Résumé:
Between and Beyond the Lines is a research that approaches Jane Austen’s novels Pride and
Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility from a fresh gender dimension. The duality of men vs.
women is invested at the heart of the novels sessions taught to groups two and four, first year
students at the University of Mascara as part of a didactic experiment.
While it is detected that literature remains by far the subject with least attractions to learners, it is
disregarded as boring, condensed, ancient and uninteresting overall. This research puts forward a
new strategy to attract learners’ attention, engage them more in the classroom and fuel their
passion for literature. The fresh perspective of gender invites learners’ thinking and involvement
inside the classroom as well as it activates their curiosity into the text being taught.
On the way to find answers, this work has been divided into four chapters. The first one which is
introductory serves as a review of the literature carried through a lens of gender. Chapter two
goes beyond the lines of Jane Austen’s novels. It sets on the journey to survey learners’ general
views with regard to literature-related issues with the use of the pre-questionnaire. A series of
five sessions follows where PP and SS are brought into groups two and four with gender as the
key element of teaching both novels. Chapter three comes to investigate the efficiency of the
teaching experiment with an opening crossroad session followed with the post-questionnaire.
The final chapter is an attempt to offer solutions for the issues and problems detected during the
study or pointed by the students
