"I Want a Wife" Essay Analysis
Ivan Lopez
9/28/11
Essay
EH 101- 3AA
My God, Why Would a Woman Want a Wife? Judy Syfers in the essay, “I Want a Wife”, argues implicitly that wives and mothers are underappreciated for what they do and what they do is more than what their counterparts do; women are being treated unequal to men. Judy Syfers supports her claim by using the three major modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. The author’s purpose is to get women to take action and to get men to feel sympathy and treat women equally. The author writes to married men, who do not appreciate their wives and married women, who need to realize what is happening to them. However, she also writes to men and women who are not married in order to prevent men and women from living like a stereotypical couple. In the introduction, Syfers uses ethos to gain the audience’s trust and to prove she is a credible person to be writing an essay about this topic by saying, “I belong to a classification of people known as wives. I am A Wife. And, not altogether incidentally, I am a mother.” (p. 261) By claiming this in the beginning, she is gaining the audience’s trust because it makes it seem like she has had first hand experience and everything to follow in the essay is true. It lets the audience know where the information she is giving them is coming from and that she did not just get the facts from another source. Throughout the essay, Syfers uses pathos to appeal to the audience’s emotions by repeating, “I want a wife to/who…” (Syfers) followed by a “wife’s duty”. She does this to rile up the audience’s emotions. She wants women to feel like they have been treated unfairly and to make them take a stand to be treated the same way men are treated, and she wants men to feel sympathy for women and realize they have been treating women unequally. Syfers strongest hit to the audience’s emotion is last question, “My God, who wouldn’t want a wife?”(p. 263) It makes people realize that the reasons why
9/28/11
Essay
EH 101- 3AA
My God, Why Would a Woman Want a Wife? Judy Syfers in the essay, “I Want a Wife”, argues implicitly that wives and mothers are underappreciated for what they do and what they do is more than what their counterparts do; women are being treated unequal to men. Judy Syfers supports her claim by using the three major modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. The author’s purpose is to get women to take action and to get men to feel sympathy and treat women equally. The author writes to married men, who do not appreciate their wives and married women, who need to realize what is happening to them. However, she also writes to men and women who are not married in order to prevent men and women from living like a stereotypical couple. In the introduction, Syfers uses ethos to gain the audience’s trust and to prove she is a credible person to be writing an essay about this topic by saying, “I belong to a classification of people known as wives. I am A Wife. And, not altogether incidentally, I am a mother.” (p. 261) By claiming this in the beginning, she is gaining the audience’s trust because it makes it seem like she has had first hand experience and everything to follow in the essay is true. It lets the audience know where the information she is giving them is coming from and that she did not just get the facts from another source. Throughout the essay, Syfers uses pathos to appeal to the audience’s emotions by repeating, “I want a wife to/who…” (Syfers) followed by a “wife’s duty”. She does this to rile up the audience’s emotions. She wants women to feel like they have been treated unfairly and to make them take a stand to be treated the same way men are treated, and she wants men to feel sympathy for women and realize they have been treating women unequally. Syfers strongest hit to the audience’s emotion is last question, “My God, who wouldn’t want a wife?”(p. 263) It makes people realize that the reasons why