An experiment on hearts and minds: how to enjoy an experiment in love

‘A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.’(Samuel Johnson) Every time I think about teaching literature to students the quotation mentioned above comes to my mind and I try to do everything possible to make students inclined to read books we choose for Home Reading classes as literature can be a significant and democratic channel of human interactivity. In this article I would like to share my experience on how students and I found our way through Hilary Mantel’s book An Experiment in Love.

The first thing to do to motivate students and create proper background for discussing the novel is to have them do some research work on the time of the book (and here the Commentary hits the mark). To make this investigation more fruitful I ask some students to speak of the same time period in this country and contrast the situation to that of Britain.

Sir Francis Bacon once said that ‘some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. ’ And Hilary Mantel’s An Experiment in Love is undoubtedly to be thoroughly digested - the most difficult task for students. Unfortunately many of them try to swallow it as a bitter pill that is to be taken in the course of treatment (studies) and it takes a great effort to make them bite it and taste the flavour.

First of all, students should be warned from the very start that this book is not to be read on a bus or to make oneself asleep (as it is very haunting and unsettling). This book is to be read with a pencil and a pack of sticky notes in order not to overlook Mantel’s ‘fine brushstrokes’ (capturing so much with what seems to be so little effort)’. Gradually it becomes a great pleasure for students to share their findings in class, interpret and translate them into Russian trying to create the same images by means of their native tongue or English (they can make up their own - often brilliant - lyrical digressions on memory, etc).

An Experiment in Love is ‘a novel of different pasts’ and it takes a very patient and persevering reader to find one’s way through the main character’s story. And here I want to paraphrase Carmel’s words and stress that if you hurry you will lose the thread; or the reading will be like knitting done in a bad temper. The tension goes wrong; you come back later, analyse your reading and find that it hasn’t grown as you imagined. Mantel’s elegantly surprising images should be carefully traced through the book and here ‘Reader’s Diary’ with a ‘Character Chart’ can be of great help. The ‘Character Chart’ is a table where students write out striking descriptions of the main characters and their actions and express their own evaluation of them.

Since the book dwells upon contradictory freedoms of university and maturity, it provides a rich background for discussing students’ problems, responsibilities, ways of rebelling, etc as little girls, larger girls, young women and future mothers. Suchlike discussions can be effectively held in the form of the so-called ‘time space bridge’ -some students speculate on the issue on behalf of Carmel and her peers and others - speak for themselves contrasting the situation and attitudes to those described in the novel. And here I find put-her-skin-on-your-back-approach very effective, though sometimes it is quite a job for students to understand the time and interpret the problem (they see no problem) but owing to a thorough Commentary and its authors it can’t become an insuperable difficulty but serves as a great cultural guide to England with its bafflingly complex and minutely calibrated systems of class and status, of region and religion.

An Experiment in Love makes students analyse not only the characters’ childhood misery, youthful naivety and female friendship but their own relations with parents (mothers), friends, themselves and even unborn children, that in turn allows them to avoid Carmel’s mistakes who pondering over her formative years remarks ‘that is where we went wrong’.

If your parents don’t teach you how to live, you learn it from books; and clever people watch you, to learn from your mistakes.

At this stage of book discussion students can make public speeches on whether to use or not to use the Pill (on behalf of men and women), write articles on woman’s place and role in society (referring either to the time of the book or today), letters to their mothers evaluating their impact on them as children (expressing both gratitude and reproach), etc.

It’s necessary to mention that the book is a challenge to readers who cannot stand (for some reason) detailed descriptions of dripping tights hanging over a radiator or the residence soup being ‘an uncleaned aquarium, where vegetable matter swam’. But the similes and metaphors sparkle so brightly that it is impossible not to admire them as it is impossible not to admire somebody’s skillful embroidery. On the whole the language of the book is rather difficult for students as they are not used to going behind the words. Therefore I prepare a special “Quotation List” for every portion of the novel which contains interesting sentences from the book to translate and comment upon. Students are always free and welcome to add their quotes on the list.

To crown it all, I would like to say that no matter how difficult it may be to carry out this experiment, the book is a great choice to be read in a small group of girls at the Department of Foreign Languages (due to this very fact our male colleagues avoid it), as it helps readers to give themselves an account of their own lives.