Parents and Children // Margaret Culkin Banning, "Letter to Susan"
Overview It's pretty safe to speculate that if 1930s advice writer Margaret Culkin Banning were alive today, she might be an Instagram mom. This 1934 selection, part of her book Letters to Susan, details Banning's relationship with her daughter. Consider how Banning's writing helps construct two elements here: her own character and Susan's. How does Banning use rhetorical strategies, including humor, to persuade her daughter of the rightness of her position?
Note: I cannot find Banning's work in the public domain. All discussion and analysis questions below refer to her letter from November 15, 1934 beginning, "Dear Susan: No, you can't drive to Detroit..."
Discussion Questions
Opening
Banning's letter begins with a flat denial of Susan's request to drive to Detroit with her friend Ann and two boys, then immediately calls attention to her rhetorical purposes in doing so.
What are those purposes?
Are there additional purposes that Banning does not name?
What is Banning's tone here from "Dear Susan..." to "...can't do that."
How does it shift in the next sentence beginning "For the judgment..." to "...and coffee"?
Paragraph 2
What is Banning's purpose in stating the several points of Susan's request that she agrees with? How does this rhetorical choice help her win the argument?
What does Banning mean when she says, "Even you are all that I sometimes say you are"?
Paragraph 3
Banning makes a rhetorical pivot from the end of paragraph 2 ("...it doesn't affect the situation") to the beginning of paragraph 3 ("In fact, I think it aggravates it.") What does she mean "it aggravates it"?
What is the meaning of "aggravates" in this context?
How does Banning's tone change in this paragraph?
What issue is Banning most worried about in this paragraph that powers her denial of Susan's request?
What are the reasons she gives for rebutting Susan's argument here?
How does Banning use "cheap perfume" as a symbol? What are the cultural significances of cheap perfume?
Paragraph 4-5
How does Banning's language intensify in this paragraph?
Banning's comment that "conduct is social as well as invididual" is not specific to 1934. To what extent does this statement still hold true, that conduct is social as well as individual? To what extent are our actions both private and public, even if we consider them to be "nobody's business but your own"?
Paragraph 6
What is Banning's tone in the parenthetical statement "(I'm beginning to love that name)"!
What does Banning mean by "high explosives"?
Conclusion/Ending
What is Banning's purpose in publishing a letter to her daughter, one which we are implicitly to consider a personal correspondence?