Nights at the Circus Lesson Plan

Describe and analyze the House of Correction.

A wheel-shaped panopticon in which prisoners are under constant observation, isolated in the Siberian wilderness. The prisoners are all women who killed their husbands - as is the warden, Countess P.! As the text highlights, she is privileged because of her wealth, and this has the power to inflict her own guilt on poor women who share her crime (and often for better reasons) As the novel itself explains, women in abusive marriages in the 1800s had no options and no recourse to protect themselves. The House of Correction subplot has a number of the book’s recurring features: an all-women environment (as Nelson’s house was);...