Essay 2: Essay on Mary Barton

Your second short essay (7-8 pages + a works cited page) will be on the novel Mary Barton. You will explore a topic about the novel that you think is interesting and significant. You can formulate your own topic based on your reading of the novel or focus on a topic from our class discussions. You should not, however, just summarize or repeat class discussions.

As you consider the length of this essay, your topic should be clearly defined as well as narrow enough so that you can develop your discussion thoroughly. Check with me if you have questions. 

For this paper, you will need to use a minimum of two secondary sources.  Use the Online Research Guide, located on the footer of the course website homepage.  This site will help you find journal articles about Mary Barton as well as your topic.  It will point you to library databases to search for articles (e.g., JSTOR, MLA International Bibliography.  Specific journals may be helpful, e.g., Victorian Studies).  Some websites may be helpful, but a website does not count toward the two minimum sources.  It will be an additional source.  You might also use the critical introduction from our Penguin edition of the novel, but it does not count toward the two minimum sources. Also, there are books on reserve about Mary Barton you will want to consult.  In addition, you might see our course website: Resources menu----British Literature Links ("Victorian Literature").  Reference works (e.g., the online Oxford English Dictionary or specialized encylopedias) may be helpful but also do not count towards the two minimum sources.

Once you choose and refine your topic, begin by reviewing the novel and your class notes, and your own reading notes.  Formulate a main question your essay will answer and line up your evidence. You might also try freewriting as an invention strategy.  Write out your topic on Mary Barton.  Then write nonstop for 20-30 mins--everything about the topic that comes to mind without worrying about structure or grammar. Analyze this freewriting for key ideas. Then proceed to your working thesis and outline.  **You will need to turn in a typed outline with your final essay (5pts).  See the outline handout you used for essay one.  Turn in the actual outline you use throughout the writing process.  This will be the same type of scratch (paragraph) outline you wrote for essay one.  Finally, as you formulate your topic, complete an initial search for sources to see what is available for your topic.  Sources should focus on the work you are writing about.  If you need help finding sources, seek help from a librarian.

Introduction/Thesis

Your introduction should be brief  for an essay of this length, most likely one paragraph, perhaps two. Begin your essay by naming the work your are writing about. Frame the issue you are exploring or ask a key question(s) that you will address for readers. You might also briefly contextualize the work you are writing about within the Victorian Age. Then state your thesis--the main point, conclusion, or claim you are making about your topic (and Mary Barton).

SAMPLE

(Thesis is in brackets)

Authorship, Publishing, and Audience in Dickens’s Prefaces

        In reading Dickens’s 1850 serial and 1869 Charles Dickens Edition prefaces for David Copperfield, readers certainly note the warm, familiar, intimate tone of an established author reflecting on the completion of his eighth novel.  Sharing his close, personal connection to the novel as a parent in the 1850 preface, that it is his “favorite child,” surely suggests readers should form a similar attachment to the novel when reading it, that we will experience and form our own “personal confidences” and “private emotions” with characters and the story just as Dickens did.  In addition, Dickens directs readers forward to his “two green leaves once a month” (11), not only a Romantic allusion to the natural, familial relationship he continues to cultivate with readers, a nod to the intimate-feeling tone established in the essays of Hazlitt and Lamb, but also to his readers’ anticipation and purchase of his next novel.  Later, in his largely unchanged 1869 preface, he does, in a telling addition, take readers into his secret but true “confidence” that David Copperfield is his favorite novel, or child, gently persuading readers and parents with sentimental strokes that they might also purchase his favorite work in volume form.  What a different note is struck, however, in the 1841 preface to Oliver Twist, which begins with Dickens defending an objection to the novel “on some high moral grounds in some high moral quarters” and then proceeding to address the key issues of these objections, namely the depiction of low, criminal life as somehow being unnatural or fabricated, as not true (456).  Here, the upcoming professional writer directly instructs and controls how to read his novel while addressing critics and reassuring publishers and readers about the authenticity of his artistic vision. [These two brief examples highlight notable differences that indicate how Dickens used prefaces, particularly the shift in their purposes as he became a successful, popular author.  First, a young, up-and-coming writer keenly aware of the need to establish a relationship with readers in order to sell books and satisfy his publishers, to be sure readers understand the purpose of his art, and to respond to reviewers and critics so that he, not they, shape the meaning of his literary works. And second, an established literary artist, Charles Dickens, not Boz anymore, who talks to his readers as familiar friends, sharing personal thoughts and impressions, not worried so much about (initial) sales and secure in his established, trusted reputation.]  These early and late prefaces that connect various novelistic formats and editions “[bind] author and readers in an imagined community” that is also real, as prefaces, written after the novel is completed, both introduce and say goodbye (Jordan 3).

Evidence/Quotations

After you have formulated a thesis, find the best evidence you can to support it. Do not organize your essay around "the plot"; organize it around the central idea you are presenting (in your thesis). Select the best examples to illustrate your ideas. Novel: You should use direct quotations--let the novel speak for itself and present readers with emphatic or telling examples that would lose their impact if paraphrased. Be careful if you use block quotations (make use of ellipses) and do not use too many quotations. Secondary Sources: Use quotations to support your argument, contextualizing it within critical discussions of the novel, or offer quotations that express ideas you disagree with in order to challenge specific ideas or claims.  Remember, quotations are not a substitute for your own thinking. You must interpret them for readers. Quotations are examples that illustrate your ideas.  See the MLA Handbook (9th ed.) for the mechanics of quoting. Also, consult the handout on integrating quotations you used for essay one.  Copies are in the library.  For this essay, you will use in-text or parenthetical citations and a works cited page.

In your essay, you might reference other works we have studied this semester to make apposite comparisons.

For this essay you need a works cited page.  Again, consult the MLA Handbook (9th ed.) as needed. You will cite Mary Barton (our Penguin edition) + at least two secondary sources. The works cited page receives the page number after the last page of essay, e.g., page 8 or 9.

Style/Grammar/Formatting Audience

Assume readers, who are students taking a 200- or 300-level English literature course, have a basic knowledge of the work's plot. What would this audience expect to learn from your essay? What would be their reason for reading it? Keep these questions in mind as your draft and revise.

Feel free to see me if you have any questions. I'll also be glad to look at drafts as you write them.

Generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) has uses in the workplace and in classrooms where it is intergrated into course content as a learning tool, not a crutch.  However, in this course, we will not use AI.  Using AI to write an initial draft your essay is cheating, and any essay that is AI generated will be treated as a form of plagiarism, defined as academic misconduct by University policy.  You will receive an "F" on the essay and possibly for a course grade.  Using AI to create writing assignments but then simply editing them yourself is still plagiarism.

The essay's due date is on the syllabus.  We will adjust this if necessary.