Prompt: In her research on love, Barbara Frederickson reconceptualizes love as an embodied process that can have a
wider reach and increased frequency than human definitions of love usually allow. By looking at how love
happens in the body—in the brain, through the hormone oxytocin, and via the vagus nerve—Frederickson
argues for the possibility of increased individual experiences of love as well as more communal ones:
“micro-moments of love, of positivity resonance, can also be viewed as the doorways through which caring
and compassionate communities are forged” (129). While Hartman’s essay seems to have an opposite focus
in how she documents the alienation of communities from each other, she also writes about the “mutuality
and creativity” (237) required for young women like Esther Brown to “make a beautiful life” (236), a goal
not unlike the “mutual care” (125) that Frederickson describes. For analytic essay four, draw on specific
idea-rich passages from both Frederickson’s and Hartman’s readings and one other reading of your choice
to compose an original argument that responds to the following question: How could Hartman’s “method”
of telling a story from “inside the circle” (xiv) be an attempt to create positivity resonance for her
readers? Use a second reading of your choice to consider further how texts work on readers.
