Midterm Essay Assignment

ENGL 2550.03: Gender, Identity, and Literature

General Assignment
In a 1500-word argumentative essay, respond to one of the prompts below. Draw from class
lectures, discussions, and your close reading assignments, and move beyond them, coming to
your own unique reading of the text(s) at hand. If you have a topic or question in mind that is not
covered in the prompts below, you may formulate your own topic, but please speak with me to
have the topic approved before Tuesday, March 1.
Requirements
o 1500 words (not less than 1450, or more than 1550) not including the Works Cited. Place
the word count at the end of the document.
o This paper is argumentative. It will present a thesisa specific way of reading the text
with which others might disagree. The paper will then work to support this thesis with
textual evidence and analysis.
o To support your argument, you must incorporate at least two academic (not popular)
secondary sources, such as books or scholarly articles. You may access these at Pius or
through the electronic databases to which the library subscribes. As you will see, many of
the prompts ask you to engage with one of the secondary texts weve read in class. Those
do count toward your two sources. Read these sources carefully, and use them to develop
or support your own argument.
o The paper should be formatted according to MLA Citation Style, with parenthetical
citations. We will discuss this in class. Also see Purdue OWL MLA Formatting Guide
online for guidance.
o This includes a creative title. Please take the time to come up with a title, rather
than using Midterm Paper.
Essay Prompts
1. Kate Chopins short story Dsires Baby explores issues of gender and race, and the
relationship between these socially/culturally constructed elements of an identity, pointing at
times to the fluidities and grey areas of these categories. In an essay, present a specific argument
about the relationship between gender and race depicted in this short story.
2.a In the introductory reading to short stories we completed by Ann and Samuel Charters, they
state, [S]hort stories are end-oriented. Their endings can shine a spotlight back to illuminate the
meaning of what has gone before (15). Chopins The Story of an Hour ends abruptly with the
doctors explanation of Louise Mallards sudden death after her purportedly dead husband walks
through the door: [T]hey said she had died of heart diseaseof joy that kills (Chopin 261).
Performing close readings from select passages throughout the story as support, make a claim
about how we might read this final statement, focusing on how the conclusion shine[s] a
spotlight on the rest of the story.
2.b. Alternately, you may choose to write about both Dsires Baby and The Story of an
Hour together, focusing on their surprising endings. In an essay, examine how their shocking

Midterm Assignment 2
endings shine light on the rest of their narratives, and make an argument about how these two
short stories make similar, or different, statements about female experience or gender relations.
3. Hemingways Hills Like White Elephants relies primarily on dialogue and brief, terse
description to present a situation between a young woman and a man. Focusing your analysis on
the dialogue (both its content and its formal qualities), but also noting any particularly relevant
description/narration, make a claim about the characters relationship, motives, fears, etc.
4.a. Hemingways The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber narrates a married couples
crisis while on safari with a professional hunting guide. We learn that the tension within the
group that overpowers the first few pages is due to the fact that Macomber had just shown
himself, very publicly, to be a coward (6). The tension between, or opposition of, courage and
cowardice play a large role in this story. Write an essay exploring the kinds of courage and
cowardice displayed, theorized, or expressed in the story. Make a claim about one or more of the
characters experience with courage and/or cowardice, perhaps doing a comparative analysis
between 2 of the characters (or all 3, if you work hard on concision). Think carefully about how
gender influences the characters understandings and experiences of cowardice and courage.
4.b. In The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, readers sometimes gain entrance into the
animals perspective of events, particularly the lion (p. 13), and the narrative repeatedly turns to
animals to say something significant about the men in the story. For example, after the debacle
with the lion, the narrator states, Macomber did not know how the lion had felt, whereas
Wilson knew something about it (16-17). Reread the story, paying close attention to how
Hemingway uses descriptions of or references to the animals to explore qualities of the male
characters. In an essay, make an argument about what these descriptions and comparisons say
about Macomber and Wilson, particularly as it has to do with masculinity.
5.a. Shakespeares Twelfth Night, or, What You Will, includes several scenes of cross dressing,
dressing up, or dressing a part. In its obsession with dress, the play seems to suggest something
more significant about performance, clothing, gender, and identity. In the excerpt of Judith
Butlers Gender Trouble that we read for class, Butler argues that drag fully subverts the distinction
between inner and outer psychic space and effectively mocks both the expressive model of gender
and the notion of a true gender identity (2549). Turning to Gender Trouble as a lens through
which you view the play, make an argument about the significance of Twelfth Nights rampant
drag. Remember to focus on specific scenes rather than generalizing about the whole play. Do
close readings to support your argument.
5.b. In Gender Trouble, Butler speaks of the effort to expose the foundational categories of sex,
gender, and desire as effects of a specific formation of power (2541). In an essay, address the
often confusing movement of desire within Twelfth Night, focusing on one (or at most, two)
romantic relationships, exploring how foundational categories are flouted in this play. Note,
you do not need to consider only instances of same-sex desire, but rather investigate how the
characters desires resist easy categorization. Using Butlers refusal of the natural as a guide,
and focusing in on one or two romantic connections, make an argument about the nature of
desire in Twelfth Night.

Midterm Assignment 3
5.c. As we discussed in class, adapting a text/play for a film involves many choices, and these
choices engender their own meaning. For example, Catherine Thomas argues that by setting his
1996 film adaptation of Twelfth Night in the late nineteenth century, Trevor Nunn deploys the
layered historicisms to create an eroticized space that allows representations of all kinds of desire
between the sexes (311). Focusing on one scene (or 2), a single character, a particular theme, or
a similarly manageable element of the play, write a comparative analysis of the text and the film,
making an argument about the significance of the changes made in the adaptation. What new or
different meaning is created?
6.a. Edna Pontellier, the protagonist of Kate Chopins The Awakening, comes gradually and
perhaps incompletely to a new understanding of her own body, desires, and autonomy. In The
Laugh of the Medusa (1975), Hlne Cixous claims, Womens imaginary is inexhaustible, like
music, painting, writing: their stream of phantasms is incredible (1943). Using Cixous to
approach The Awakening, write an essay making an argument about how music and/or art
contribute to and shape Ednas personal development.
6.b. The working title of Chopins novel The Awakening was A Solitary Soul. Make an argument
about the meaning of either of these titles. Why would Chopin have used A Solitary Soul as the
original title? What role does solitude play in this novel? What is the nature of the awakening
experienced by Edna? What is the larger significance (outside of Edna) of the concept of
awakening?
More to come