RHETORICAL ANALYSIS SAMPLE ESSAY Harriet Clark .docx

RHETORICAL ANALYSIS
SAMPLE ESSAY
Harriet Clark
Ms. Rebecca Winter
CWC 101
13 Feb. 2015
Not Quite a Clean Sweep: Rhetorical Strategies in
Grose’s “Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier”
A woman’s work is never done: many American women grow
up with this
saying and feel it to be true. One such woman, author Jessica
Grose, wrote “Cleaning:
The Final Feminist Frontier,” published in 2013 in the New
Republic, and she argues that
while the men in our lives recently started taking on more of the
childcare and cooking,
cleaning still falls unfairly on women. Grose begins building
her credibility with

personal facts and reputable sources, citing convincing facts and
statistics, and
successfully employing emotional appeals; however, toward the
end of the article, her
attempts to appeal to readers’ emotions weaken her credibility
and ultimately, her
argument.
In her article, Grose first sets the stage by describing a specific
scenario of house-
cleaning with her husband after being shut in during Hurricane
Sandy, and then she
outlines the uneven distribution of cleaning work in her
marriage and draws a comparison
to the larger feminist issue of who does the cleaning in a
relationship. Grose continues
by discussing some of the reasons that men do not contribute to
cleaning: the praise for a
clean house goes to the woman; advertising and media praise
men’s cooking and
childcare, but not cleaning; and lastly, it is just not fun.
Possible solutions to the problem,
Grose suggests, include making a chart of who does which
chores, dividing up tasks

based on skill and ability, accepting a dirtier home, and making
cleaning more fun with
gadgets.
Throughout her piece, Grose uses many strong sources that
strengthen her
credibility and appeal to ethos, as well as build her argument.
These sources include,
“sociologists Judith Treas and Tsui-o Tai,” “a 2008 study from
the University of New
Hampshire,” and “P&G North America Fabric Care Brand
Manager, Matthew Krehbiel”
(qtd. in Grose). Citing these sources boosts Grose’s credibility
by showing that she has
Hook
Context
Article author’s
claim or purpose
Thesis
Summary of the
article’s main

points in the
second paragraph
(could also be in
the introduction)
Third paragraph
begins with a
transition and
topic sentence that
reflects the first
topic in the thesis
Quotes illustrate
how the author
uses appeals to
ethos
done her homework and has provided facts and statistics, as
well as expert opinions to
support her claim. She also uses personal examples from her
own home life to introduce
and support the issue, which shows that she has a personal stake
in and first-hand
experience with the problem.

Adding to her ethos appeals, Grose uses strong appeals to logos,
with many facts
and statistics and logical progressions of ideas. She points out
facts about her marriage
and the distribution of household chores: “My husband and I
both work. We split
midnight baby feedings ...but ... he will admit that he’s never
cleaned the bathroom, that I
do the dishes nine times out of ten, and that he barely knows
how the washer and dryer
work in the apartment we’ve lived in for over eight months.”
These facts introduce and
support the idea that Grose does more household chores than her
husband. Grose
continues with many statistics:
[A]bout 55 percent of American mothers employed full time do
some housework
on an average day, while only 18 percent of employed fathers
do. ... [W]orking
women with children are still doing a week and a half more of
“second shift”
work each year than their male partners. ... Even in the
famously gender-neutral
Sweden, women do 45 minutes more housework a day than their

male partners.
These statistics are a few of many that logically support her
claim that it is a substantial
and real problem that men do not do their fair share of the
chores. The details and
numbers build an appeal to logos and impress upon the reader
that this is a problem worth
discussing.
Along with strong logos appeals, Grose effectively makes
appeals to pathos in
the beginning and middle sections. Her introduction is full of
emotionally-charged words
and phrases that create a sympathetic image; Grose notes that
she “was eight months
pregnant” and her husband found it difficult to “fight with a
massively pregnant person.”
The image she evokes of the challenges and vulnerabilities of
being so pregnant, as well
as the high emotions a woman feels at that time effectively
introduce the argument and its
seriousness. Her goal is to make the reader feel sympathy for
her. Adding to this idea
are words and phrases such as, “insisted,” “argued,” “not fun,”
“sucks” “headachey,” “be

judged,” “be shunned” (Grose). All of these words evoke
negative emotions about
cleaning, which makes the reader sympathize with women who
feel “judged” and
shunned”—very negative feelings. Another feeling Grose
reinforces with her word
choice is the concept of fairness: “fair share,” “a week and a
half more of ‘second shift’
work,” “more housework,” “more gendered and less frequent.”
These words help
Analysis explains
how the quotes
show the effective
use of pathos, as
noted in the thesis
Analysis explains
how the quotes
show the effective
use of ethos, as
noted in the thesis
Quote that
illustrates appeals
to logos
Quote that
illustrates appeals

to logos
Transition and
topic sentence
about the second
point from the
thesis
Quotes that
illustrate appeals
to pathos
Transition and
topic sentence
about the third
point from the
thesis
Analysis explains
how the quotes
show the effective
use of logos, as
noted in the thesis
This document was developed by the
College Writing Center
STLCC-Meramec

Created 2/2015 by HSC
establish the unfairness that exists when women do all of the
cleaning, and they are an
appeal to pathos, or the readers’ feelings of frustration and
anger with injustice.
However, the end of the article lacks the same level of
effectiveness in the
appeals to ethos. For example, Grose notes that when men do
housework, they are
considered to be “’enacting “small instances of gender
heroism,” or ‘SIGH’s’—which,
barf.” The usage of the word “barf” is jarring to the reader;
unprofessional and immature,
it is a shift from the researched, intelligent voice she has
established and the reader is less
likely to take the author seriously. This damages the strength of
her credibility and her
argument.
Additionally, her last statement in the article refers to her
husband in a way that
weakens the argument. While returning to the introduction’s
hook in the conclusion is a
frequently-used strategy, Grose chooses to return to her
discussion of her husband in a

humorous way: Grose discusses solutions, and says there is “a
huge, untapped market ...
for toilet-scrubbing iPods. I bet my husband would buy one.”
Returning to her own
marriage and husband is an appeal to ethos or personal
credibility, and while that works
well in the introduction, in the conclusion, it lacks the strength
and seriousness that the
topic deserves and was given earlier in the article.
Though Grose begins the essay by effectively persuading her
readers of the
unfair distribution of home-maintenance cleaning labor, she
loses her power in the end,
where she most needs to drive home her argument. Readers can
see the problem exists in
both her marriage and throughout the world; however, her shift
to humor and sarcasm
makes the reader not take the problem as seriously in the end.
Grose could have more
seriously driven home the point that a woman’s work could be
done: by a man.
Works Cited

Grose, Jessica. “Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier.” New
Republic. The New
Republic, 19 Mar. 2013. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.
Quote illustrates
how the author
uses appeal to
ethos
Transition and
topic sentence
about fourth point
from thesis
Analysis explains
how quote
supports thesis
Transition and
topic sentence
about fourth point
from thesis
Conclusion returns
to ideas in the
thesis and further
develops them
Analysis explains
how quote
supports thesis

Quote illustrates
how the author
uses appeal to
ethos
Last sentence
returns to the hook
in the introduction
Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier
Why men still don't do their share of the dirty work.
By JESSICA GROSE
March 18, 2013
The day after Hurricane Sandy, my husband had cabin fever and
was desperate to go for a walk. We had been trapped in our
apartment for 36 hours. Here was the rub. His father was about
to come over, and our living room was strewn with shut-in
detritus: magazines, beef jerky wrappers, and empty soup cans.
Even though I was eight months pregnant, I insisted we tidy up.
My husband argued that his dad didn’t care if our place was a
bit messy, but it’s really hard to fight with a massively pregnant
person who is hanging up jackets and washing dishes.
When it comes to housecleaning, my basically modern,
egalitarian marriage starts looking more like the backdrop to an
Updike short story. My husband and I both work. We split
midnight baby feedings. My husband would tell you that he
does his fair share of the housework, but if pressed, he will
admit that he’s never cleaned the bathroom, that I do the dishes
nine times out of ten, and that he barely knows how the washer
and dryer work in the apartment we’ve lived in for over eight
months. Sure, he changes the light bulbs and assembles the Ikea
furniture, but he’s never scrubbed a toilet in the six years we’ve
lived together.
This is not just our issue. According to the U.S. Bureau of

Labor Statistics, about 55 percent of American mothers
employed full time do some housework on an average day,
while only 18 percent of employed fathers do. Even if you
control for the fact that moms with full-time jobs tend to work
fewer hours than dads with full time jobs (as studies have),
working women with children are still doing a week and a half
more of “second shift” work each year than their male
partners.1
Furthermore, when you look at the granular data from time-use
studies, the housework men actually do is both more gendered
and less frequent than the housework women do. Fathers do
slightly more lawn care than moms—11 percent of working dads
are out mowing the lawn on an average day compared to 6.4
percent of working moms. So that means dads are out clipping
the hedges on sunny Saturdays, while moms are the ones doing
the drudgery of vacuuming day in and day out. And this isn’t
solely an American phenomenon. Even in the famously gender-
neutral Sweden, women do 45 minutes more housework a
day than their male partners.
To be fair, men do far more cleaning now than they did in the
Eisenhower era. But when you look at the advances women have
made in getting men to share other domestics tasks—childcare,
cooking—cleaning is still very much women’s work (though it’s
worth noting that men still don’t do as much childcare and
cooking as women do). The fact that it’s more than OK—cool
even—for men to take on pretty much any domestic
tasks but cleaning is everywhere in the wider culture. Louis
C.K., one of the most popular stand-ups in the country, has
constructed his entire identity around fatherhood and is still
seen as masculine and hilarious. Ben Affleck is photographed
carting his two daughters around a Los Angeles farmers market
and the world swoons. There is a new magazine called Kindling
Quarterly that looks like an Anthropologie catalog and bills
itself as an “exploration of fatherhood.” Anthony Bourdain,

Momofuku’s David Chang, and the Voltaggio brothers of "Top
Chef" fame have made cooking synonymous with trash mouths
and tattoos. Men with brawny arms host butchering
classes in Middle America and Popular Mechanics has written a
beginners guide to brewing beer.
Which is all to say, it’s seen as socially admirable and
masculine for a man to be on diaper duty or to sous-vide a
steak, but there are no closet organizing tips in the pages
of Esquire, no dishwasher detergent ads in the pages of GQ.
Considering the strides that have been made in getting men to
share the labor in other traditionally female domestic areas, why
has cleaning remained the final frontier?
Bottom of Form
At its most basic, a reason why a lot of men don’t want to clean
is obvious: it’s not fun. The rewards of the other two
traditionally female household tasks—childcare and cooking—
are palpable. Your kid’s smile, a delicious meal. But not so with
cleaning. Drew Magary, a Deadspin columnist and the author of
the forthcoming parenting memoir Someone Could Get Hurt,
says that men will never take the initiative and clean without
being asked “because it sucks.” Indeed, when sociologists
Judith Treas and Tsui-o Tai looked at household task
hierarchies among men in 32 different countries, they found that
men all over the world will forego laundry over all other
traditionally female tasks—they’re much more likely to care for
a sick spouse or child or go grocery shopping.
But this is only a very partial explanation. Disaggregating all
the factors that go into making women more inclined to clean
than men is a headachey, complex, chicken-egg, nature-nurture
project. But looking at some of the practical reasons and the
theories behind this disparity might just give us some of the
tools to shift it.

To start, nearly all of the ads for cleaning products feature
women and are designed to appeal to women. According to a
2008 study from the University of New Hampshire, only about 2
percent of commercials featuring men showed them doing
domestic tasks. Even Tide, which has recently featured a stay-
at-home dad in a few commercials, uses ads that emphasize the
dad part rather than the cleaning part--like this one, where a
father is sweetly washing his daughter’s favorite princess dress.
Ads like that, according to P&G North America Fabric Care
Brand Manager, Matthew Krehbiel, are meant to appeal to the
17 percent of men who are the primary grocery shoppers and
launderers. But that’s a small slice of the overall market, and so
it makes sense that it’s not the marketer’s priority. This aspect
of cultural messaging is a self-perpetuating tautology: The vast
majority of detergent purchasers are women, and so marketers
feature more women in the ads.
In a phone interview, Arlie Hochschild, the author of The
Outsourced Self and the foundational feminist text on women
and housework, The Second Shift, makes the argument that a
women’s desire for a clean home has deeper origins than just
marketing. Cleaning, Hoschild says, is not simply physical
work. It’s emotional work. “Letting the house go is in a way
letting something deeper go. … You get a sense of safety in an
orderly home,” Hochschild says.
But assuming both parties care about creating a sense of safety
in the home, why does it fall to women? I suspect that women
are more driven to keep a clean house because they know they—
before their male partners—will be judged for having a dirty
one. When I lived with two female roommates, I was much more
of a slob. None of us was particularly responsible for the
emotional tone of that apartment—no single one of us was more
likely to be shunned for the state of our bathroom. But when I
got married, the dust bunnies hopping across our floor started
seeming like a personal affront. Although it was my husband’s

father coming over, I was the one who insisted we clean. I was
worried I would be judged for the beef jerky wrappers (on both
aesthetic and gustatory grounds), despite the fact that my
father-in-law has never once made a peep about the state of our
abode. Somewhere lodged within me was the message that it
was my responsibility.
Unfortunately, the notion that women will be the first to be
judged for a messy home and the first to be commended for an
orderly one isn’t much of an incentive for men to pick up a
mop. In the instances in which men actually do the majority of
the housework in their partnership, women are still the ones
getting credit. David Michael Perez, the publisher and editor
of Kindling Quarterly, says that though he does more decorating
and cleaning than his spouse does, “often when people say ‘your
house is nice,’ it’s directed more at my wife.” If they’re not
even going to be rewarded for it, why bother at all?
With all these obstacles to real gender parity of chores, what’s a
working woman to do? Philosophy professor Alexandra Bradner
suggests on the Atlantic’s website that couples sit down with a
list of questions like, “Do I do half of the laundry and half of
the dishes every day?” to figure out where they’re slacking off
in comparison to their mate. This sounds exhausting and
impractical. If I do one load of laundry, it’s easier for me to do
the second rather than wait for my husband to mosey over.
(Bradner also says that when men do traditionally female
chores, they’re enacting “‘small instances of gender heroism,’
or ‘SIGH’s”—which, barf.)
I’m much more inclined to take the advice of Jenny
Anderson, the co-author ofIt’s Not You, It’s the Dishes, which
applies economic theory to household tasks. A lot of women
shoo their husbands away from cleaning because they know the
men will do a sub-par job of scrubbing the sink. Anderson says
you should divide up tasks according to the economic theory of
comparative advantage. Let’s say a woman is twice as good as

her husband at doing the laundry, but only 20 percent better
than her husband at doing the dishes. In that couple, the
husband should always do the dishes. What’s more, he’ll get
better at it through repetition.
Another solution is for women to lower their filth thresholds.
Did I really need to clean up the house for my father-in-law?
Would he have cared if there were a few glasses sitting out on
the kitchen table? Probably not. But it’s harder to stomach this
fix once you have children, when the threat of a Fisher Price
plastic hell-scape is perpetually around the corner. One of the
women I interviewed for this piece, who doesn’t want to
publicly shame her husband, said that when she came home
after a weekday night out, it was so messy that it looked like
she had 40 kids instead of two. If she had left the living room
like that, it wouldn’t have been very good hygiene modeling for
her kids (and, at some point, might get social services called).
One last suggestion comes from Magary, who so emphatically
declared that cleaning sucks: make cleaning more fun. He says
that when the Swiffer first came on the market, it was sort of
enticing. (Swiffer reps said they had no information to share
with me about men and cleaning.) “We like gadgets and stuff,”
Magary explains. “If there was some new electronic hovering
Apple product that cleaned the bathroom, I’d try it.” Are you
listening out there in Cupertino? You have a huge, untapped
market on your hands for toilet-scrubbing iPods. I bet my
husband would buy one.
1. “Second Shift” was a term popularized by sociologist Arlie
Hochschild in her book, The Second Shift, to refer to the extra
child care and housekeeping working women do after they get
home from the office (the first shift).

RHETORICAL ANALYSIS SAMPLE ESSAY Harriet Clark .docx

RHETORICAL ANALYSIS SAMPLE ESSAY Harriet Clark .docx

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RHETORICAL ANALYSIS SAMPLE ESSAY Harriet Clark .docx