Upton St Leonard’s WI

FROM an early start with horror stories a favourite German author Dr Heinrich Hoffmann who wrote Struwwelpeter, our speaker Gill Boyd from Oddington, near Stow on the Wold, entertained and enlightened us on the written word.

Teaching literature to young children authors and teachers try to involve and connect with similarities in their everyday life.

Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ tells the tale of two young lovers whose families, the Capulets and Montagues fight each other in the market place; scenes which still happen four hundred years later, connecting children through this well loved tale.

Old English language dates back centuries, founded in old Norse, old English, and Welsh. J.R.R.Tolkien, a lover of old English put all of his mythical knowledge of monsters, heroes, dragons and Norsemen into his classic, ‘Lord of the Rings’, brought to life in film and TV.

Jane Austen wrote of social climbing and etiquette of the day, shown vividly in the now famous opening lines of ‘Pride and Prejudice’, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Young ladies were expected to get married and the Bennetts of this story had five daughters, so Mrs Bennett cast her eye on all single young gentlemen with a large fortune". In ‘Emma’, "Mrs Elton tried to impress by using a ‘barouche’, landau, or chaise, larger than local people using a pony and trap, all for pomp and show".

Weather is used as a ploy when Jane had to ride to ‘Netherfield’ getting soaking wet to visit Mr Bingley.

In Tess of the D’urbevilles, Thomas Hardy is very descriptive, with weather, “when its’ bad, its’ really bad”, “yelling wind, sticking in like glass splinters, till they were wet through”.

The colour red, a symbol of seduction, red ruby lips, red ribbon in Tess’s hair, Alec D’Urbeville holds a red strawberry to her ruby lips, later to rape her, a fallen woman, the red threshing machine is very noisy in the heat of day and so it goes on.

The dye is cast, the plot and story line are written and we can sit back and relax from the vast array of poems and stories we have access to in our homes and public libraries.

A very warm round of applause followed by a vote of thanks by Marlene for an entertaining evening.

A lovely display of ceramic vases was on the table and Pamela spoke on the Group Rally, where the committee worked really hard but a poor response from some WIs.

Lesley gave a good account of her Bursary at Denman.

We meet again on Monday, July 6, 7.30pm in Upton St. Leonard’s village hall for a talk on Tai Chi, by Robert AGU Hutton.

All ladies very welcome.

Colour green.