LITR 4231
Early American Literature
        

Final Exam Essays 2014
assignment

Sample answers for
Essay 2d: Inspiring / Challenging Idea

 

Sarah Robin Roelse

2 May 2014

Essay 2 D:  The Founding Mothers of Our Nation

          Throughout the world’s history, women have been held down and tucked away from education. It hasn’t been until recently (within the past four or five centuries) that we have really began to develop true voices of our own, even if it meant going against the suggested social norms and values of our culture.  With the ever growing development of women in the educational and literate world, I think that it is certainly worth mentioning and exploring how far we, as a group of people, have come.  As a female literature major, I have to say that learning about these extraordinary women was exciting, not only because their stories rocked, but because I personally had never had the chance to learn about them before (and let’s face it, by the time students reach college courses, they think they’ve already heard it all; so it’s refreshing to learn new material!). In this course we focused on several female revolutionaries, artists, and writers; this is very important because it shows students that it isn’t impossible for customs and societal norms to change, and it enables female (and male) students to recognize some of the lesser known heritages that our country was formed from.  Moreover, including female history into the course curriculum where we have, in the past, focused primarily on male influences on our country’s formation, provides insight to the many struggles that women have faced and overcome to achieve the status where we are now.

          One woman, whom I’d never even heard of before this class, completely went behind the back of her family and national law in order to educate herself was Sor Juana Inez de Cruz.  Coming from a prominent Spanish background, Sor Juana had the chance to do something that women wouldn’t get much of a chance to do for quite some time to come:  Learn to read and write.  Sor Juana was seen as a fantastic woman and even considered the “Tenth Muse” in her culture; it is unfortunate that most of her writings and instruments were seized by the Spanish church simply because it was unacceptable for women to read, write, and create art at the time.  I would consider Sor Juana to be up there with female figures such as Joan of Arc for having the will and the courage to go behind the backs of Spanish rules to further her education – not every woman would have had the courage to do so, and most didn’t even have the opportunity if they’d wanted to – so her presence as a “female rights activist” is legitimately validated; she only wanted for herself to be able to have the same abilities as any man would.

          Considering the fact that women have made such headway in the past few centuries, I think it was nice to hear and not only read or see some of the progress that we made in our endeavors through the class lectures.  In the Romantic Movement women made extensive amounts of progress in the arts, as well as literature.  One such artist was composer Amy Beach, who wrote concertos, operas, sonatas, and songs.  Amy Beach is important to mention because even after her husband passed away, she continued to tour the world and play music – this shows that she was comfortable and confident enough in her ability to not need a man.  While this concept can be a harsh reality for men sometimes, I think that it is something that needs to be addressed so that women can feel that they do have the ability to make it on their own.  It is women like Amy Beach who can be realistic role models for women today who don’t have men in their lives; and for lots of women, this is the kind of role model that can be the most important.

          Focusing on another female that we often hear about but never really know about is Abigail Adams, the lesser known of the Adams family.  Growing up in America, we all take social studies courses and hear about our founding fathers, but this class made it easy and applicable to hear about our founding mothers as well.  Abigail Adams was an important woman for her time because she openly suggested to her husband, John Adams, that women should have equal rights too.  As an early mother of feminism and the women’s rights movement, she may be one of the most important because she was of prominent social stature; she could reasonably have made a greater difference had men not been so keen to keep women in ‘their place.’  Through the letters that were discussed in the lectures, we see that even though she was avid about receiving equal treatment as a woman, she also had a loving and passionate relationship with her husband, which I think a lot of people forget can be done -- there is no rule stating that a feminist can’t be married to a man and have a good relationship with him, while all the time being opinionated and well educated to the social matters at hand.

          While these aforementioned ladies are all respectable and worth learning about, the woman that I was most interested in during our class was oddly enough, writer, Susana Rowson.  In her book, Charlotte Temple, she managed to not only write one of the first American novels, but she also focused the novel towards women and designed it to be a moralistic and heeding book to her female readers.  This kind of literary genius is not something that all writers are able to achieve; many popular novelists in the modern world such as Danielle Steele simply write the same book over and over with a change in location and character name without doing anything, but Rowson really touched her readers (in the past and present).  As a female literature major, I appreciate Rowson’s effort that she put into her novel not only because it blended effects of drama, melodrama, and morality into a juicy read, but because it had an effect on me when I legitimately thought it wouldn’t.  I figured that the book would be dry and boring, but it was pleasantly humorous in the right places and tender when needed; it appealed to my feminine side by making me feel empathy for the hero(ines) and hatred for the villains.  This, in my opinion, is what makes a novel great!

          As a non-feminist woman in this class, I feel that I have learned to appreciate my gender quite a bit more than I initially had; of course I realize and know that there have been females in the past that have enabled me to be where I am today – in a college level class with male peers and having the ability to make my own choices (and even voting!)--  but learning about new personalities and women who have put their lives at risk in order to better themselves really makes me proud to be a woman.  Each of the women mentioned above, Sor Juana, Amy Beach, Abigail Adams, and Susanna Rowson each have a certain appeal to them that make me literally smile when I think about the trials and tribulations that they must have overcome to be the women that they were.  I am glad that this class introduced me to some of our country’s founding mothers and female artists because without them I wouldn’t be the woman I am today; in fact, there’s a great possibility that none of us might be.