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ENGL197 G – H3

Writing in the English Discipline


English 197 G | Handout #3 – Developing Lines of Inquiry

Overview
Creating new knowledge in English discourse through argumentation is not a matter of an
author’s whim, but rather a development that should grow directly out of the reading and
analysis of texts. While texts are always open to multiple interpretations, this does not mean
that they will suffer any kind of interpretation or line of inquiry. The clarity, rigor, and
effectiveness of arguments in English largely depend on the quality of their purposeful use of
texts and the focus and relevance of their line of inquiry.

Therefore, the best place to start developing your argument is direct engagement with the text.
This practice stands in contrast to abstract reflection about general themes, imposing pre-
determined questions on the text, or simply hunting for evidence for an assumed topic. Building
your inquiry out-of, rather than on-to a text or set of texts will help you avoid over-
generalization in claims, a common problem that often plagues even professional scholarship.

Strategy: Particular to General


In order to develop your line of inquiry for pursuit in Essay #1 you were asked to prepare a
commentary on a specific passage of your interest from The Coquette, providing clear
explication and developing a line of inquiry you might pursue later. The second aspect of this
task involved developing such a line of inquiry that would be of interest to Anderson in some
way. As you can see, the movement of your thinking proceeded from the particulars of the
passage –your understanding and interest in its language, imagery, topic(s), etc. – to the
concepts and concerns of the theory.

Example: from “The Horizontal Tension of Friendship in The Coquette”

Marriage is the tomb of friendship. It appears to me a very selfish state. Why do


people, in general, as soon as they are married, centre all their cares, their
concerns, and pleasures in their own families? former acquaintances are
neglected or forgotten. The tenderest ties between friends are weakened, or
dissolved; and benevolence itself moves in a very limited sphere. It is the glory of
the marriage state, she rejoined, to refine, by circumscribing our enjoyments.
Here we can repose in safety.

"The friendships of the world are oft


Confed'racies in vice, or leagues in pleasure:
Our's has the purest virtue for its basis;
And such friendship ends not but with life."

True, we cannot always pay that attention to former associates, which we may wish; but the little
community which we superintend is quite as important an object; and certainly renders us more
beneficial to the public. (Foster 24-5)

In this passage Eliza confides in her friend Lucy her frustration with the limitation of friendship
sustained by marriage. Recently “assailed” by Boyer, the legitimate and sincere suitor, and the
calculating Sanford, she has become very concerned about the prospects of engaging a man
because it threatens her sense of freedom in friendship. Although Lucy rejoins that marriage is a
refinement of friendship, aligning it with “purest virtue” and “safety,” Eliza sees not only a
problematic narrowing of friendship’s benevolence to a “limited sphere,” but also a loss of its
ENGL197 G – H3

positive social function. What is important to note is that Eliza’s reasoning is complex: she is not
simply complaining selfishly about personal loss, but also a social loss. Even if we remain cynical
and take her concern as an insincere strategy to justify her selfish concern (by claiming a social
value that she herself does not really believe in), this strategy still demonstrates a very modern
awareness of community.
This modern awareness is in contrast to some of the qualities Anderson attributes to pre-
modern, monarchical society. For example, Anderson characterizes the imagination of
community in pre-modern societies as oriented hierarchically and centripetally, meaning
subjects imagined their place and function in society as a matter of “hierarchical” concern: their
place in society is conditioned by social distance from the divine; and “centripetal” concern:
their sense of self and society was not comparative to other differing societies, but rather
imagined as cosmologically central (15). Elsewhere Anderson refers to this aspect of pre-modern
consciousness as the “general principle of verticality” (20), emphasizing social imagining that
placed individuals as subjects to families, families subjects to functionaries and clergymen, and
these subjects to the central concerns of monarchs as representations of the divine. This vertical
orientation in how individuals would imagine their social function is also at play, as a foil to
Eliza’s modern awareness, in Lucy’s rejoinder above.
Lucy’s comments work to discipline Eliza with a kind of pre-modern imagining of her
social role, seeking to instill a sense of hierarchical order that places the “state of marriage” as a
centralizing concern for women. Here friendship is seen as subordinate to marriage in the
hierarchy of social goals for women, suggesting that the friendship of marriage, which
constrains the functions of women in society to domesticity and support of the husband and his
interests, is central to the way Lucy imagines women’s place in community. Furthermore, this
orientation is tied into religion, for “virtue” was generally indistinguishable from scripture
during her time. Thus, when Lucy says that marriage ends up “circumscribing [women’s]
enjoyments,” she is, in effect, pointing to a subtle hierarchy by which Eliza’s imagining of
community must be disciplined.
This scene seems to suggest a complex tension between the socially horizontal impulses
of friendship that Eliza values, and the verticality of the institution of marriage and moral
correctness for women. This begs us to ask, as readers, how the “chymical powers of friendship”
pose a threat to the community represented in the novel…

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