PrepTest 132, Section 1, Question 22

Working the answers

• A

  We know that women are central characters in these novels. That doesn't tell us whether any of the novelists were men. Subject matter and the writer's identity are different things.

• B

  We aren't told whether widely read domestic novels were written after the 1860s. Another conception of fiction becoming dominant doesn't establish either that this genre disappeared or that it continued to produce widely read books.

• C

  Migration is mentioned as a possible contributor to differences between Jewett and the earlier novelists. The author doesn't explain how migration affected the development of domestic fiction specifically in the 1850s. We shouldn't turn that tentative explanation into a precise historical account.

• D
  Correct

  Her conception of fiction helps explain the absence of instructional aims. The second paragraph contrasts domestic fiction's religious and household instruction with her writing's value in itself. The final paragraph makes the connection explicit: Jewett intended her works to possess their own artistic value rather than serve an outside purpose (paragraph 3).

• E

  We are told she wrote regional fiction, but the region isn't named. Picturing a particular setting while reading doesn't supply that missing information.