Long Essay – Option 5

She Stoops to Conquer: Conspicuous Consumption and Its Relation to Gender and Courtship

In Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, the author addresses conspicuous consumption through Mrs. Dorothy Hardcastle and Miss Kate Hardcastle. Therefore, I will argue that the women’s gender determines the ways they conspicuously consume, express, and leisure via close readings of Mrs. Hardcastle’s desire to travel and her want of fashion, as well as Miss Hardcastle’s decision to put aside her class to achieve her three goals with Mr. Marlow.

Long Essay – Option 3

The History of Mary Prince: The Literarily Constructed Role of the Body and Its Relation to Gender, Possession, and Permissibility 

In Mary Prince’s The History of Mary Prince, the body functions as an exploitable tool that Mary is constantly attempting to reappropriate. Therefore, I will argue that in her narrative, Mary’s body is constructed as a tool which is restricted by her gender, that she is accessed and possessed more frequently by others than herself, and that her story represents actions thought to be permissible; furthermore, via an analysis of the format and publication of her narrative, I will show how her narrative has been literarily constructed in a somewhat misleading way.