The song played a central role in these two students’ identification with the character.
The song literally ‘gave voice to’ the character Curly’s Wife. The character’s singing
presented them with an insight into her emotional life via her voice. In the process
the character was transformed from a hardened vamp into a victim of a sexist society.
Through her voice, the music, and the words of the song the character Curly’s Wife in
the ‘Novel as CD-ROM’ was drawn into the inclusive theme of loneliness. The
‘knowledge’ that she sang (rather than the song itself) appeared to be key in the
reshaping of the character for the student Carol. Perhaps for this student singing is a
metaphor for emotion. As was the case for Kate, the multimodal re-shaping of the
character provided these students with a different potential for engagement with the
character Curly’s Wife.
MultimodaIity, New Media, and Learning
The resources of page and screen offered students and teacher different possibilities
for engaging with specific characters and the construction of character as an entity,
and brought forth quite different practices of interaction.
Textual Evidence
The Dossier part of the CD-ROM enabled the students to engage with the entity
character independent of the novel itself. In doing so, the CD-ROM offered a model
for studying the text for characterisation: the segments of the novel selected as
‘textual evidence’ explored characterisation as a symbolic device through visual
objects and links. Further, the potential to explore the entity character dislocation
from the narrative appeared to provide a potential for some students to identify with
marginal or negatively portrayed characters. In addition, placing the characters within
a shared format of display appeared to have an equalising effect on characters.
Social-historical Context
The structure of the CD-ROM provides a modal commentary on the work of studying
character within a set text: the expectation that character be understood in its social-
139
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