English 398: Assignment for Final Essay
(Due Tuesday, December 6, by 5:00 p.m.*)

*Please put a hard copy of your final paper (rather than e-mailing it to me) in my faculty mailbox in the English Department Office in Denney 421 by the deadline. The office is closed and locked at 5:00 p.m. each day so you should count on turning in your paper a few minutes before that, at the very latest.

In an essay of about 1,500 words (given the +/- 10% rule, the paper can be 1,350 – 1,650 words), discuss how four of the critical approaches that we have studied this term can be used to develop interesting interpretations of Kate Chopin’s “The Father of Desiree’s Baby,” an online version of which can be found here:

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/ChoDesi.html

Here is a list of the critical approaches we have covered this quarter:
As you prepare to write your essay, think about how you might use any four of these approaches to develop interpretations of Chopin’s story. Then, before you meet with me individually in the conferences we’ll have during the last week of classes, create an outline in which you provide a tentative statement of your overall thesis and a list of the main points you’d like to make in connection with the four critical approaches you’ll be drawing on in your essay. What insights into the story can each of these approaches help generate? Compare and contrast the kinds of insights each approach affords, and discuss how the interpretations made possible by each approach might complement the interpretations made possible by the other approaches.

Although you are not required to use external sources for this assignment, you should feel free to consult critical studies of Chopin’s work, as well as biographical and historical sources. As always, though, be careful to cite any sources that you consult, and make sure that you indicate clearly in your paper whether you have incorporated into your argument ideas that you read about in external sources.