Assignment One

Due Date: 7/17
Peer Review: 7/10

Assignment Goal: To create an argument about a critical theme from Ruth Hall, and use the argument to explain the meaning of the novel. Arguments must use supporting passages from the text for evidence, and students must define their terms.

Assignment Description. Students may write on a topic of their choice or pick from two below. Students that write on a topic of their choice must have it approved by the professor in writing before the peer review.

Requirement: All students need to bring in an outside, peer-reviewed academic essay. This may include the essay assigned for the first blog. All students are also strongly advised to read the "Introduction" to the Penguin Classics text for background information and sources. 

Topic One: Mrs. Hall - As we found in our class discussion, Mrs. Hall is an interesting and clever character in the novel, and her feelings, choices, and beliefs play a strong role in shaping Ruth's life. For this essay topic, explain what you believe to be Mrs. Hall's motives and articulate how her concerns, anxieties, and personality interact with the main character, Ruth. While it would be easy to simply judge her from a post-1855 position of moral superiority, instead try and explain her behavior according to how Fanny Fern composes her as a character. Your thesis statement should thus define her feelings and beliefs, and also define how those feelings and beliefs shape her attitudes, anxieties, and, by extension, the choices she makes about Ruth. As always, use supporting passages for evidence and close-read words and phrases for their meaning.

Topic Two - Sympathy - As we've discussed, Ruth Hall does not find much comfort in her immediate family members, whether we consider her parents or her in-laws. Instead, as Ruth "falls" in the world of social status, community position, and financial independence she encounters brand new social networks full of working-class characters normally hidden from the view of previous scenes in the novel. Yet we can see even in these relationships social bonds fairly indivisible from the economic relations that primarily motivate her family. So where does sympathy come from, for Ruth Hall? How does she achieve it? In this topic, create an argument that explains where sympathy comes from in the novel, how Ruth activates it, and its ultimate significance. Your thesis statement should thus define sympathy, and allude to where we find it - and where we don't - in the novel. As always, use supporting passages for evidence and close-read words and phrases for their meaning.