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Rhetorical Analysis Of Why I Want A Wife

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In the prose, “Why I Want a Wife,” Judy Syfers blatantly uses anaphora, diction, and a rhetorical question to express the irony of men’s treatment of women and their utter dependence for them. Through this irony, Judy Syfers made the audience, mostly women, think about women’s rights and the treatment of women as being property or possession. Syfers began the bulk of her essay by relaying to us a list of things she would want in a wife if she could have one. The most obvious device used would be anaphora in the repetition of “I want a wife who…” at the beginning of almost every sentence. You could see this in the range of demands in the sentences “... a wife who will work and send me to school.” to “... a wife who will care for me and sympathize …show more content…
She employs a monotonous and unsympathetic tone to the speaker when she gives the laundry list of men’s wants in a wife. The line “ I want a wife who will remain sexually faithful to me so that I do not have to clutter up my intellectual life with jealousies.” with words like “sexually faithful” and “my intellectual life,” portray men as being heartless and unfeeling when it comes to women. Obviously, someone in a monogamous marriage would not wish for an affair but in the wording of this sentence and many others, the supposed man has no sympathy for the wife and is selfish by making all of his demands or serving only himself.
In the last sentence, Syfer deploys a rhetorical question that perfectly sums up the piece while simultaneously making the reader think. “ My God, who *wouldn’t* want a wife? ” The tone of this question could be described as something that everyone should understand the answer to. However, it makes the reader think about the reasons why someone wouldn’t want a wife. The question also gives the reader a sense that ironically, the speaker doesn’t want a wife because they know, being a wife, that they shouldn’t “own” someone like

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