Choose one of the following writing prompts below and write a 4-5 double-spaced page essay (1200-1500 words) that fully answers the prompt using literary analysis (argumentation via textual citation):
Prompts:
Analyze Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Blithedale Romance, as a literary commentary on social reform (feminism, laborism, socialism, etc.) in antebellum American (1840-1850s). For this prompt, you might analyze a character(s), a theme, or an aspect of the plot. You might also try to investigate how the novel appears to be a critique of sympathy as a liberal value that can effectively contribute to progressive outcomes. Finally, you might focus on what the novel seems to say about gender inequality as an obstacle to true social reform.
In her famous essay, “The Cult of True Womanhood” (1966), feminist historian Barbara Welter argued that, in nineteenth-century American society, upper to middle-class white women were expected to uphold four moral ideals that supposedly defined their embodied relationship to feminine virtue: namely, the virtues of piety, purity, domesticity, and submission. For this essay, analyze how Fanny Fern’s novel, Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time” (1855) used her literary narrative as an artistic statement that rejected these ideals to offer instead an alternative image of femininity in the novel’s character of Ruth Hall. Provide textual examples that show how Ruth’s character represented a new type of woman for whom American women were meant to idealize and imitate. What were these new alternative ideals, and how did they run counter to those representing “the cult of true womanhood”?
Explain how, in both their slave narratives, Douglass and Jacobs characterize the liberation of their personhood as a struggle to reclaim their own sense of masculinity and femininity. In other words, analyze how each author’s narrative detailed how the institution of slavery, not only stripped slaves of their equal rights as human beings (both legally and physically), but also deprived slaves a sense of dignity on the level of their gender and sexuality. Finally, explain the various ways that each author attempted to reclaim what it meant for them to be seen as a man or woman.
Interpret how either Douglass’s and/or Jacobs’s slave narrative(s) critically attacked the pro-slavery ideology of paternalism. Make sure to explain what paternalism was, how it operated as a justification of slavery, and how Douglass’s and Jacob’s narratives strategically attempt to undermine it.
Analyze how race and gender operate in Alcott’s “My Contraband” in terms how the story valorizes the beneficial possibilities that interracial bonding, religious sentimentality, and feminine agency might have on a post-Civil War era. In other words, investigate how the story emphasizes these moral aspects as ways to “heal the nation” in the traumatic aftermath of the Civil War.
Requirements:
* 4-5 pages double-spaced
* Must contain a thesis statement with body paragraphs that support your argument and interpretation
* Must be argumentative rather than summative
* Must incorporate a minimum of ten citations (direct quotes) from the texts examined.
* Must provide documentation and a works cited page for any outside recourses other than the textbook
* Must provide parenthetical references (i.e. pages numbers) for all quotes
* Must use proper MLA formatting rules
