Sabrina Patrizio’s essay, “Wouldn’t You Like to be Loved by April Wheeler: Suburban and Feminine Containment in Revolutionary Road,” was written as the final paper for EN 220: Postwar American Literature. As in WR 150, in EN 220 students read a variety of texts that revolve around a particular theme and write research-driven final essays. In order to complete this final assignment, Sabrina proposed her argument in a prospectus, explored relevant research by constructing and revising an annotated bibliography, and crafted and revised the final essay in response to peer and instructor comments.
Sabrina came to me early in the research process because she found that very little had been written about Revolutionary Road—a fact that she saw initially as an obstacle to writing about the novel. However, once she began to consider new approaches to the problem and different strategies for performing research, she was able to capitalize on the limited scholarship on Richard Yates and begin to fill in that gap. The final version you see here represents a series of revisions to Sabrina’s line of argument with particular attention paid to positioning the claim within a body of scholarship and considering alternative perspectives and counterarguments. This essay is a joy to read because of Sabrina’s sensitive literary analysis and beautifully wrought prose. Sabrina is an incredibly gifted writer, and her persistence in developing her approach to research has paid off in this exemplary essay.
— GWEN KORDONOWY
EN 220: Postwar American Literature