PrepTest 109, Section 2, Question 10
The autobiographical narrative Incidents in the Life of(463 more words not shown)
It can most reasonably be(22 more words not shown)
- AThe mixture of(17 more words not shown)
- BThe mixture of(17 more words not shown)
- CThe mixture of(17 more words not shown)
- DThe mixture of(17 more words not shown)
- EThe mixture of(19 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Whose view do we need? The critics', not the author's defense of Jacobs. The critics say the domestic novel's purposes overshadow the slave narrative's purposes. They think one genre has crowded out the other.
Working the answers
- A
This belongs on the author's side. The author finds value in the tension between the familiar domestic story and Jacobs's experience. The critics think following the domestic conventions shortchanges that experience.
- B
Both sets of goals are compromised? We only have one being overshadowed: the slave narrative. Nothing in the criticism says the domestic novel's goals suffer too. A dominant genre can crowd out another without losing its own goals.
- C
The critics do not say that greater realism determines which genre dominates. We would be inventing a reason for the imbalance they describe.
- D
The opening calls the domestic novel sentimental, but the critics never say the less sentimental genre tends to win. A reference to sentimentality does not establish this comparison.
- ECorrect
In the critics' view, combining these genres has compromised the slave narrative's purposes. That supports the limited claim that mixing genres can sometimes undermine the goals of one of them. It does not require the stronger claim in B that both lose.
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