Rhetorical Analysis Sample Essay

November 02, 2025

Posted by STLCC in Tutoring Resources 

This page includes a rhetorical analysis sample essay you can use as a model for your own writing. It shows how to structure an analysis, develop ideas and support points with clear examples.

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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.¹ One 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

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

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

However, the end of the article lacks the same level of effectiveness in the appeals to ethos.¹⁶

Additionally, her last statement in the article refers to her husband in a way that weakens the argument.¹⁹

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

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Works Cited

Grose, Jessica. “Cleaning: The Final Feminist Frontier.” New Republic. The New Republic, 19 Mar. 2013. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.

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Notes

1. Hook
2. Context
3. Article author's claim or purpose
4. Thesis
5. Summary of the article's main point
6. Topic sentence reflects thesis
7. Quotes illustrate ethos
8. Analysis of ethos
9. Transition to logos
10. Quote for logos
11. Quote for logos
12. Analysis of logos
13. Transition to pathos
14. Quotes for pathos
15. Analysis of pathos
16. Transition to ethos
17. Quote for ethos
18. Analysis supports thesis
19. Transition
20. Quote for ethos
21. Analysis supports thesis
22. Conclusion connects to thesis
23. Returns to hook