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.1One such woman, author Jessica Grose, wrote

“Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier,” published in 2013 in the New

Republic,2 and she argues that while the men recently started taking on more of

the childcare and cooking, cleaning still falls unfairly on women.3 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.4

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. 5

Throughout her piece, Grose uses many strong sources that strengthen her

credibility and appeal to ethos, as well as build her argument.6 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).7 Citing these sources boosts Grose’s

credibility by showing that she has 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.8

Adding to her ethos appeals, Grose uses strong appeals to logos, with

many facts and statistics and logical progressions of ideas.9 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.”10 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.11

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.12

Along with strong logos appeals, Grose effectively makes appeals to pathos

in the beginning and middle sections.13 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.”14 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 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.15

However, the end of the article lacks the same level of effectiveness in the

appeals to ethos.16 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.”17 The usage of the word “barf” is jarring to the reader;

unprofessional and immature, it is a shift from the researched, intelligent voice

damages the strength of her credibility and her argument.18

Additionally, her last statement in the article refers to her husband in a

way that weakens the argument.19 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.”20Returning 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.21

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.22 Grose could have more seriously driven home the point that a

woman’s work could be done: by a man.23