EN328 English Literature and Feminisms, 1790-1899
Autumn Term 2014 – Assessed Essay I
Write a 5,000 word essay on ONE of the following. You should be primarily engaged
with the set texts of the course studied in term 1. Supplementary reference may be
made to other test, by agreement with your tutor.
1. In consultation with your seminar tutor construct an essay title that will allow you to
write on an aspect of the work of term 1 which has particularly interested you. (N.B. You
must agree on the wording of your title with your tutor before commencing work).
2. Compare and contrast Mary Wollstonecraft’s and Hannah More’s ideas of appropriate
female education.
3. Write an essay on the issue of sensibility and how it is portrayed in at least two of the
course texts.
3. How do issues of class impact and intersect with ideas of gender in at least two of the
course texts?
4. In what ways do at least two of the authors on the course explore the significance of
women's reading?
5. Explore the issue of feminised spaces in at least two of the texts on the course.
6. How significant is the relationship between the female body and femininity as explored
in two of the texts on the course?
7. Compare and contrast examples of women's absence/silence in two of the texts studied
8. Compare and contrast two different texts in which the line between the public and
private spheres is called into question.
9. What are the key categories and arguments women poets invoke to make their
arguments for the iniquity of slavery and/or the conditions of factory labour? How
successful are their arguments?
10. How is deviation from traditional notions of femininity explored in at least two of the
texts on the course?