Please no outside sources
Essay prompt
• First, review “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin; be sure you know what circumstance really caused Louise’s heart to fail upon seeing her husband alive after all: be aware of details like how she reacts to news of her husband’s death, how she perceives her relationship to him, and her resentment to his imposition of his will upon her.
• Second, as we see from the story “Once Aboard the Lugger,” Nance accepts the pattern imposed upon her of being a wife, and perhaps, a mother; how she becomes a wife is another matter. First, she reverses the usual gender roles of courtship in which the man makes the first touch, initiates the affection, offers the first kiss, and states the proposal of marriage; second, she steps out of her social status as a citizen of Ruan to do so. At what point in the story does she make a decision to do all the above, and what motivates her to do it? After all, after seeing Samuel preach his sermon and wondering what he would be like as a husband, she remembers she is a Ruan girl, not one of Troy, and she is prepared to forget all about him and take the ferry back home to dinner.
What changes her mind?
For Essay One, consider the following: D. H. Lawrence proposes, in his essay “Give Her a Pattern,” that men impose upon women patterns of behavior and customs, and men expect women to adhere to these patterns, the most general and persistent pattern being the expectation that every woman will become a wife and mother. This has been, and certainly was during the last two centuries, the role expected of every woman. You have read “The Story of an Hour” and “Once Aboard the Lugger.” Ask yourself, what patterns are Louise and Nance following? Are the patterns only the roles they are expected to follow, or does society place additional expectations upon them in regard to class?
Discuss how these women characters handle the patterns they follow in an essay due as a first draft for Tuesday, January 8. Introduce the essay by introducing the two short stories, “The Story of an Hour” and “Once Aboard the Lugger,” and how the stories present two women characters who follow the pattern of marriage, but explain in the essay how they handle the pattern, and for Nance, what additional patterns she is expected to follow in regard to class and courtship.
Please note: when writing about literature, whether fiction or non-fiction, we use present tense verbs when referring to the actions or speech of characters and authors. Thus, we use say, remark, comment, reply, utter and other present tense forms in place of said, remarked, commented, replied, uttered, and other past tense forms.
The reasoning is this: whenever you read the text, the author’s words are being read in the present, not in the past; you are reading the text now, and the author’s words are relevant to your experience of reading now. This practice of using present tense verbs in this way is called “the literary present.”
This idea also applies to song lyrics and poetry, which become relevant later in the course.
• When referring to the song’s lyrics or a performer’s performance of it, use the present tense verbs. You see, whenever you listen to the song, the performer is singing it now. We know objectively that the performer sang it, but for us the performer is singing it now.
• When we read the poem, we are reading it in the present; the action of the poem’s narrator speaking is present, not past.
Citing Sources in the essay
For citing your sources in the essay, the first time you provide a quote from Chopin, for example, use (Chopin 1) if it’s from page one, or (Chopin 2) if it’s from page two. As long as you’re still citing Chopin, only the page number in parentheses is necessary, like this: (2). If you’re citing Quiller-Couch, since he calls himself “Q,” you may do it this way, using “Q” and then the page number: (Q 5). As long as you’re still citing Q, only the page number in parentheses is necessary, like this: (5). This pattern will persist for each essay you write: as long as you’re quoting the same source, once you have provided the author and page number, successive citations need only be the page number in parentheses. As soon as you cite a different author, the author’s last name and the page number must be placed in the citation.
