Midterm essay (1700 words, including Works Cited)
Write an essay analyzing a text or texts—for example, you may want to discuss two poems together—that we haven’t discussed thoroughly in class, in their social, political, cultural, or economic context. Students must make a strong argument at the outset of their presentation and carry it through to the end. They are defending a thesis, not giving us a summary of the text. They must conclude their essay by placing their topic in a broader context, namely, by drawing connections to other works studied this semester. You are required to use at least two additional scholarly sources, contextual rather than critical.
The introduction should identify the primary text, author, topic, method (relevant textual passages plus context), goal (the knowledge the student seeks to produce), and thesis (claim plus reasons).
Essays must be typed in 12 pt. Times New Roman font and double-spaced and adhere to proper MLA format. See pp. 405-07 of the St. Martin’s Handbook for proper MLA formatting.
Send me the pdfs of the three scholarly articles, along with the essayThe introduction should identify the primary text, author, topic, method (relevant textual passages plus plus context), goal (the knowledge the student seeks to produce), and thesis (claim plus reasons).
Henry James’s story “Daisy Miller: A Study” features as its protagonist the eponymous character, characterized as a “new girl.” The “new girl” refers to a young woman in late-nineteenth-century America who enjoyed the new freedom to socialize with members of the opposite sex. I will analyze the gender relations in the story, together with three articles on the “new girl” in Blah Blah magazine, published in the United States in 1878. The aim is to reveal the cultural conflict between what was then considered acceptable behavior for a young woman in America and social norms in Europe. Thesis…
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”
BODY: DEFEND YOUR THESIS
CONCLUSION: WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS OF YOUR ARGUMENT FOR OTHER THEMES/TEXTS?
WORKS CITED (SEPARATE PAGE)
What I wish to discuss is the following:
Primary text is: The Yellow Wallpaper
Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Topic: Gender roles and domestic life and how it relates to the way women’s mental health used to be viewed and cured or rather called Feminine Imagination vs. Masculine Factuality
Make sure to draw background on Charlotte Perkins from scholarly articles and how her childhood and mental illness contributed to her writing this piece “the yellow wallpaper”
Make sure to connect her with Adrienne Rich and how similar they are while analyzing her poem Diving into the wreck
Then draw on the Historical Context of The Yellow Wallpaper
and explain the plot of the story while analyzing some quotes from the yellow paper and what they mean for the theme and in the contet and you can draw from Adrienne Rich and compare certain lines etc
I want to talk about how women were supposed to just believe everything men around them say because they know better about women than women do themselves as they are nothing but naive and fragile little creatures
Talk about how John her husban belittles her and calls her by very childish pet names
Also talk about how mental health especially for women back then was generalized and given the name hysteria, downplaying the gravity of the situation and pushing the agenda of how women know not about themselves.
