The Literary Development of Kate Chopin, Author of The Awakening (1899), Took her Through Several Phases of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Fiction.

Reading Passage Question

The literary development of Kate Chopin, author of The Awakening (1899), took her through several phases of nineteenth-century women’s fiction. Born in 1850, Chopin grew up with the sentimental novels that formed the bulk of the fiction of the mid–nineteenth century. In these works, authors employed elevated, romantic language to portray female characters whose sole concern was to establish their social positions through courtship and marriage. Later, when she started writing her own fiction, Chopin took as her models the works of a group of women writers known as the local colorists.

After 1865, what had traditionally been regarded as “women’s culture” began to dissolve as women entered higher education, the professions, and the political world in greater numbers. The local colorists, who published stories about regional life in the 1870s and 1880s, were attracted to the new worlds opening up to women, and felt free to move within these worlds as artists. Like anthropologists, the local colorists observed culture and character with almost scientific detachment. However, as “women’s culture” continued to disappear, the local colorists began to mourn its demise by investing its images with mythic significance. In their stories, the garden became a paradisal sanctuary; the house became an emblem of female nurturing; and the artifacts of domesticity became virtual totemic objects.

Unlike the local colorists, Chopin devoted herself to telling stories of loneliness, isolation, and frustration. But she used the conventions of the local colorists to solve a specific narrative problem: how to deal with extreme psychological states without resorting to the excesses of the sentimental novels she read as a youth. By reporting narrative events as if they were part of a region’s “local color,” Chopin could tell rather shocking or even melodramatic tales in an uninflected manner.

Chopin did not share the local colorists’ growing nostalgia for the past, however, and by the 1890s she was looking beyond them to the more ambitious models offered by a movement known as the New Women. In the form as well as the content of their work, the New Women writers pursued freedom and innovation. They modified the form of the sentimental novel to make room for interludes of fantasy and parable, especially episodes in which women dream of an entirely different world than the one they inhabit. Instead of the crisply plotted short stories that had been the primary genre of the local colorists, the New Women writers experimented with impressionistic methods in an effort to explore hitherto unrecorded aspects of female consciousness. In The Awakening, Chopin embraced this impressionistic approach more fully to produce 39 numbered sections of uneven length unified less by their style or content than by their sustained focus on faithfully rendering the workings of the protagonist’s mind.

“The Literary Development of Kate Chopin, Author of The Awakening (1899), Took her Through Several Phases of Nineteenth-Century Women’s Fiction.”- is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates need a strong knowledge of English GMAT reading comprehension.

This GMAT Reading Comprehension consists of 7 comprehension questions. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions are designed for testing candidates’ abilities in understanding, analyzing, and applying information or concepts. Candidates can actively prepare with the help of GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solution and Explanation

1. Which one of the following statements most accurately summarizes the content of the passage?

(A) Although Chopin drew a great deal of the material for The Awakening from the concerns of the New Women, she adapted them, using the techniques of the local colorists, to recapture the atmosphere of the novels she had read in her youth.
(B) Avoiding the sentimental excesses of novels she read in her youth, and influenced first by the conventions of the local colorists and then by the innovative methods of the New Women, Chopin developed the literary style she used in The Awakening.
(C) With its stylistic shifts, variety of content, and attention to the internal psychology of its characters, Chopin’s The Awakening was unlike any work of fiction written during the nineteenth century.
(D) In The Awakening, Chopin rebelled against the stylistic restraint of the local colorists, choosing instead to tell her story in elevated, romantic language that would more accurately convey her protagonist’s loneliness and frustration.
(E) Because she felt a kinship with the subject matter but not the stylistic conventions of the local colorists, Chopin turned to the New Women as models for the style she was struggling to develop in The Awakening.

2. With which one of the following statements about the local colorists would Chopin have been most likely to agree?

(A) Their idealisation of settings and objects formerly associated with “women’s culture” was misguided.
(B) Their tendency to observe character dispassionately caused their fiction to have little emotional impact.
(C) Their chief contribution to literature lay in their status as inspiration for the New Women.
(D) Their focus on regional life prevented them from addressing the new realms opening up to women.
(E) Their conventions prevented them from portraying extreme psychological states with scientific detachment.

3. According to the passage, which one of the following conventions did Chopin adopt from other nineteenth century women writers?

(A) elevated, romantic language
(B) mythic images of “women’s culture”
(C) detached narrative stance
(D) strong plot lines
(E) lonely, isolated protagonists

4. As it is used by the author, “women’s culture” (Highlighted) most probably refers to a culture that was expressed primarily through women’s

(A) domestic experiences
(B) regional customs
(C) artistic productions
(D) educational achievements
(E) political activities

5. The author of the passage describes the sentimental novels of the mid–nineteenth century (Text in red) primarily in order to

(A) argue that Chopin’s style represents an attempt to mimic these novels
(B) explain why Chopin later rejected the work of the local colorists
(C) establish the background against which Chopin’s fiction developed
(D) illustrate the excesses to which Chopin believed nostalgic tendencies would lead
(E) prove that women’s literature was already flourishing by the time Chopin began to write

6. The passage suggests that one of the differences between The Awakening and the work of the New Women was that The Awakening

(A) attempted to explore aspects of female consciousness
(B) described the dream world of female characters
(C) employed impressionism more consistently throughout
(D) relied more on fantasy to suggest psychological states
(E) displayed greater unity of style and content

7. The primary purpose of the passage is to

(A) educate readers of The Awakening about aspects of Chopin’s life that are reflected in the novel
(B) discuss the relationship between Chopin’s artistic development and changes in nineteenth century women’s fiction
(C) trace the evolution of nineteenth-century women’s fiction using Chopin as a typical example
(D) counter a claim that Chopin’s fiction was influenced by external social circumstances
(E) weigh the value of Chopin’s novels and stories against those of other writers of her time

8. The work of the New Women, as it is characterised in the passage, gives the most support for which one of the following generalisations?

(A) Works of fiction written in a passionate, engaged style are more apt to effect changes in social customs than are works written in a scientific, detached style.
(B) Even writers who advocate social change can end up regretting the change once it has occurred.
(C) Changes in social customs inevitably lead to changes in literary techniques as writers attempt to make sense of the new social realities.
(D) Innovations in fictional technique grow out of writers’ attempts to describe aspects of reality that have been neglected in previous works.
(E) Writers can most accurately depict extreme psychological states by using an uninflected manner.

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