History 101: Family, Community, and Class
Mr. Schwartz
Paper Assignment: due April 3 IN CLASS
Write a four to five-page essay (double spacing) on one of the following two questions. For background and additional historical information you should draw on relevant secondary readings and class discussions. Your essay, however, must center on primary texts and offer a focused, well-documented interpretation of specific aspects of these texts that pertain to the questions below.
1 In The Devil’s Pool how did George Sand represent the proper relations between man and woman, between husband and wife? Did Sand differ from Restif de la Bretonne (in My Father’s Life and/or Ploughman’s Wife) on this subject? To what extent did Sand’s ideas indicate historical change in thinking about the relationship between husband and wife? On the basis of our study so far, what do you think is the historical significance of Sand’s ideas?
2. The study of historical rituals can reveal aspects of the past that are otherwise difficult to discern. According to anthropologist Clifford Geertz, for example, rituals present “stories that people tell about themselves.” Hence, when the rituals under study are those enacted by common people in the past, “the stories” told are important to study because they can reveal beliefs, actions, and emotions that are rarely recorded in other sources. If we follow Geertz and consider the wedding rituals described by George Sand at the end of The Devil’s Pool as stories that peasants told about themselves, what do we learn about French rural inhabitants of the era (roughly 1770 to 1850)? In your answer, consider at least one other primary source as a basis of comparison, choosing from among the earlier sources by Le Grand d’Aussy and Father Bernard, or from the selections we read from Balzac’s The Peasantry, a source contemporaneous with Sand’s novel. In the comparison you might ask what the wedding ritual reveals that another primary source does not, or whether a comparison of the primary sources can indicate historical change or differing historical viewpoints of observers and the observed. (Choose something not discussed in depth in class.)
Requirements and Check List:
· Your paper presents a documented interpretation, thesis, or argument. (Recall the difference between summary/description and analysis/interpretation.
· The paper contains an introduction that states or foreshadows in specific terms the thesis of your essay. Write the final version of your introduction after you’ve completed your essay.
· At the end of the paper, there is a meaningful conclusion that sums up clearly your major discoveries and thesis and makes clear what you have shown that is historically significant.
· Ideas and judgments are supported with evidence.
· Statements and vocabulary are accurate and precise; concrete and specific terms are used in preference to abstract and overly general ones: "daffodils" is concrete as compared to the abstract and general term "plants."
· Paragraphs are focused on one major point and include effective topic sentences.
· Acknowledge sources in parentheses (Author page) with a Works Cited on a separate sheet.
· Quotations: use direct quotations sparingly, and use them effectively by making clear what a quotation means.
· Proofread your paper carefully so that it is free of mistakes in grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
· Identify your paper by putting your social security/student number on it; do not put your name on it.
· Audience: assume that you are writing your essay for publication in a student journal of history: your readers are interested and knowledgeable about history, but they probably have not read the texts that you are investigating
Please do NOT fold your papers.