DISCUSSION: The New Women are discussed only in the fourth paragraph.
Most of the answers discuss things that never happened anywhere in the passage, or only happened in other paragraphs.
Note that you must think broadly. Answer D mentions “aspects of reality that had been neglected”. That specific phrase wasn’t in paragraph four, but it corresponds exactly with lines 50-52.
I worked first by eliminating those answers that were clearly wrong, then skimmed through paragraph four to find the lines that justify D.
___________
- The passage never talks about literature changing social customs. We don’t know why social customs change.
- We’re not told whether the New Women advocated social change, and regret is never mentioned.
- The passage didn’t say this. “Inevitably” is a strong word. We only know about one change in social custom: the dissolution of women’s culture.
Further, the dissolution of women’s culture was in paragraph two. The passage doesn’t say whether the New Women cared about the dissolution of women’s culture. The New Women were only mentioned in paragraph 4. - CORRECT. Lines 50-52 support this directly. The New Women experimented with impressionism in order to describe female consciousness. This consciousness had been neglected in prior works.
- The local colorists were dispassionate and uninflected. See line 37, where Chopin was using their techniques. We don’t even know if the New Women were uninflected, so this answer has no support.
Mike says
The “strong word,” in answer choice (C) is not “invariably,” but “inevitably.”
Founder Graeme says
Fixed it, thanks!
Brittany says
I guess what confuses me most about (D) is it mentioned reality, whe in the passage The New Women were talking about fantasy. Am I to ignore that word to make it make more sense to me? Thanks!
I chose (C), but I wasn’t 100% sold on that either.
Your site is awesome btw!
Founder Graeme Blake says
Good question. They were using fantasy to explore aspects of female consciousness that hadn’t been recorded until then. Female consciousness is reality.
Basically, the world limited women’s options so fantasy was required in order to explore certain aspects of female consciousness.