Research Paper proposal
The purpose of a research paper proposal is to show that you have ample reasoning and resources for
your research paper novel/topic. Also, it is to encourage you to be on task and moving forward.
Please take the proposal seriously.
Novel:
Author:
Author’s Year of Birth:
Author’s Nationality:
Setting of the Novel (Time and Place – note if set during a significant event, such as WWI or French Revolution):
Original Year of Publication:
Meeting Objectives and Identifying Outcomes:
Objectives Met
Outcomes
Reading of Primary Source (name the novel):
How much have you read so far?
Preliminary Topics:
List some Internet Cites/Book Notes/etc.
you’ve read to narrow topic (i.e. how did you
come up with topic list?).
Evaluation
Identify one or two topics on which you have
been focusing.
Identify Refined Topic and why you have
chosen it.
Identify what types of sources you have
found to date, where you have found them,
and how many:
Ex – journal article, Questia (3)
book, BHS library (1)
website, Internet (2)
Have you found sources that you needed to
discard? If so, explain why.
Continuing Research – Approximately how
much time have you put into your topic
selection and investigation of sources so far?
What ideas/phrases/terms/etc. are you using
in your search?
What do you need to do next?
Identify any difficulties you are having thus
far in the process.
Explain your comfort level with picking a
novel, topic, and locating sources.
Add any additional comments or questions
you have at this point.
Research Paper Questions
Research questions help develop your topic and communicate to your teacher what your paper will
likely address.
Example 1
Big Research Question:
How does Kate Chopin expose the subjugation of nineteenth-century women through suppressive
Victorian fashion?
Developing Research Questions:
1. What are society’s expectations for a woman in the nineteenth century?
2. What is socially appropriate dress for a Victorian “lady”?
a. What were collars like?
b. What were hemlines like?
c. How many times a day did a “lady” change?
d. How was the handkerchief a reflection of propriety?
e. How did corsets and other undergarments restrict women?
3. How does Adele Ratignolle dress?
4. In what way does Ratignolle’s dress reflect her socially conventional views?
5. What does Edna Pontellier’s daily routine look like?
6. How does Edna Pontellier dress at the beginning of the novel (when she joins her husband at
the breakfast table)?
7. How do Ratignolle’s and Pontellier’s clothing affect their comfort and ability to move while on
the beach?
8. What is the connection between clothing (layers of fabric, underskirts, corsets, etc.) and
dependency and weakness?
9. Why is Pontellier repulsed by Mariequita’s shoeless feet on the boat to the island?
10. What is Mariequita’s social class? What are Pontellier and Ratignolle’s social class?
11. How does dress differ for women of different social classes?
12. How does Ratignolle respond to the midwife’s presentation of a clean handkerchief during
pregnancy?
13. What does Pontellier’s clothes look like when she is painting in the birdhouse?
14. How does Pontellier’s change in dress reflect her increasingly unconventional views?
15. While alone in a room in the cottage on an island, why does Pontellier remove her clothing?
a. How does the shedding of her layers of clothing contribute to Pontellier’s “awakening”?
b. What connection does this act have to her lover, Robert Lebrun?
16. How is Pontellier dressing by the middle/end of the novel, and how does her change in dress
relate to her isolation from her family?
a. What is Chopin saying about society’s acceptance/embrace of an “awakened” woman
through this traditional family?
17. Why does Pontellier strip naked before swimming into the sea and committing suicide?
18. Is Pontellier’s suicide a cowardly surrender to a repressive society or is it a liberating triumph
over it, and what does her nakedness have to do with her end?
Example 2
Big Research Question:
How does William Shakespeare incorporate blood symbolism into his play Macbeth and what
importance does blood symbolism serve in the play?
Developing Research Questions:
1. Does the visual of blood add to the reality of Macbeth’s crime?
2. Why is blood significant?
3. What is the significance of blood symbolism throughout the play?
4. What connections are there between intense violence and ascensions to the throne in Scotland
at this time?
5. How is blood displayed throughout the play?
6. When do bloody scenes occur?
7. How often do bloody scenes occur?
8. Why do bloody scenes occur?
9. Are bloody scenes more often connecter to certain characters?
10. If so, which characters?
11. Who is the most affected by the “blood” or bloody scenes?
12. What images or symbols are connected to blood?
13. Of whom does the reader think when a bloody image is shown?
14. Does the symbol of “blood” represent other symbols?
15. Is blood sometimes shown as a “hallucination” and why is that important?