Due Date: Assignment Point Value: Suggested Length:

Monday, September 20th 0-60pts. 1 ½-2 typed pages.2

III. Out-of-Class Essay Question: Answer one of the following questions, discussing three works by three different authors that we have read since the course began and using specific quotes and/or details from those work to support your claims. While you are not required (or expected) to use any outside sources for this response, if you use any sources (in addition to our texts), then you need to document those sources using MLA documentation. The out-of-class essay questions are due by the end of class on the day of the exam (for this exam that is by 3:20 on September 20th).3

1. Barbara Welter, in "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," describes the qualities associated with this term today:

The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors and society, could be divided into four cardinal virtues-- piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. Put them all together and they spelled mother, daughter, sister, wife- woman. Without them, whether there was fame, achievement or wealth, all was ashes. With them she was promised happiness and power. (11)

In The Cult of True Womanhood marriage was the one way that women could make social moves, and it "could provide for a woman the improved economic and social benefits which men received through education, speculation, the professions, business, and marriage" (Welter 8). Marriage offered the promise of happiness and freedom. However, as critics have noted the literature of the period not only reflects the influence of this ideology, it often provided a critique or subversion of it as well. Discuss three works that in some way reflect on this ideology; what kind of response to the Cult of True Womanhood is seen in these texts?

2. William Dean Howells said, "Realism is nothing more and nothing less than the truthful treatment of material" (Criticism 38). However, as Cecelia Tichi, points out in her introduction to the Bedford Press Cultural Edition of Life in The Iron Mills, most realists "understood writing to be a moral act and rejected abstract absolutes such as Truth and Justice as evasive and normative" (14). For this reason, realists "scorned romanticism as self-deception and the deception of readers" (Tichi 14). Using Howells definition of realism, discuss three works from our reading that could be viewed as proponents of realism. Do these work reflect the notion of realism as a moral act? Why or why not?

3. In "Bearing the Burden? Puritan Wives," Martha Saxton quotes John Winthrop in order to illustrate that 17th century feminine ideal:

A true wife accounts her subjection her honor and freedom and would not think her condition safe and free but in her subjection to her husband's authority. Such is the liberty of the church under the authority of Christ, her king and husband; his yoke is so easy and sweet to her as a bride's ornaments; and if through forwardness or wantonnes [sic], etc., she shakes it off at any time, she is at no rest in her spirit until she take it up again; and whether her lord smiles upon her and embraceth her in his arms or whether he frowns and rebukes her, or smites her, she comprehends the sweetness of his love in all and is refreshed, and instructed by every such dispensation of his authority over her. (28)

Saxton claims that while women might be the subjects of their husbands, they could find a kind of moral authority by living up to this ideal and being good wives and mothers. We talked about this in terms of Bradstreet and Rowlandson primarily; however, if you look at the description of the Cult of True Womanhood given above you can see some similarities. Look at how three writers reflect or challenge this 17th century feminine ideal; you may want to trace this ideal from the 17th century until the 19th century to see how it has been changed or modified and/or to explore what elements of this idea have been retained.

4. In addition to gaining authority by living up to the ideal image of a wife and mother, puritan women gained moral authority through suffering, particularly the suffering connected to child birth. Due to the fact that little was understood about infection, many doctors would deliver babies without washing their hands; therefore, for a woman facing childbirth, death was a very real possibility. However, in the eyes of the church (and many men), women gained a moral and spiritual strength through this suffering. For instance, Cotton Mather said the following at a funeral for a 17 year old girl who died in childbirth (in 1724): "But when it pleases Him, to take children, and those of that Sex which Fear is most incident and enslaving to; and make such Babes and Sucklings to triumph over the Enemy,-- Oh! The wondrous power of our God!" Look at three works that deal with suffering in some way. How is suffering treated? Is it viewed as a redeeming or empowering event for the characters involved?

5. When Anne Bradstreet's brother-in-law had her poems published in 1650, he felt it important to point out that her poems were "the fruit of some few houres, curtailed from her sleep, and other refreshments" and had not taken away from the time she committed to her family and home, since writing and poetry in particularly were not associated with the domestic sphere or with women (Women's Work 8). While many of the women writers that we have looked at thus far were setting forth into what was normally a masculine domain by writing, their works, nonetheless, express their belief in the value of writing both for and by women. Look at three works by three writers that illustrate their view of writing and/or art. How is this view influenced by their gender and/or their culture's view of women's roles? Is their view of art altered or modified in any way by their gender? Why or why not? How do they address those who wish to challenge their entry into this field?

6. Cathy N. Davidson in Revolution and the WORD: The Rise of the Novel in America notes that novels were seen as particularly threatening to the virtue of young women. She illustrates this with a passage from an essay titled, "Novel Reading, a Cause of Female Depravity:"

Without the poison instilled [by novels] into the blood, females in ordinary life would nave have been such mus the slaves of vice... It is no uncommon thing for a young lady who has attended her dearest friend to the alter, a few months after a marriage which, perhaps, but for her, had been a happy one, to fix her affections on her friend's husband, and by artful blandishments allure him to herself. (Davidson 45)

Look at three works (particularly novels) that address this fear; how do they respond to such complaints/fears. How do narrative techniques and/or the construction of the work itself reflect this response?


7. The final question allows you to discuss some broader concepts that may or may not be effectively permitted in the above questions, but that are important to these works and our discussion of them. Be cautious when answering this question because since it is so broadly defined you will need to carefully construct your introduction and your discussion to assure that you have a strong thesis connecting your discussion of three works from our reading since the beginning of the term. You may write an essay determined by your own interest on any one of the following: race and/or race relationships; domestic duties and/or marriage; setting; the importance of landscape; the role of the narrator; the importance of audience; love; communities of women and/or friendship, motherhood and/or the maternal, the role or value of poetry, and/or education.

3No out-of-class essay questions will be accepted for credit after the exam period has ended. Students are expected to arrive at the exam on time; the exam period will end at 3:20 or when all students arriving on time have completed the in-class exam, whichever comes first.