Background
Susan Perkins Gilman and Octavia Butler led lives that might appear well removed. However, their intellectual concerns centered on common questions of freedom, equality, and justice. Both were concerned with social confinement and its physical manifestations. Both writers treated the experience of subordinated women in ways that expand our concepts of the literature of captivity.
Throughout this course we have addressed different forms and stories of captivity. Now in this final paper we shall attempt to put them together and understand how genres and themes of captivity echo through US literature.
Question
Using the body of readings assigned during this course, propose an argument on how captivity can shape minds and personalities. Your argument should address immaterial forces of captivity across a range of narratives and stories. How do these ideas function to effect, reinforce, or maintain physical captivity? How does captivity gain its power over minds? How do threats and fears work, and how does resistance manifest itself? IMPORTANT: The paper should integrate a discussion of both Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ and Butler’s Kindred that constitutes approximately half of this 10-page paper.
Sample Solution