Mrs Lintott and The History Boys

Good afternoon you lot! Lots of work here today. The aim of the lesson is to create a series of notes on Padlet about the scene we looked at yesterday and develop our understanding of Mrs Lintott as a character.

TASK 1:

You will each be given a short extract from the scene we studied yesterday. Copy up the line(s) onto the following padlet page and explain why it is important linguistically and in terms of meaning. Padlet Page for Drummer Hodge Scene

Here is the framework just in case you would like to refer to it:

TASK 2:

Mrs Lintott is the only female character in The History Boys. Analyse the quotations below and comment on what they tell us about her views on being a woman and education. What impression do you get of her as a character? How does the language she uses help the audience to understand her as a character? Why do you think she is the only woman in the play? Post your work on your blog or your padlet page!

Quotation 1

Mrs Lintott: They know their stuff. Plainly stated and properly organised facts need no presentation, surely.

Headmaster: Oh, Dorothy. I think they do. 'The facts: serving suggestion.'

Mrs Lintott: A sprig of parsley you mean? Or an umbrella in the cocktail? Are dons so naive?

Quotation 2

Durham was very good for history, it's where I had my first pizza. Other things, too, of course, but it's the pizza that stands out.

Quotation 3

Mrs Lintott: The new man seems clever.

Hector: Depressingly so.

Mrs Lintott: Men are, at history, of course.

Hector: Why history particularly?

Mrs Lintott: Story-telling so much of it, which is what men do naturally.

My ex, for instance. He told stories.

Hector: Was he an historian?

Mrs Lintott: Lintott? No. A chartered accountant. Legged it to Dumfries.

Quotation 4

On Dakin: Actually I wouldn't have said he was sad. I would have said he was cunt-struck.

Quotation 5

Rudge: You've force fed us the facts; now we're in the process of running around acquiring flavour.

Quotation 6

One thing you will learn if you plan to stay in this benighted profession is that the chief enemy of culture in any school is the Headmaster.

Quotation 7

A nickname is an achievement...both in the sense of something won and also in its armorial sense of a badge, a blazon. Unsurprisingly, I am Tot or Totty. Some irony there one feels.

Quotation 8

I have not hitherto been allotted an inner voice, my role as a patient and not unamused sufferance of the predilections and preoccupations of men. They kick their particular stone along the street and I watch.

I am, it is true, confided in by all parties, my gender some sort of safeguard against the onward transmission...though that I should be assumed to be so discreet is in itself condescending. I'm what men would call a safe pair of hands.

Our headmaster is a twat. An impermissible word nowadays but the only one suited to my purpose. A twat. And to go further down the same proscribed path, a condescending cunt.