Gre阅读真题200篇 brief contents

Mary Barton, particularly in its early

As a member of the middle class, Gaskell could hardly help approaching working-class life as an outside observer and a reporter, and the reader of the novel is always conscious of this fact. But there is genuine imaginative re-creation in her accounts of the walk in Green Heys Fields, of tea at the Bartons’ house, and of John Barton and his friend’s discovery of the starving family in the cellar in the chapter “Poverty and Death.” Indeed, for a similarly convincing re-creation of such families’ emotions and responses (which are more crucial than the material details on which the mere reporter is apt to concentrate), the English novel had to wait 60 years for the early writing of D. H. Lawrence. If Gaskell never quite conveys the sense of full participation that would completely authenticate this aspect of Mary Barton, she still brings to these scenes an intuitive recognition of feelings that has its own sufficient conviction.

The chapter “Old Alice’s History” brilliantly dramatizes the situation of that early generation of workers brought from the villages and the countryside to the urban industrial centers. The account of Job Legh, the weaver and naturalist who is devoted to the study of biology, vividly embodies one kind of response to an urban industrial environment: an affinity for living things that hardens, by its very contrast with its environment, into a kind of crankiness. The early chapters—about factory workers walking out in spring into Green Heys Fields; about Alice Wilson, remembering in her cellar the twig-gathering for brooms in the native village that she will never again see; about Job Legh, intent on his impaled insects—capture the characteristic responses of a generation to the new and crushing experience of industrialism. The other early chapters eloquently portray the development of the instinctive cooperation with each other that was already becoming an important tradition among workers.

17. Which of the following best describes the author’s attitude toward Gaskell’s use of the method of documentary record in Mary Barton?

(A) Uncritical enthusiasm

(B) Unresolved ambivalence

(C) Qualified approval

(D) Resigned acceptance（C）

(E) Mild irritation

18. According to the passage, Mary Barton and the early novels of D. H. Lawrence share which of the following?

(A) Depiction of the feelings of working-class families

(B) Documentary objectivity about working-class circumstances

(C) Richly detailed description of working-class adjustment to urban life

(D) Imaginatively structured plots about working-class characters（A）

(E) Experimental prose style based on working-class dialect

19. Which of the following is most closely analogous to Job Legh in Mary Barton, as that character is described in the passage?

(A) An entomologist who collected butterflies as a child

(B) A small-town attorney whose hobby is nature photography

(C) A young man who leaves his family’s dairy farm to start his own business

(D) A city dweller who raises exotic plants on the roof of his apartment building（D）

(E) A union organizer who works in a textile mill under dangerous conditions

20. It can be inferred from examples given in the last paragraph of the passage that which of the following was part of “the new and crushing experience of industrialism” (lines 46-47) for many members of the English working class in the nineteenth century?

(A) Extortionate food prices

(B) Geographical displacement

(C) Hazardous working conditions

(D) Alienation from fellow workers（B）

(E) Dissolution of family ties

21. It can be inferred that the author of the passage believes that Mary Barton might have been an even better novel if Gaskell had

(A) concentrated on the emotions of a single character

(B) made no attempt to re-create experiences of which she had no firsthand knowledge

(C) made no attempt to reproduce working-class dialects

(D) grown up in an industrial city（E）

(E) managed to transcend her position as an outsider

22. Which of the following phrases could best be substituted for the phrase “this aspect of Mary Barton” in line 29 without changing the meaning of the passage as a whole?

(A) the material details in an urban working-class environment

(B) the influence of Mary Barton on lawrence’s early work

(C) the place of Mary Barton in the development of the English novel

(D) the extent of the poverty and physical suffering among England’s industrial workers in the 1840’s（E）

(E) the portrayal of the particular feelings and responses of working-class characters

23. The author of the passage describes Mary Barton as each of the following EXCEPT:

(A) insightful

(B) meticulous

(C) vivid

(D) poignant (being to the point: APT)（E）

(E) lyrical

10. In his 1976 study of slavery in

Gutman recreates the family and extended kinship structure mainly through an ingenious use of what any historian should draw upon (draw upon: 利用), quantifiable data, derived in this case mostly from plantation birth registers. He also uses accounts of ex-slaves to probe the human reality behind his statistics. These sources indicate that the two-parent household predominated in slave quarters just as it did among freed slaves after emancipation. Although Gutman admits that forced separation by sale was frequent, he shows that the slaves’ preference, revealed most clearly on plantations where sale was infrequent, was very much for stable monogamy. In less conclusive fashion Fogel, Engerman, and Genovese had already indicated the predominance of two-parent households; however, only Gutman emphasizes the preference for stable monogamy and points out what stable monogamy meant for the slaves’ cultural heritage. Gutman argues convincingly that the stability of the Black family encouraged the transmission of—and so was crucial in sustaining—the Black heritage of folklore, music, and religious expression from one generation to another, a heritage that slaves were continually fashioning out of their African and American experiences.

Gutman’s examination of other facets of kinship also produces important findings. Gutman discovers that cousins rarely married, an exogamous tendency that contrasted sharply with the endogamy practiced by the plantation owners. This preference for exogamy, Gutman suggests, may have derived from West African rules governing marriage, which, though they differed from one tribal group to another, all involved some kind of prohibition against unions with close kin. This taboo against cousins’ marrying is important, argues Gutman, because it is one of many indications of a strong awareness among slaves of an extended kinship network. The fact that distantly related kin would care for children separated from their families also suggests this awareness. When blood relationships were few, as in newly created plantations in the Southwest, “fictive” kinship arrangements took their place until a new pattern of consanguinity developed. Gutman presents convincing evidence that this extended kinship structure—which he believes developed by the mid-to-late eighteenth century—provided the foundations for the strong communal consciousness that existed among slaves.

In sum, Gutman’s study is significant because it offers a closely reasoned and original explanation of some of the slaves’ achievements, one that correctly emphasizes the resources that slaves themselves possessed.

20. According to the passage, Fogel, Engerman, Genovese, and Gutman have all done which of the following?

I. Discounted the influence of plantation owners on slaves’ achievements.

II. Emphasized the achievements of slaves.

III. Pointed out the prevalence of the two-parent household among slaves.

IV. Showed the connection between stable monogamy and slaves’ cultural heritage.

(A) I and II only

(B) I and IV only

(C) II and III only

(D) I, III, and IV only（C）

(E) II, III, and IV only

21. With which of the following statements regarding the resources that historians ought to use would the author of the passage be most likely to agree?

(A) Historians ought to make use of written rather than oral accounts.

(B) Historians should rely primarily on birth registers.

(C) Historians should rely exclusively on data that can be quantified.

(D) Historians ought to make use of data that can be quantified.（D）

(E) Historians ought to draw on earlier historical research but they should do so in order to refute it.

22. Which of the following statements about the formation of the Black heritage of folklore, music, and religious expression is best supported by the information presented in the passage?

(A) The heritage was formed primarily out of the experiences of those slaves who attempted to preserve the stability of their families.

(B) The heritage was not formed out of the experiences of those slaves who married their cousins.

(C) The heritage was formed more out of the African than out of the American experiences of slaves.

(D) The heritage was not formed out of the experiences of only a single generation of slaves.（D）

(E) The heritage was formed primarily out of slaves’ experiences of interdependence on newly created plantations in the Southwest.

23. It can be inferred from the passage that, of the following, the most probable reason why a historian of slavery might be interested in studying the type of plantations mentioned in line 25 is that this type would

(A) give the historian access to the most complete plantation birth registers

(B) permit the historian to observe the kinship patterns that had been most popular among West African tribes

(C) provide the historian with evidence concerning the preference of freed slaves for stable monogamy

(D) furnish the historian with the opportunity to discover the kind of marital commitment that slaves themselves chose to have（D）

(E) allow the historian to examine the influence of slaves’ preferences on the actions of plantation owners

24. According to the passage, all of the following are true of the West African rules governing marriage mentioned in lines 46-50 EXCEPT:

(A) The rules were derived from rules governing fictive kinship arrangements.

(B) The rules forbade marriages between close kin.

(C) The rules are mentioned in Herbert Gutman’s study.

(D) The rules were not uniform in all respects from one West African tribe to another.（A）

(E) The rules have been considered to be a possible source of slaves’ marriage preferences.

25. Which of the following statements concerning the marriage practices of plantation owners during the period of Black slavery in the United States can most logically be inferred from the information in the passage?

(A) These practices began to alter sometime around the mid-eighteenth century.

(B) These practices varied markedly from one region of the country to another.

(C) Plantation owners usually based their choice of marriage partners on economic considerations.

(D) Plantation owners often married earlier than slaves.（E）

(E) Plantation owners often married their cousins.

26. Which of the following best describes the organization of the passage?

(A) The author compares and contrasts the work of several historians and then discusses areas for possible new research.

(B) The author presents his thesis, draws on the work of several historians for evidence to support his thesis, and concludes by reiterating his thesis.

(C) The author describes some features of a historical study and then uses those features to put forth his own argument.

(D) The author summarizes a historical study, examines two main arguments from the study, and then shows how the arguments are potentially in conflict with one another.（E）

(E) The author presents the general argument of a historical study, describes the study in more detail, and concludes with a brief judgments of the study’s value.

27. Which of the following is the most appropriate title for the passage, based on its content?

(A) The Influence of Herbert Gutman on Historians of Slavery in the United States

(B) Gutman’s Explanation of How Slaves Could Maintain a Cultural Heritage and Develop a Communal Consciousness

(C) Slavery in the United States: New Controversy About an Old Subject

(D) The Black Heritage of Folklore, Music, and Religious Expression: Its Growing Influence（B）

(E) The Black Family and Extended Kinship Structure: How They Were Important for the Freed Slave