AP English

Samples from the Flatland Workshop

Thesis Sentences:  The more specific and focused you can be on your topic, the better!  Don't take on a giant topic and then have to write in broad sweeping strokes. Concentrate on one aspect of the novel/topic assigned.

TERRIBLE: Flatland is a novel which is a satire of Victorian England.

HO-HUM: Abbott’s satire of Victorian England in the novel is effective because of irony.

BEST: Square’s ironic view of women in Flatland works to satirize Victorian attitudes even while perpetuating them.

Middle Paragraphs*:

Suffers from lack of text:

            Square really believes that women are inferior.  He says that they are prone to insane fits of violence and are not very smart.  This is a satire of Victorian England because they believed the same thing (well, not the violence part).  So it’s ironic that these comments are spoken by the hero of the story even though they are insults against Victorians.  What I mean is, readers think the idea of dumb women is an insult and therefore see that it’s what the Victorians believed, too. Therefore, it’s a satire of Victorians. Even so, would Victorians notice it? Does satire work if the readers don’t see it?  Did the Victorians accept the idea of dumb women because Square is the logical hero?

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Too much text:

            Square thinks that women are inferior which is an insult to Victorians.

For as they have no pretensions to an angle, being inferior in this respect to the very lowest of the Isosceles, they are consequently wholly devoid of brain-power, and have neither reflection, judgment nor forethought, and hardly any memory (50).

Later, he says that “’Once a Woman, always a Woman’ is a Decree of Nature; and the very Laws of Evolution seem suspended in her disfavour” (53).  So basically this is a satire against Victorians who were into evolution and hated women.

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Ahh, just right!

            Certainly, Square’s belief that the “Laws of Evolution” themselves are stacked against women (53) acts to echo those of the most conservative Victorians even as it builds the ironic ineffectiveness of his character.  The portrayal of women is so obscene (from “swaying their backsides” to the violent St. Vitus’s Dance (49)) that no reader, Victorian or contemporary, can take it seriously. Yet each of these descriptions is only an exaggeration of the Victorian manner, from padded skirts to admonitions to silence; Abbott points his finger clearly at this prejudice.  However, he does it through the heroic voice of Square, a character readers are also urged to be sympathetic to.  As Square becomes enlightened on many dimensions, we also learn what The Sphere tells him:  “How little your words have done” (150).  We readers may permit ourselves wonder at dimensions, but Abbott holds little hope that we will actually change our beliefs. They are, after all, “Natural” (53); and so we see the satire, but may be doomed to continue our ignorant behavior.

*Page numbers cited refer to the Signet Classic edition.