Gender and Race in American Literature—Frustrated Wives and Fathers, Stalwart Spouses and Suffering Sons
This unit sees us reading two of the centerpieces of American literature focusing on those caught in the margins—Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (April 14/15) and August Wilson’s Fences (April 30/May 1). These stories follow the struggles of two protagonists, living in major American cities at the end of the nineteenth century and during the mid-twentieth century, respectively. Each protagonist lives a life of frustrated personal fulfillment as a result of their status, subverting their own desires to fit the needs of the (white) men who rule the worlds in which they live. Each also feels compelled to stray from their family in an attempt to experience a sense of personal satisfaction—but with what other motives or success? Fences, specifically, discusses the demons that haunt those seeking the American Dream but held back by their status as a minority. What do these works say about the “tragedy” of the common individual? What do they propose as the ways out (if there are ways out) of the spirals of failure and despair, when the dream that you chase remains forever out of your reach? These works touch upon themes of identity, of self-care, of selflessness, of strength and weakness.
Outside Reading for Unit 6 (please select from this list for outside reading or run your choice by me):
The Glass Menagerie (1945), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1954), by Tennessee Williams [100, 150, 150 pp. each]
Death of a Salesman (1949) or The Crucible (1952), by Arthur Miller [140 pp. each]
Catcher in the Rye (1951), by J. D. Salinger [280 pp.]
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), by Edward Albee [200? Pp.]
The Bell Jar (1971), by Sylvia Plath [240 pp.]
Ordinary People (1976), by Judith Guest [270 pp.]
The Joy Luck Club (1989), by Amy Tan [350 pp.]
A Thousand Acres (1991), by Jane Smiley [380 pp.]
Independence Day (1995), by Richard Ford [464 pp.]
August: Osage County (2007), by Tracy Letts [150 pp.]