PrepTest 109, Section 2, Question 14
The autobiographical narrative Incidents in the Life of(463 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(10 more words not shown)
- AThose autobiographical narratives(12 more words not shown)
- BThose autobiographical narratives(15 more words not shown)
- CThose autobiographical narratives(17 more words not shown)
- DThose autobiographical narratives(17 more words not shown)
- EThose autobiographical narratives(12 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
We need a principle behind the author's favorable evaluation. The author thinks Jacobs has done something valuable by bringing her experience into a form familiar to free women. What, exactly, makes that valuable?
Working the answers
- A
The author does not praise Jacobs for capturing the mood of her time.
- B
Accuracy is not the basis of the evaluation. The discussion concerns what readers come to understand through Jacobs's story, not how precisely she records each event.
- CCorrect
The first paragraph says free readers come to see familiar values “within a broader social context.” Marriage, home, and family are familiar to them. Jacobs makes them consider what those values mean for a woman who must send away her lover or leave family behind to gain freedom. That broader perspective is the benefit the author identifies.
- D
The domestic form is familiar to the readers; the enslaved woman's perspective is what they need help understanding. This confuses the familiar way Jacobs reaches them with the different experience she wants them to confront.
- E
Borrowing another genre's conventions is not automatically valuable. The author's defense depends on what Jacobs accomplishes with those conventions: she makes readers reconsider their values in circumstances unlike their own. C captures that benefit; E merely names the technique.
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