CHABOT COLLEGE—SPRING 2015—2nd
PAPER—Eng 4
One
of the central claims that James Gilligan makes in his book Violence, and that Mary Pipher makes in
her book, Reviving Ophelia, is that
girls and women in the United States today are being terribly harmed by
something called the “Girl Code.” (This code is actually nothing more than the
socially expected gender rules for women.) Pipher argues that this Code is
everywhere and that girls and women have a hard time not changing their
behavior to meet the Code’s guidelines. He goes so far as to say that any girl
who resists the code should be called a Hero. And yet, anthropologists have
argued that the job of any society is to keep itself growing and prospering.
And if this means that some individual
members of the society suffer—as long as the society itself is improved--well
that is the way it goes.
For this paper you will be investigating these ideas and
coming to your own conclusions about whether you think this trade-off (between
the needs of women and the needs of a greater society) is worth it. Here are the questions for you to consider:
What do you think
are some elements of this Gender Code for women in the book or movie?
What are the
negative consequences for women when they follow the code in the book or movie?
Could the Code
offer any Positive benefits for women? For society?
Is Sara a Hero? Why
or why not?
Is Sara a Feminist?
Why or why not?
Of
course you will want to start paragraph topic sentences off with concepts and
keywords, while trying to keep people—Reb/Sara—out of that part of the
paragraph. They are brought in later to support your concept.
And
of course you must integrate quotes from Bread
Givers, Hester Street and from any other helpful sources you may have in
order to support your points. You need to average 2-3 quotes per page of the
paper.
The
page minimum is 6 full pages….
—BNDJTM
(But Never Do Just The Minimum.)
The
first draft is due on March 18
The
final draft is due on March 25
