I am project director of The Elizabeth Robins Web, a site which, with modest startup funding from a JSU Faculty Research Grant, makes available hyptertext versions of Robins's previously published works. Over the summer of 1999, I added Robins's collection of suffrage speeches and essays collected as Way Stations (1913) to my on-line offerings.  Thus, in addition to Robins' influential play Votes for Women, the clas was encouraged to read either this pamphlet, "Woman's Secret," available on line at http://www.jsu.edu/depart/english/robins/waysta/way01wos.htm, and intednded as preface for the novel version of the play, or another essay by Robins, preferably one she addressed to other women writers at their suffrage association meetings in 1909 and 1910.  Each of these essays provide the historical context for the themes and tone of the social issues drama that so vitalized Robins' reputation. 

In the same manner,  I wanted to convey the context for Tillie Olsen's minor masterpiece, Tell Me a Riddle,  which students read from the anthology. Even though I also made available the optional viewing of the film adaptation ot the text, students who work with me know that the viwing never takes the place of their engagement with the text. Indeed, it was useful for this class to hear from those who could make careful critiques of the filmmaker's choices as they argued for the strengths in the text. 

In order to better integrate Olsen's imaginative text with themes in the course, I elected to convey some of the original impact that Tillie Olsen had on my generation of scholars by relating the importance, when it first was published, of her book Silences, and telling of her appearance at one or two events in the Five-College Area (in and near Amherst, Massachusetts).  I also had a taped interview which was broadcast as a Humanities Foundation event from North Carolina's National Public Radio.  I carefully selected a segment that I thought best characterized the life forces which Olsen delineates as both hindrances to the time she felt she could devote to her writing and those which characterize the vital energy of a woman's caring-- for children, for political organizations, for working to help support a family.  Many of the students are already familiar with Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing," and Olsen, I explained, was asked to give a brief preface to explain the story's genesis.  I was particularly interested in conveying what Olsen expresses as the necessity for a "compressed" style, as I felt the flow (and leaps) in  Tell Me A Riddle made it challenging to appreciate without such a disclaimer. 

I have drafted the procedure for conducting the exercise in a longer version of this document. What is important to stress in this on-line class page is that the initial impulse to personalize and project back an autobiographical statement that students had heard, under somewhat spontaneous circumstances, turned into a major turning point for the class.  The exercise was one of many, variously formatted, non-graded response exercises. (Students also wrote paragraphed essays, discussed in small groups and reported to the class, took factual quizzes, and gave me lists of their previous encounters with titles in the anthology).  Only one or two students read their pieces on the spot, but I collected all work. 

The responses meant more because of the way I elected to return them.  I held them until the last class (announcing I was keeping a xeroxed copy), then passed them back.  Just after coaching them on best ways to deal with some provocative and synthesizing issues that they were to write up for the final exam, then, I gave the class the opportunity for a "read-around."  Students left the class with the impressions left by hearing aloud each spontaneous effort to turn Olsen's outburst into a personalized  poetic statement.  The re-creations were elevated into a format more appropriately classified as a testimonial, a confirmation that indeed, they felt and comprehended Olsen's burdens and joys of needing to write under less than perfect circumstances.  (In Olsen's original, of course, she names Henry James as representative of the leisured male writer who has world enough and time.) 
 

In all of us
                 unless we were so damaged already

That human ecstasy of achievement 
Electric excitement of discovery

This was as I've written 
literally late at night

It's called I sand here writing

It took me two years

Motherhood -- otherhood -- unpaid jobs

More than a fourth of a century ago. 

Finished -- almost.
        I have one more shirt, 
                wrinkled, 
                      misshapen, 
                             crooked, 
                                      out of sorts. 

This one I have fun with.  It's the joy of my life -- 
        My children, my successes, my happiness --
                my wife. 

Who could think that ironing 
        could bring such 
                pleasure?

I'm done. 

          excitement of discovery!

Triumph!
          Regardless of color, Walk of life

          No matter who you are!

Satisfaction!  Give your all to all facets

          of your life--bring peace!

Remember the delight I saw in 
a child blowing dandelions in the breeze 
Remember me when I still felt compassion
for poverty and oppression

Please remember me as vibrant and fully awake
Remember me in love with you, in love with life, 
in love with me 
Remember me laughing in the sunshine 
and holding hands with the world.