View the NFB film Prairie Women by Barbara Evans. What does this film add to your understanding of Ann’s situation? Quote lines from the film that, to you, most accurately summarize Ann’s experience. In your post, use one film clip that you feel most vividly captures the life of a farm wife on the prairies.
oehttps://www.nfb.ca/film/prairie_women
News Article
Write a news article based on the outcome of the story. Remember that news articles…
Post your news articles to your blog and share your articles with your group. Comment on others’ posts.
Poem
Choose ten words, phrases, or images from a favourite section of the story. Create your own free verse poem (no rhymes). (Your poem need not be specifically about the story.) Share your poem.
Debate
Formally debate the following resolution: BIRT no one is to blame for what happens at the end of the story.
Fatal Inquiry Report
Imagine you are an Alberta Judge (and the events in the story occur in Alberta) write a Fatal Inquiry Report into John’s death.
After an inquiry is complete, the presiding judge provides the Minister with a written report that:
- identifies the deceased
- outlines the date, time, place and circumstances of death
- may recommend how to prevent similar incidents, but
- cannot make any findings of legal responsibility
Read “The Painted Door” by Sinclair Ross.
Write an essay in which you develop your thesis from one of these topics:
Commentary
“The Painted Door” is partly an anatomy of a sin – and of a repentance that comes, tragically, scant hours too late. As the recorder of that sin, Ross is severe, portraying Ann as a woman just good enough to be fully culpable, in a way that the handsome but morally vacant Steven is not and cannot be. Indeed, the reader may ask whether the two crucial elements in Ann’s tragedy – her contrition and regained love for John, and John’s grief-stricken retreat back into the storm – are reasonable to be predicted given what we know of the characters, or are imposed on the story as part of Ross’s indictment of Ann as a woman unworthy of John.
But the story can also be seen as a portrayal of a seduction – or perhaps a series of rapes culminating in a barely noticed seduction. For Ann’s moral will is assaulted by the storm, and her nerves and mental balance are battered by isolation, long before Steven arrives to confront her with nothing more aggressive than clean-shaven jowls and an easy smile. In fact, during the hours of mounting sexual tension beside the stove, Ann seems to be seduced not so much by Steven as by her own overstrained, terrified, feverish imagination; the “act” is so understated, and Steven so passive throughout, that it is possible to miss that point that Ann and Steven have not just bundled together for warmth. Her storm-induced hallucinations, then, are powerful, even decisive agents in her seduction; but in the end it is Ann, not the elements, whom Ross taxes with kindness.
Other topics for discussion:
realism, surrealism vs classicism, romanticism
Apollonian and Dionysian Dichotomy
Wild Geese vs After the Harvest
Golden Age, Golden Mean, Golden Rule
Sinclair Ross’s entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
… To appreciate Ross’s work …, he presented a theme that remained a preoccupation: intellectual isolation.