PrepTest 103, Section 4, Question 22
In England before 1660, a husband controlled his(440 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AAs notions of(23 more words not shown)
- BTraditional historians have(17 more words not shown)
- CThe incorporation of(19 more words not shown)
- DAn examination of(23 more words not shown)
- EBefore marriage settlements(17 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
We've already predicted the main point: judicial decisions undermined the apparent gains marriage contracts offered women. The contracts might look like progress, but the restrictions made those protections less useful in practice. We want some version of that challenge to the traditional historians' view.
Working the answers
- A
This gives us the opening historical development, then stops before the disagreement that drives the discussion. The central claim concerns whether those apparent protections actually delivered the gains historians attributed to them.
- B
Staves disputes how much the contractual features helped women, not which features existed. Mistaking a provision's effects isn't the same as incorrectly identifying the provision.
- CCorrect
This captures the challenge to the traditional claim of a significant gain. Paragraph 1 says the gains were “undermined by judicial decisions”; the property restrictions and judges' return to older assumptions explain how. This needn't mean no woman ever benefited—the text acknowledges occasional favorable decisions.
- D
The problem is how contractual protections worked, not that most settlements lacked them. We aren't given that claim about how frequently the features were included.
- E
The opening describes husbands' control of their wives' property. It doesn't establish that all women lacked any way to gain financial power, and that sweeping claim about the earlier period misses the dispute over the later changes.
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