English 28: Women's Literature

Study Guide for Midterm Exam


The Midterm exam will consist of four short essay questions.  For each question, assert your opinions and be able to support your views with specific evidence from the writing of at least two writers that we have studied this semester.  If you can support your assertions with details from one work of each of two writers, that is sufficient.

Try to use different writers for each question.  (In other words, with four questions to answer, you should be able to remember the works of eight writers.  That's two writers per question.)

Here are the questions:

  1. So far this semester, several of the writers we have studied have dealt with the question "What do women want?"  What do the writers say women want?  Some issues to consider: Does the answer to this question change depending on if it is a male writer or a female writer?  Does the culture of the particular century influence the answer to that question, and if so, how?
  2. The Adam and Eve story is often used as a lesson to teach both men and women how women should be viewed and how they should be treated.  Using details from the works of at least two writers, discuss men's interpretations and women's interpretations of the Adam and Eve story, and the implication both of these interpretations have for the treatment of women.
  3. Women’s writing often reflects issues associated with the domestic realm.  Explore this aspect of women's writing and what it reveals about women's lives in the centuries that we have studied.
  4. Apart from the Adam and Eve issue, how else does women’s writing in the centuries that we have studied reflect the issue of women's place in society?  Perhaps you want to tackle this question focusing on occupations for women.
On the day of the exam, you should be able to spend 10 to 15 minutes answering each question with a short essay.  The trick, of course, is to know what you want to say before you walk into the exam.  So develop your answers now by trying to answer these questions and by selecting the eight (or more) authors that you will discuss.

Here is a review of the authors that we have discussed and their works.
 

CENTURY AUTHOR TITLES
600 B.C. Sappho various poems
400 B.C. Aristophanes (male) Lysistrada
1300s-1400s Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales, The Wyf of Bath's Prologue and Tale
1300s-1400s Julian of Norwich A Book of Showings
1300s-1400s Margery Kempe The Book of Margery Kempe
1400s Juliana Berners The Book of St. Alban's
1500s Elizabeth I "The Doubt of Future Foes"
"On Monsieur's Departure"
"Speech to the Troops at Tilsbury"
1500s-1600s Aemilia Lanyer Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum
"Eve's Apology in Defense of Women"
1600s Elizabeth Cary The Tragedy of Miriam (a play)
1600s Anne Bradstreet various poems, incl. "The Prologue," "The Author to Her Book," and "To My Dear and Loving Husband"
1600s Katherine Philips poems, incl. "On the Death of My First and Dearest Child, Hector Philips," "To Sir Amorous La Fool," and "A Married State"
1600s Aphra Behn "The WIlling Mistress," "The Disappointment," "To the Fair Clarinda, Who made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman," and Oroonoko
1600s-1700s Mary Astell "Ambition"
"A Serious Proposal to the Ladies"
1600s-1700s Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Poems and letters, incl. "Epitaph" and "To the Countess of Bute, Lady Montagu's Daughter"
1700s Anna Letitia Barbauld "The Rights of Woman"
"Washing Day"
1700s-1800s Abigail Adams letters to John Adams
late 1700s Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
1700s-1800s Jane Austen "Love and Freindship"