Critical Essay

This page takes on two important questions about the critical essay you will write this semester in this course: what and what for; it also includes an assignment sheet. Recently I added a new section that includes a summary of the grade distribution on the first draft along with "re-vision" suggestions. My goal is to make this page as useful to you as possible, so let me know if it can be improved. If anything is badly worded, unclear, or missing, please contact me with constructive criticisms and suggestions. Ditto for any questions you may have about any of the options listed below. Thanks.

What

Your critical essay is to be thesis-driven, analytical, and persuasive six-to-eight-page paper. That is, it should not simply be a personal response to what you have read, or simply a statement of your opinions or assertion of your views, but should instead be organized to convince your readers to accept an argument you have developed in response to a specific question. There is a kind of "romantic ideology" to this kind of essay, in the sense that you are being asked to generate an original, creative argument that supports your own perspective on the text or texts.

What For

So far this semester you've already done a good deal of writing--ranging from the informal free writing on specific topics in class, to generating discussion questions, to writing short reflective essays. You've gotten good practice at noticing things about literary texts and asking questions of them; we've focused a lot on making connections between texts and identifying tensions within and between them, as well as interpreting significant passages and image patterns. What you haven't had a chance to do yet is develop a sustained argument on a specific topic. The critical essay is your chance to do just that: to focus in on a particular topic or question that most interests you (this involves reviewing your notes and memories of the readings, as well as listserv contributions), to delve more deeply into specific readings (this involves choosing the readings that best allow you to address the topic or question you have chosen and focusing on those parts that seem most relevant to the topic), and to develop and support a sustained argument about the relation between the readings and the topic or question (this involves both critically analyzing the texts you have chosen to focus on and crafting a valid, persuasive argument). Doing these things will not only improve your skills in active, critical reading and analytical, persuasive writing, but it will also prepare you for the final research project.

The other major purpose of the critical essay is for me to indicate clearly what I see as the major questions or issues raised by the "Declarations of Independence" unit in the course. This should provide you with something of a framework for understanding and reviewing the unit as a whole. Hence, it is highly recommended that you consider carefully each of the options given before settling on one on which to focus your critical essay. It's easy to miss the forest for the trees, especially when there were so many different "trees" we were analyzing each day, so seeing the range of questions I think are most important to consider when looking back on the unit can give you a new, better perspective on what we've read, as well as lay out possible directions for the final research project.

Finally, you'll note that most of the options listed below require you to relate Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, to specific texts and issues from the antebellum period. The purpose of this is for you to see that a writer can engage his or her own time period even when setting a novel in a different period, that a canonized text which for many people may be the only work read from this period in their lives can be interpreted quite differently when understood in relation to the writers and literary movements of its time, and that it's possible for us as readers today to try to recover a sense of the intellectual and political debates that were most pressing during the antebellum period. The edition of Hawthorne's novel that we're using has an excellent critical apparatus, so feel free to draw on arguments presented by the critics included in the book--or find ones they refer to--so long as you are not plagiarizing them or allowing their own theses to direct yours. That relates to the final purpose of forcing you to write on Hawthorne's novel: it gives you the chance to develop your own critical voice and perspective, in dialogue with others', and to see that you have the potential to make as interesting and valid an argument as any professor.

Assignment Sheet

Due: at the beginning of class on Tuesday, March 6, 2001

Format: 6-8 pages, double spaced, with reasonable fonts, font sizes, and margins (be warned that barely getting on to the sixth sheet of paper does not a six-page paper make!); title that indicates main argument of paper; heading that includes your name, the course name or number, and the date; bibliography and citations in MLA style (see the links page for explanations of this style of citation); proper quotation format: "..." (12). for quotations within a paragraph; blockquote format for quotations five lines or longer.

Options: Here are your options for the critical essay. In each of these options, your job is to come up with an argument that you are trying to support by using textual evidence to persuade your readers of your interpretation's validity. You will not have the option of choosing your own topic/question for this essay, as you will for the final research project; instead, you must choose one of the following topics and use at least one of the works we've read thus far in the semester in developing your response to it.

• America: Consider that the "A" Hester is forced to wear is never literally defined in the novel; although it's strongly hinted that it stands for "adultery," what happens when we consider the possibility that Hawthorne meant the "A" to stand for America? What kind of commentary on the new nation is Hawthorne making by making Hester a representative of it? How does his perspective on America relate to that of at least one other writer we've read thus far this semester? Your job for this option is to develop an argument about the significance or stakes of the relation between Hawthorne's and at least one other antebellum writer's "take" on America.
• The American Self: Consider Hawthorne's self-representation in "The Custom-House" or his representation of Hester--both are versions of or models for an "American self." Consider other versions of, models of, and perspectives on "the American self" that we've encountered this semester, and choose one or two to relate to either one of Hawthorne's. Your job for this option is to develop an argument about the significance or stakes of the relation between Hawthorne's and at least one other antebellum writer's creation of an "American self."
• Dependence/Independence/Interdependence: Consider Hawthorne's treatments of the related themes of dependence, independence, and interdependence, and relate his treatment of those themes to one or two other antebellum American writers we've read thus far this semester. Your job for this option is to develop an argument about the significance or stakes of the relation between Hawthorne's and at least one other antebellum writer's perspectives on dependence/independence/interdependence.
• Women's Rights: Consider the many ways in which The Scarlet Letter addresses issues relating to women's rights and feminism in mid-nineteenth-century American culture and society--the debate over "separate spheres," over citizenship and property rights, over marriage laws, over family structures and parenting, over educational opportunities, over female independence and autonomy--and any other topics addressed by women writers in the period. Your job for this option is to choose one of these issues and develop an argument about the significance or stakes of the relation between Hawthorne's and at least one other antebellum writer's "take" on it.
• Slavery and Abolition: Consider Sacvan Bercovitch's argument that The Scarlet Letter enacts the logic of the Compromise of 1850 and works to create a kind of nationalist consensus. (You might consult his larger argument in his book The Office of The Scarlet Letter, beyond the excerpt in our edition of Hawthorne's novel.) Do you agree or disagree with Bercovitch's argument? Your job for this option is either to respond to Bercovitch's reading of The Scarlet Letter by crafting your own interpretation of the novel's relation to conflicts over slavery and abolition in mid-nineteenth-century America OR to develop an argument about the significance or stakes of the relation between Hawthorne's and at least one other antebellum writer's perspectives on slavery and abolition.

"Re-Vision": Requirements and Suggestions

Due: by 5 pm Friday, April 6, 2001 (earlier submissions recommended).

Who Should Do One: I recommend that everyone take advantage of the opportunity to have the grade on your "re-vision" replace the original grade. As you can see from the grade distribution, people are likely to be disappointed by their grade on the critical essay: A=0, A-=1, B+=7, B=2, B-=7, C+=3, C=3, C-=3. 14 people chose the "women's rights" option, and grades ranged from B+ to C-; 10 people chose the "America" option, and grades ranged from A- to C-; and 3 people chose the other options, with grades ranging on those options from B+ to C-.

Here's what these grades mean. Generally, to get a B+ or higher, you had to have understood what the assignment was asking you to do, come up with a main argument that is argue-able, debate-able, and non-obvious, and done a good job persuading your readers to agree with it (the more ambitious your argument was and the better your support for it, the higher your grade rose). It was difficult to get into this range if your thesis was not addressed to the stakes or significance of the relation between the two or three texts you were analyzing. To get a between a B and a C+, you had to have raised doubts about your understanding of the assignment, had a main argument that was more descriptive than analytical, or had problems in the way you attempted to support it (the shakier your understanding of the assignment, the less analytical your thesis was, the more problems you had with supporting arguments, evidence, organization, and grammar, and the more clear misreadings of the text[s] in question, the lower your grade fell in this range). And to get a C or lower, you had to have had serious problems with your understanding of the assignment, had an incoherent, contradictory, or reductive main argument (or lacked one altogether), and had serious problems with your mode of supporting it (the more problems with the main argument, structure, and use of evidence, and with your understanding of the text[s] in the question, the lower your grade fell).

"Re-Vision" Suggestions: I write extensive comments on your papers. I recommend reading the closing statement first for my overall assessment of your essay and suggestions for revision. Only after reading that should you go through my marginal comments on each page. When doing this, be sure to distinguish between formatting suggestions, identifications of grammar/punctuation/citation errors, questions about your readings of a given passage, comments about structure and argument, and suggestions for revision. (Oh, and check marks, underlined and/or starred passages are meant to identify important observations, arguments, or ideas worth developing further.) If you have trouble reading my handwriting or deciding what to focus on for your "re-vision" of your essay, make an appointment with me. Hopefully what follows will help clear up ambiguities, but don't hesitate to talk things over with me--sometimes hearing something can help you understand a point differently than reading it!

Between what I wrote on your paper and what I'm writing here, I hope it's clear that I am more interested in how well your paper works on the persuasive/analytical level than in what specifically you are arguing for or against--so only worry about being "right" to the extent that you have considered other points of view and thought carefully about how best to support your own. Students always worry about "what the teacher wants," and I'm sure we all have had teachers for whom a good grade on their papers was dependent on your regurgitating their ideas to show you had done the reading and paid attention in class--well, I think you can see I am not one of those teachers (or at least that I believe I am not!). As I have emphasized in class and on the critical essay page, the critical essays are your chance to go beyond our class discussions and bring your understanding of the unit and certain texts in it to a new level--they require extra work and additional thinking and reading; they require you to make a critical, or analytical, or interpretive leap beyond making observations. The best papers stem from a question for which it's possible to give many plausible answers, because then you have to make a case for your answer being more plausible than other potentially plausible ones.

I say all this because as you approach the challenge of revising your essays, you need to set priorities and goals for yourself. Fixing all the punctuation and grammar errors when my comments indicate you had a fundamental misunderstanding of the assignment will not raise your grade one iota. Doing the kind of proofreading you should have done the first time around isn't a "re-vision" of your prior draft, but just a minor edit of it. Similarly, focusing only on reformatting quotations and citations when my comments suggest you need to revise the thesis and defend it better is a waste of your time. So is polishing the prose of a paragraph that may well be irrelevant to your main point. This is not to say that punctuation, grammar, formatting, and polished prose aren't important, but rather that you shouldn't let working on those things keep you from focusing on the larger questions of how well you understand the assignment, how well your main argument addresses the stakes or significance of the parallels and tensions you've observed in the texts you're analyzing, and how well you organize the paper and marshall evidence so as to persuade even the most skeptical readers to accept the validity of your argument. I think you'll find that as you consider these larger questions, and revise your introductory paragraph, the urge to include plot summary as filler, to repeatedly restate your claim rather than support it, and to multiply examples in support of a simple point will fade away. Because you have a much clearer sense of what you're trying to convince your readers to believe, you will be better able to organize your paper and decide what evidence best fits with which arguments, which in turn well help you make your sentence-level writing as precise and concise as possible.

Here are a few quick tips for checking over your revised essays after you've taken on the big questions discussed in the previous paragraph:

• examine your introductory paragraph: does it grab your readers' attention and make them want to read on? does it give them a sense of where your argument is headed or what your most provocative claim is without making it unnecessary to read the rest of the paper? does it establish your own voice and style?
• consider the order and function of your body paragraphs: if you can change their order without affecting the meaning of your essay, you have a problem; if so, note in the margin what each paragraph is for, what you want it to accomplish, and how it contributes to the larger goals of your paper--and consider what the most effective order for achieving your larger goals would be;
• examine the topic sentence of each paragraph: it should not just clarify what the subject of the paragraph is but help the reader connect that paragraph to your main argument; it should help your readers orient themselves and help you
• examine your transitions between paragraphs carefully: if you can't find a logical, syntactical, or rhetorical connection between adjacent paragraphs, you are running the risk of losing your reader in the gap between them;
• examine individual sentences for wordiness, repetition, diction, cliches, awkward syntax, and how they relates to patterns in the sentences around them (sometimes you might want to vary rhythm, sound, or length of a particular sentence to emphasize a key point);
• examine your conclusion: if you are restating your main points, do you do a better job of doing so here than in the original statement of them in the introduction? (if so, replace your intro with your conclusion or merge the two, and write a different conclusion that shifts gears in some way--discusses what follows from what you've just argued, brings up a text or issue related to your argument, shifts to another mode of analysis [say, from authorial goals to audience responses], and so on--while still providing a sense of closure.)

Specific suggestions for the two most popular options follow:

• "Women's Rights" option: The major pitfall people fell into on this option was to stop at the descriptive level--to only identify similarities and differences between various women writers' texts and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter without ever making an argument about what's at stake in the relation between the texts. A common approach for those who avoided this pitfall was to either argue for or against the notion that The Scarlet Letter should be considered a feminist text (as with the in-class debate on this topic, the class was split); another common approach was to try to identify Hawthorne's position on the question of separate spheres or female autonomy. The problem these writers encountered was not at the level of not fulfilling the requirements of the assignment or lacking a thesis, but a selective approach to supporting their argument. Most of these writers failed to anticipate and refute potential counter-arguments and counter-evidence or ignored inconvenient passages or patterns in the novel. My marginal comments were often aimed at getting people to consider challenges to their thesis. I strongly recommend that people who do a "re-vision" on this draft read and consider the various critical essays that may be said to be relevant to their topic that are included in their edition of The Scarlet Letter. The more aware you are of common arguments and evidence for the various positions on your topic, the better able you will be to advance a persuasive argument of your own.
• "America" option: People who chose this option tended to see The Scarlet Letter in Emersonian or Whitmanesque terms, and tended to argue that Hester represents Hawthorne's endorsement of American romanticism in political and aesthetic spheres. The problem these writers encountered was thus not at the level of not fulfilling the requirements of the assignment or lacking a thesis, but a selective approach to supporting their argument. Most of these writers failed to anticipate and refute potential counter-arguments and counter-evidence or ignored inconvenient passages or patterns in the novel. My marginal comments were often aimed at getting people to consider challenges to their thesis. I'm rooting for people to make their arguments more effectively, because those who stress the connections between Hawthorne and Emerson and Whitman are going against a critical consensus that dates back to at least Matthiessen's American Renaissance and Lewis's The American Adam (both of which can be found on reserve), and it's always fun (and very romantic, in the sense we've been using the term this semester) to try to overturn or rethink critical consensuses!

ENGL 332: American Romanticism, Spring 2001
Created: 2/21/01 4:18 pm
Last modified: 3/26/01 2:21 pm