze just the changes that have been made over time. And it can also give us the opportunity to kind of

Just learn more about, you know, the vocabulary that was used because it's very different from how we speak today and like what we, like older British literature and things like that. Thank you for coming to my podcast. Thank you for having me. I want to read you an article from Gustavus Adolphus College on why our students study literature.

Mariah Froond says, Reading and writing the basic principles involved in the study of English serve as the gateway to a deeper level of thought. After mastering these elementary skills, comprehension, analysis, and interpretation are learned and used to better educate oneself. Studying literature and observing personal reactions to the literature

can make one more aware of his or her own values. English skills are helpful in every area of life.

Reading, writing, comprehension, analysis, and interpretation increase efficiency in multiple ways, including communication, documentation in other areas of study, and reflection of personal values. I believe there is no area of study that English and communication skills do not influence. There are many people today who disregard the facts stating literature.

especially British literature, is not relevant today. The decline in British literature is astounding because schools and universities do not see the significance. I hope that anyone who listens to this podcast learned a thing or two about the importance of British literature.

I can proudly say taking a British literature course and reading many British works has expanded my range in knowledge when it comes to vocabulary, social issues, and society today.