PrepTest 149, Section 2, Question 22
The novelist and social theorist Charlotte Perkins Gilman,(435 more words not shown)
The passage most strongly suggests(9 more words not shown)
- AGilman's social theory(27 more words not shown)
- BOne of Gilman's(27 more words not shown)
- CGilman worked in(22 more words not shown)
- DCharles Darwin's writings(18 more words not shown)
- EOther evolutionary theorists(20 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
This is a broad support question, so start with the relationships we actually know. Gilman participates in an existing debate, joins the activist camp, and applies its ideas to social change. We need a claim that follows from that account; something that seems plausible for a social activist is not enough on its own.
Working the answers
- A
We are not told which major political movements Gilman or other theorists supported. Different views of social evolution do not establish this difference in political alliances.
- B
Gilman participates in the social application of Darwin's ideas; she is not credited with introducing it. The opening already describes intellectuals translating natural selection into social language. Being one contributor to that debate does not make her the person who began it.
- C
She urges people to act collectively, but that does not establish that she personally collaborated with other activists to implement a particular set of reforms. Advocating a way of working and actually carrying out a joint project are different claims. We only have the former here.
- D
Indirect influence would mean that Gilman encountered Darwin's ideas through someone else's writing about them. That may have happened, but “only indirectly” also rules out her reading Darwin himself. Nothing tells us that she did not. Her membership in a group does not settle which authors she read.
- ECorrect
Gilman aligned herself with the second group of theorists (paragraph 2). We have already been told what that group believed: social evolution can occur through collective action. She therefore was not the only theorist to think evolutionary ideas had implications for social practice. Other members of the camp shared that general view, even if they did not share every specific proposal she made.
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