Even the absence of women in a text can provide commentary on how women were treated and viewed in literature and society/culture in general. By examining at least 3 authors (either male or female) how do you see women treated in American Literature? Does this treatment relate to the bigger context of how women were treated and viewed in society for the period we are studying, which is the early 1600’s to the early 1900s?
Authors and texts to choose from below. Please let me know if you need any links to read these and I can send them over.
William Bradford: “Of Plymouth Plantation”
Anne Bradstreet: “Upon the Burning of our House”
Benjamin Franklin: “Autobiography”
Jonathan Edwards: “Personal Narrative”
Washington Irving: “Rip Van Winkle”
Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Nature”
Edgar Allen Poe: “Cask of Amontillado”
Nathaniel Hawthorne: “Young Goodman Brown” & “The Minister’s Black Veil”
Mary E Wilkins Freeman: “The Revolt of Mother”
Emily Dickinson: “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass” & “Some Keep the Sabbath going to Church”
Steven Crane: “A Man Said to the Universe” & “The Open Boat”
Charlotte E Perkins Gilman: “The Yellow Wallpaper”
