GMAT申友阅读RC题库-The passage suggests that Margaret Cavendish’s decision to become an author was motivated, at least in part, by a desire-OG2022-真题答案解析

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It is an odd but indisputable fact that the

seventeenth-century English women who are generally regarded as among the forerunners of modern feminism are almost all identified with the Royalist side in the conflict between Royalists and Parliamentarians known as the English Civil Wars. Since Royalist ideology is often associated with the radical patriarchalism of seventeenth-century political theorist Robert Filmer—a patriarchalism

that equates family and kingdom and asserts the divinely ordained absolute power of the king and, by analogy, of the male head of the household—

historians have been understandably puzzled by the fact that Royalist women wrote the earliest extended criticisms of the absolute subordination

of women in marriage and the earliest systematic assertions of women’s rational and moral equality with men. Some historians have questioned the facile equation of Royalist ideology with Filmerian patriarchalism; and indeed, there may have been no consistent differences between Royalists and

Parliamentarians on issues of family organization and women’s political rights, but in that case one would expect early feminists to be equally divided between the two sides.

Catherine Gallagher argues that Royalism engendered feminism because the ideology of absolute monarchy provided a transition to an

ideology of the absolute self. She cites the example of the notoriously eccentric author Margaret

Cavendish (1626–1673), duchess of Newcastle.

Cavendish claimed to be as ambitious as any

woman could be, but knowing that as a woman she was excluded from the pursuit of power in the real world, she resolved to be mistress of her own

world, the “immaterial world” that any person can create within her own mind—and, as a writer, on paper. In proclaiming what she called her “singularity,” Cavendish insisted that she was a

self-sufficient being within her mental empire, the center of her own subjective universe rather than a satellite orbiting a dominant male planet. In justifying this absolute singularity, Cavendish

repeatedly invoked the model of the absolute monarch, a figure that became a metaphor for the self-enclosed, autonomous nature of the individual person. Cavendish’s successors among early

feminists retained her notion of woman’s sovereign self, but they also sought to break free from the

complete political and social isolation that her absolute singularity entailed.

The passage suggests that Margaret Cavendish’s decision to become an author was motivated, at least in part, by a desire to

A.justify her support for the Royalist cause
B.encourage her readers to work toward eradicating Filmerian patriarchalism
C.persuade other women to break free from their political and social isolation
D.analyze the causes for women’s exclusion from the pursuit of power
E.create a world over which she could exercise total control

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答案：

Inference

This question asks about Margaret Cavendish’s reasons for becoming an author. The

second paragraph describes her as someone who insisted that she was a self-sufficient

being; she understood that, given the real-world strictures in place, she could achieve this self-sufficiency in her own mind and on paper as a writer. So her decision to become a

writer can be inferred to be motivated by her desire to exercise power and control.

A.The passage states that Cavendish justified her being the center of her own universe by invoking the Royalist figure of the absolute monarch; there is no suggestion in the passage that Cavendish felt the need to justify any support for the actual Royalist cause.

B.The passage gives no direct indication that Cavendish was even aware of Filmerian patriarchalism.

C.The second paragraph states that Cavendish’s idea of absolute singularity carried with it the idea of social and political isolation; Cavendish was most likely not motivated by a

desire to persuade other women to break free from such isolation.

D.Cavendish took the exclusion of women from the pursuit of power for granted; the passage does not suggest that she was concerned with its causes.

E.Correct. According to the passage, Cavendish considered herself a self-sufficient being who was at the center of her own universe; in her writing, she wanted to create a world in which this was also true.

The correct answer is E.