Thesis Statement 9 examples

(Bruce Robbins, “‘They don’t much
count, do they?’: The Unfinished History of The Turn
of the Screw”)
In his essay, using The Turn of the Screw as an illustration, Robbins reveals the mechanism which
enables the existence of social hierarchy without conflict among the classes, or “dialectical materialism”: the class role of the governess shifts between two modes, the ruling and ruled classes (master and servants); squeezed between two antithetical groups, she possesses the “Cinderella” desire for the upper class, and being above servants, she assumes a protective role of her own and, subsequently, master’s share in the ownership of power from those who “don’t much count.” --Iana

Marxist Criticism, Bruce Robbins:
A Marxist reading of The Turn of the Screw gives reason for the ambiguity in the conversation between the governess and Mrs. Grose: because they are both representatives of particular classes, the ambiguity they employ or are at the mercy of is a socially produced ambiguity, meaning that "[p]ower and hierarchy interrupt what can be said, forcing communication into obscure and roundabout illusions'" (287); they are bound by certain social restrictions to say only that which is appropriate for them to say
and are, therefore, silenced, in effectbarred from true communication with each other not because of ability but because of status.--Melissa

Robbins mentions that "If one looks at the text with class in mind, one sees..." so and so--and this is a major limitation of Marxist criticism, that it sets up class conflict as an external center to the text and proceeds to compare and morally judge any internal ideologies to this center, running recklessly over subtleties and other possible, equally valid meanings. --JiM