Research Paper

Your research paper should be an argumentative essay that makes a specific claim about some aspect(s) of 2-3 of the literary works assigned in class. The claim should incorporate some specific school of literary theory discussed in class. Support this claim and argument in a coherent, developed, and organized essay of 1500 words or more and must also successfully use at least 3 critical secondary sources accessed through the relevant GMC Library databases.

Make sure your thesis is one that is arguable and requires research to effectively answer or prove.

Literary works are “Mother” and “Adventure” by Sherwood Anderson.

3 critical secondary sources are Atlas, Marilyn Judith. Sherwood Anderson and the Women of Winesburg, Xiao, Ningshuang, and Hongbin Dai. The Loss of Dream, Love and Words of Women: A Brief Analysis of Three Female Characters in Winesburg, Ohio. , and Zihan, Qian. Sherwood Andersons Feminine Consciousness Embodied in MotherConcerning Elizabeth Willard.

starting point

As I am brainstorming for my final research paper, I think I am going to focus on Sherwood Anderson’s stories Adventure and Mother. These two stories were very detailed and related in a lot of ways. They both focused on gender and repression. For my paper I will focus on how Anderson portrays women trapped within restrictive social expectations and how emotional and/or sexual repression shapes their identities. This paper will be a feminist literacy criticism. A possible research question I might use is How does Sherwood Anderson use Alice Hindman and Elizabeth Willard to show how small-town society limits women, and what does their unhappiness and bottled-up emotions say about life in Winesburg, Ohio? A working thesis statement for me right now is In Adventure and Mother, Anderson shows how strict small-town gender roles trap women and damage their sense of self. I will work to make it more nuanced but this is my starting point.