III. Out-of-Class Essay Question: answer one of the following questions, discussing three works that we have read since the last exam 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. Out-of-class component of the exam is due by the end of class on 3/23.


1. We began our discussion of the work of women writers with a discussion of the Puritan understanding of suffering and its importance in the construction of women's spiritual identity. With advances in our understanding of infection, reproduction, and even medical technology, the likelihood that a woman would die in childbirth greatly decreased. Our understanding of women's suffering has changed as well. How is suffering imagined or viewed in the works we have read since the last exam? Is suffering still physical, or has it become more psychological since the beginning of the 20th Century? How are women's bodies connected to or removed from our understanding of suffering in the works we have read recently? You might consider, for instance, how views of the body in writers such as Acker and Kennedy revise or revisit notions of suffering prior to the 20th Century?

2. For many years, our understanding of Modern American Poetry was heavily influenced by the ideals of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Works such as Eliot's essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" or Pound's "A Retrospect" were seen as statements about what Modern Poetry was and how it should be evaluated. One effect of our defining this period of poetry through the work of Eliot and Pound has been to relegate some female writers to the status of minor poets. One of the benefits of a course such as this is that it allows us to focus on female poets in their own right and to think about what Modern Poetry looks like through the eyes of women writers. What does looking at the work of the female poets contribute to our understanding of Modern Poetry? If you are familiar with Modern Poetry, particularly the ideas of Eliot and Pound, then you may want to consider how similar or different these works are from their male counterparts. If you are not familiar with this understanding of Modern Poetry, then you may just want to construct your own theory of Modern Poetry based on what you find by looking at these poets. Another option for this question is to take something like Pound's "A Retrospect" and discuss the way imagism is used/modified/revised by Modern and Contemporary female poets.


3. In "America and I," Anzia Yezierska discusses the idea of the American Dream, of America as a "the golden land of flowing opportunity" (Heath, Vol. #2 page 1865) and the way in which her experience as a poor immigrant forced to work in unskilled labor jobs showed her that this dream was not always open to everyone. However, while she is critical of the way in which the upper classes benefit from the often mind numbing work which produced their wealth, she ends her text on a more positive note:

Then came a light-- a great revelation! I saw America-- a big idea-- a deathless hope-- a world still in the making. I saw that it was the glory of America that it is not yet finished. And I, the last comer, had her share to give, small or great, to the making of America...(1872).

She ends by claiming that she can best do this by writing about the life that she knows and the realization that in "writing about the Ghetto I found America" (1872). Her story reveals a couple of key areas that might be worth exploring further. First, her idea about the power of writing to create a world, to give it voice, is an idea that runs through a lot of Modern literature. While we often talk about alienation as a key concept for understanding what happens in Modern American literature, in this work Yezierska claims that art has the power to overcome this alienation; as a worker who finds herself too tired to feel a part of even her own life she represents a classical example of alienation, but her concluding points offer up her art as a way to escape from that alienation. Second, this essay reveals her view of the importance of telling stories such as "The Free- Vacation House" which provide insight into the lives of people who are not represented in pictures of America as "the golden land of flowing opportunity." Look at three works that we have read since the last exam that deal with one of the issues inspired by Yezierska and discuss the views they present on this issue.

4. At the end of the reading for the last exam, we discussed the uniqueness of Chopin's treatment of female sexuality. Although the modernist writers are not as explicit in their discussion of sexuality as some writers of the contemporary period, female sexuality and sexuality in general are more central themes in these works than in those prior to the beginning of the modern period. What do the writers we have read since the last exam reveal about the changing views of female sexuality? How do these views differ from or retain ideas about female sexuality from earlier centuries. What relationship, for instance, do Puritan understandings about female sexuality or the ideals implicated in the Cult of True Womanhood have to the view of female sexuality presented in the works we have read since the last exam? What do these works reveal about the conflicts with or conformity to cultural expectations/demands/desires for female sexuality?

5. In Verging on the Abyss, Mary E. Papke, writing about Edith Wharton, claims that she "reappropriated and transformed old forms in order to conceptualize the new content of their socially and morally responsive and responsible concerns" (3). She claims that this can be seen particularly in presentations of issues relating to class including the following:

...the individual's revolt against the inequalities manifest in genteel or bourgeois society; the decay of such a class and its replacement with the new money class and the ethics of twentieth-century industrial entrepreneurs; the role of social determinism in class and personal crises; and the conflict between individual aspirations and social duty. It can also be seen in their subversive renderings of traditional securities, limitations and types... (3)

Could this statement apply to three writers that we have looked at since the last exam? Why or why not? Discuss one or more of these themes in the works of three writers we have read since the last exam.


6. Although many of the stories and/or novels we have read since the last exam are narrated in the third person, they limit their perspective through one of the characters (or through several characters, one at a time). Discuss the author's choice of narrative perspective. How does this perspective effect our understanding of the characters and/or events in the novel or story? How does the author use this limited perspective to reveal important insights into the characters or into the theme(s) of the work itself?

7. In "`Making Generations in Jacobs, Larsen, and Hurston: a Genealogy of Black Women's Writing," Patricia Felisa Barbeito discusses the history of slavery and its connection with gender roles. She claims that Larsen's works emphasized the "enslaving effects of race on sexuality" (370). Barbara Johnson, in The Feminist Difference, describes Larsen's presentation of this in another of her novels, Quicksand, as follows:

...it is not Helga's sexuality that has trapped her but rather her attempts to disavow it her own and society's contradictory responses to it. To be respectable as a "lady" is to have no sexuality; to have sexuality is to be a jungle creature, an exotic primitive, or an oppressed wife and mother. (40)

Does this response describe Larsen's view of sexuality in Passing? While this quote applies specifically to the works of Larsen and the sexuality of her African-American characters, you can look at the relationship between society's "contradictory" responses to female sexuality in general. How do three writers that we have looked at since the last exam reflect the contradiction between their characters sexuality and society's view of sexuality? You may use one or more works that reflect society's standards for sexuality to help illustrate that standard (not required).

8. As we have discussed in class, the friendships among women are often emphasized in literary criticism on the works we have read. While such friendships are often seen as revealing essentialist connections among women, many of the works we have read since the last exam illustrate the complicated nature of relationships/friendships between women. Discuss three works that provide insights into the relationships/ friendships between women. How are these friendships presented in the works? What does this reveal about the theme(s) of the individual works?

9. As with the last exam, the final question gives you the opportunity to construct your own topic by allowing you to write on a number of general ideas that have come up in our discussion of the works since the last exam. Keep in mind that while you have the freedom to explore ideas of particular interest to you with this question, you will need to develop a specific thesis about the three works that you look at the general topic is not enough to control an essay and three works; you need to develop a clear and specific thesis about that topic and what the three works you are looking at show about that thesis. The following are the approved topics for this exam: imagism and/or the use of images, marriage, gender roles and society, love, sexuality, class, charity and/or the relationship between the haves and the have-nots, alienation, freedom, nature, narrators and/or narrative technique, & social and/or political protest.