Because of their complex relationships to
power, economics and age operate as
essential pieces in the textual
performances of gender identities,
performances that suggest conscious
parodies of these identities
and lead to radical rejections of gender norms.
Godfrey , " Jane Eyre, from Governess
to Girl Bride", Esther SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900,
45: 4, (2005): 853-871
1 comment:
Thank you for this, Masa. This is a difficult one! I agree that the sentence above *could* be taken to be a thesis statement. However, the following sentence is:
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Furthermore, the class differences between Jane and Rochester combine with the gap between their ages to exaggerate the already extreme binary logic of Victorian gender relations and create what Judith Butler calls "psychic excess," a feature of "psychic mimesis" that structures performance and potentially undermines gender identities.
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The use of the word "Furthermore" suggests that this sentence and the one before it both the same *type* of function. So if the first sentence was a thesis statement, the second one would be as well. This isn't possible, since a paper can only have one thesis statement!
So perhaps the *last* sentence of the paragraph is the thesis statement? This often happens in professional academic papers, because the summary of the supporting arguments is often missing. Let's take a look at that last sentence:
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Reading Jane Eyre to uncover how class and age influence gender offers more insight into the text's subtle shifts in power and potentially reconciles disparate critical readings of the novel.
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This could also be considered to be a thesis statement, but it isn't very satisfactory. Offering "more insight" isn't a thesis, and neither is reconciling "disparate critical readings".
I think I would have to say that this paper doesn't really have a thesis statement in the sense that we usually understand it. There is no sentence that expresses the main purpose of the paper, nothing that sums up what it is trying to prove.
This would be a weakness if you were presenting a paper as an undergraduate at university. It doesn't mean that the author of this paper is wrong, though. I was able to find a pre-publication version of the complete paper online, and I could see that this paper has an "abstract". An abstract is a kind of summary at the beginning of an academic paper. MLA style does not usually use abstracts, but if a paper has an abstract then a thesis statement isn't considered necessary in quite the same way.
The abstract of this paper is as follows:
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Clarke compares the title character of Emily Bronte's "Jane Eyre" to the German version of the Cinderella story by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm. Bronte fuses classical mythology, Christian allegory, and fairy tale to create a feminist allegory.
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This isn't a thesis statement either. This describes what the writer is going to *do* in this paper, not what he is going to *prove*. The main conclusion is not given until the end of the paper:
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The structure of Jane Eyre is a complex fusion of classical mythology, Christian allegory, and fairy tale, resulting finally in a feminist allegory, a woman's Pilgrim's Progress, in which those elements of Christianity that demean women's intelligence, will, desire, and integrity are assessed and found wanting.
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This tells me what the paper is basically about; the author wants to say that Bronte criticizes the kind of Christianity that looks down on women. That is the thesis.
The complete pre-publication version of this paper can be downloaded here:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Futamlit.pbworks.com%2Ff%2Fjane%2Beyre%2Barticle.doc&ei=NsmqUvCeKpGukgWIkYG4BA&usg=AFQjCNHahk0Xz32qun6ujN6k8GCI-PIRZA&sig2=ENwXeaUY-tjFtNodXs2Owg&bvm=bv.57967247,d.dGI&cad=rja
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