The Petticoat Affair Thesis

One of my main objections that I have with this book is that it doesn't present enough of a point of view. It is sort of like a bad research paper, without an opinion, it is simply an organized sheet of facts. Although I wouldn't call this book terrible or a failure, I would call it incomplete. It gives the feeling of reading an encyclopedia, but with more interesting details. It is understandable to have a weak opinion in an informational book, but no opinion at all is scarcely acceptable.

In my opinion I thought that this book was a very good book. In this chapter I will describe the setting, theme, plot and conflict etc. This book had a few different settings like

In my personal opinion, this book was very hard to read and follow. At certain times I had a hard time figuring out who was talking in the book. I really wanted to enjoy this book and it’s “case studies” but I simply could not get past the confusion and enjoy this like I would any other book. I feel like the author wrote a lot of the situations for shock

The Petticoat Affair focuses on the wives of Andrew Jackson’s cabinet during his first term of President of the United States. The wives and in turn their husbands had a hay day over

I did actually really like this book. I was not sure if I was going to enjoy it when the project was first assigned, but after reading for a while, I became really interested

The book was very well put together and organized with documented evidence and interviews from important people. A lot of research was put into this book and all the research used is cited in the back of the book. Since the topic is such a controversial topic I understand that all the information had to be correctly used which is why the research was so in-depth. The book was easy to read there was a few words I was unsure of and had to define in order to better understand them. The situation itself brought up other issues of that time such as: social, economic, and politics. The conclusion at the end really helps by summing up some main points considering there is a lot of information throughout the reading. The drawing and pictures included in the text are very interesting and it is really cool to get to see

Coming into the presidency Jackson had some issues. The cabinet that he had chosen did not work well together. There was vicious gossip circulating about one of the cabinet members and his wife. It came out that the person spreading these rumors was Jackson’s very own vice president. This incident was later called the Eaton affair. In response to Calhoun’s actions against a fellow cabinet member, Jackson decided to

The author did a brilliant job of putting together all the facts of every aspect of what happened but at times I felt bogged down with all the information. Therefore, the prose was not badly written it felt overwritten also containing an overabundance of

The author made the novel too long and filled it with much information that I find unneeded. The author spent some years gathering information about committing crimes and looking for suitable background for a story. Truman Capote did a real research to be prepared to write about this

     This book combines characteristics of a suspense thriller with those of a tragedy and is a very interesting book to read. I liked the detail that the author went into about the psychological aspects of the characters in making the decisions that they made. I thought that the characters were well developed and I liked the detail that the author went into about the settings. A detailed setting can really increase the intensity and realism of a situation in a book. This book contained some difficult words that lower level readers might not understand. I would recommend that anyone looking for a suspense/tragedy oriented book should look to this one. The beginning is a somewhat tedious read, but that is only because the author takes so much time to develop the

Overall I thought the book was fantastic with fictional story telling along with the facts of what happened in Abraham Lincoln's presidency. One of the greatest aspects of the book was when for every other chapter they would switch perspectives of the protagonist Bella, to the main antagonist Wilkes. Even though they had different interests they were still able to connect both of their stories together, and were able to be friends in the first half of the story like “Wilkes looked at me, his eyes boring into my very being. He is a luck young man, to be the dearest friend of the beautiful Arabella who is, I am certain, as beautiful as the beautiful Annabel Lee.”(Myers 107). It was interesting to hear not only the protagonists thoughts but the antagonists thoughts seen “I watched the girl go into the White House, and the idea came to me. One moment I was staring at her back, wondering how sweet, charming Arabella could bear to work in the house of the devil himself.”(Myers 109). It had an intriguing feel of a real assassinators connection to a fictional protagonist as she helped him assassinate the president in a theater.

Not everything about this book was good in my opinion. Most books that I read are fictional/fantasy books. Therefore, this book wasn 't necessarily a walk in the park for me. I had a very difficult time following the story and what was actually happening. This was due to the fact that the book was very randomly organized and didn 't really follow the chronological order of events in history. For example, in the beginning it was talking about King Edwards the VII’s

The film Dangerous Liaison, directed by Stephen Frears remains just about faithful to the epistolary novel, Dangerous Liaisons, by Choderlos de Laclos. Stephen Frears does "betray" the novel towards the end of the film but, it makes the ending that much more better and enticing. The film represents what the epistolary novel only hints at us readers. The novel is composed of letters where we only get a sense of the characters thoughts and emotions. The film tries to put those words into action but only showing one version of each scene. It is different in which the writer of the novel is using words while the film maker is using pictures to describe what's happening.

The Petticoat Affair by John Marszalek is a historical piece encompassing President Andrew Jackson’s cabinet and personal scandals centering around Mrs. Margaret Eaton. A scandal that shook the American public at the time it has been used by Marszalek to describe the drama filled era as well as to bring to light social issues of the era, mainly gender issues. With such a huge scandal for its time John Marszalek uses this scandal to describe the role of women in Jacksonian era America and how gender roles can have a negative impact on individuals and society as a whole. He does this by describing historically accurate reactions of the public, government officials and of course Mrs.Eaton herself. Overall gender roles are used as a microcosm to explain Americans attitudes overall towards social change.

“Burnham immediately went to Margaret's father to break the engagement, on grounds of the courtship could not continue in the shadow of scandal.” (21)