Take Part In This Project!
Create a New Character-As-Reader Persona
Description
This activity invites you to create a Character-as-Reader Persona to add to our collection, basing your character outline on a character drawn from The Woman in White and historical research about the nineteenth century.
See below for participation objectives and a description of the components to include in your written work.
Participation Objectives
The main goal of this activity is for participants to inspire others to look at nineteenth-century readers in new ways. As the project description outlines, this means that you’ll be assuming an educator role by taking up this challenge. However, at its best, the process of writing is about learning just as much as it is about communicating, and so we hope you will gain new insights about print culture history and about Collins’s novel through your research.
As you participate in this research activity, you will practice the following:
- Apply close-reading methodologies to identify demographic details about the characters in Collins’s novel.
- Describe how a Victorian reader’s class, gender, geographic location, economic status, and social role may have influenced how they encountered The Woman in White during its initial serial release.
- Synthesize information obtained from multiple secondary sources to produce a creative and informative text that accounts for multiple aspects of a Victorian reader’s identity. To accomplish this, you’ll:
- Devise a research strategy for learning more about life in the nineteenth century and about specific nineteenth-century reading practices
- Distinguish between general statements about Victorian reading practices writ large and descriptions that apply to a specific historical time range (late 1850s to early 1860s)
- Observe MLA citation conventions in a way that enables readers to identify the basis for your historical and narrative claims.
Final Components to Include
(I) Character-as-Reader Analysis
Part 1: First, include a basic list of characteristics relevant to your reader’s life.
| Category | For Example . . . |
| First appearance in the text | Installment 5 (24 December 1859) |
| Socioeconomic Class | working class, middle class, upper-middle class, upper class, etc. |
| Location | London, Blackwater Park, etc. . . . |
| Gender | |
| Age Range | |
| Profession or Social Role | servant, barrister, farmer . . . |
| Other Relevant Details | Race/Ethnicity, disabilities, education level . . . |
Part 2: Literary Analysis Statement – How Does Collins Represent This Character?
Target length for written description: 100-300 words
Second, provide a brief overview of how this character emerges in the novel. Some questions you might consider:
- Do we encounter this character’s written statements, or do we only encounter this person through the eyes of other characters?
- What tone do Collins’s characters use to describe this person? (Is it admiring? Dismissive?)
- Do any aspects of this