SAT Reading Practice Tests Questions-: History based Set 2

Questions 13-24 are based on the following passages.

The following two passages consider the experiences of middle-class women in nineteenth-century England under the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). Passage 1 is from a work of social history; Passage 2 is from a study of travel writing.

Passage 1

In nineteenth-century England, middle-class women were usually assigned domestic roles and faced severely limited professional career options. Of course, one can point to England’s monarch, Queen Victoria, as a famous Line 5 example of a woman at work, and millions of working-class women worked for wages in factories and private homes, on farms, and in stores and markets. But aristocrats were often exempt from societal strictures that bound the middle class, and working-class women were usually Line 10 looked down on as not being “respectable” for their efforts as workers. As the nineteenth century progressed, it was assumed that a woman engaged in business was a woman without either her own inheritance or a man to support her. Middle-class women already shared with upper-middle Line 15 class men the societal stumbling blocks to active pursuit of business, which included the feeling that labor was demeaning and not suitable for those with aspirations to gentility. But unlike a man, whose self-worth rose through his economic exertions, a woman who did likewise risked Line 20 opprobrium for herself and possibly shame for those around her. Inequality in the working world made it exceedingly difficult for a middle-class woman to support herself on her own, let alone support dependents. Thus, at a time when occupation was becoming a core element in masculine Line 25 identity, any position for middle-class women other than in relation to men was considered anomalous. In the 1851 census, the Registrar General introduced a new fifth class of workers, exclusively made up of women: The fifth class comprises large numbers of the population Line 30 that have no occupation; but it requires no argument to prove that the wife, the mother, the mistress of an English family-fills offices and discharges duties of no ordinary importance; or that children are or should be occupied in filial or household duties, and in the task Line 35 of education, either at home or at school. This conception of women had been developing over a long period. For example, in the late seventeenth century, trade tokens used by local shopkeepers and small masters in family businesses carried the initials of the man’s and the Line 40 woman’s first names and the couple’s surname, but by the late eighteenth century, only the initials of the male proprietor were retained. This serves to confirm the view of one Victorian man, born in 1790, that whereas his mother had confidently joined in the family auctioneering business, Line 45 the increased division of the sexes had seen the withdrawal of women from business life. Marriage became, more than ever, the only career option offering economic prosperity for women; in business, women appear only as faint shadows behind the scenes. Line 50 The absence of women in business and financial records makes our knowledge of what middle-class women actually did and how they survived economically quite fragmentary. What we do know is that women’s ability to survive economically on their own became increasingly difficult in Line 55 the course of the nineteenth century.

Passage 2

In the second half of the nineteenth century in England, under the rule of Queen Victoria, because of the long peace and the increasing prosperity, more and more women found themselves able to travel to Europe unescorted. With the Line 60 increase in travel came an increase in the number of guidebooks, collections of travel hints, and diaries by travelers-many of which were written by or directed to women. Although nineteenth-century women traveled for a variety Line 65 of reasons, ranging from a desire to do scientific research to involvement in missionary work, undoubtedly a major incentive was the desire to escape from domestic confinement and the social restrictions imposed on the Victorian female in Britain. As Dorothy Middleton observes, “Travel Line 70 was an individual gesture of the housebound, man-dominated Victorian woman.” The “caged birds” of the Victorian parlor found their wings and often took flight in other lands. In a less constrained environment they achieved physical and psychological freedom and some measure of Line 75 autonomy. In Celebrated Women Travelers of the Nineteenth Century (1883), Davenport Adams comments: “Fettered as women are in European countries by restraints, obligations, and responsibilities, which are too often arbitrary and artificial … it is natural enough that when the opportunity Line 80 offers, they should hail even a temporary emancipation through travel.” By the latter part of the nineteenth century, women travelers began to be singled out as exemplars of the new social and political freedom and prowess of women. Line 85 Ironically, Mary Kingsley and other women travelers were opposed to or simply uninterested in the late Victorian campaigns to extend women’s political rights. Thus, when Mary Kingsley returned from West Africa in 1895, she was chagrined to discover that she was being hailed as a “new Line 90 woman” because of her travels. Despite her often out-spoken distaste for the “new women” agitating for greater freedom, the travel books that she and others had written still suggested, as Paul Fussell has argued, “an implicit celebration of freedom.”

13. Lines 18-21 suggest that for Victorian middle-class women, “self-worth” and “economic exertions” were thought to be

1. mutually exclusive
2. constantly evolving
3. the two keys to success
4. essential to finding a husband
5. easy to achieve

14. In line 24, “occupation” most nearly means

1. military conquest
2. pleasant diversion
3. vocation
4. settlement
5. political repression

15. The author of Passage 1 considers trade tokens (lines 37-38) as evidence against the prevalence of a fifth class in the seventeenth century because they

1. served as legal currency
2. were issued to both middle-class and working-class women
3. helped neutralize gender stereotypes of the day
4. failed to identify women by their names and positions
5. identified men and women as partners in business

16. All of the following are referred to in Passage 1 as evidence of women’s diminished social status in Victorian England EXCEPT the

1. disparity between men’s and women’s career opportunities
2. shame risked by women who wished to enter commerce
3. exclusion of women’s initials from trade tokens
4. influence of the queen
5. absence of financial records documenting women’s activity

17. Which statement about British society, if true, would most directly support the view described in lines 42-46 ?

1. Seventeenth-century women workers could raise their status by assuming greater responsibilities.
2. Women wrote more novels in the early nineteenth century than they did in the early eighteenth century.
3. Women and girls worked in factories throughout the nineteenth century.
4. The practice of married couples jointly running businesses died out in the early nineteenth century.
5. In the seventeenth century, formal academic institutions were closed to women.