#27 - Specific Reference, Must Be True, Subject Perspective

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (B).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[reop6780]

The correct answer for this question is B.

The question asks sth that both view agree.

While the new scholarship's view was clearly discussed in the last paragraph, I could not verify whether Dexter's argument agrees with B.

Where can I infer this?

[Jon Denning]

Hey reop,

Thanks for the question! 27 isn't necessarily asking you to describe a view with which both Dexter and practitioners of the new scholarship would agree, but rather it's asking you to find an answer that tells how the new scholarship people would describe Dexter's argument (a statement about Dexter with which they would agree).

So we need to determine what Dexter thinks, and that's presented near the beginning of the passage (around line 9). Dexter's point is that colonial women were comparatively well-off, due to the relatively basic social circumstances of the time: few women meant that the women were more highly valued, and thus had a greater say in their own lives than women in later centuries.

And that's what answer choice (B) represents: the less complex social system for colonial women conferred higher status on them as a necessity. Note that it says "makes the assumption," meaning that the new scholarship practitioners don't necessarily agree with its validity, but would simply agree that it describes Dexter's position.

[rwraulynaitis]

Hello,

I see how answer choice (B) is correct, but I do not understand why answer choice (D) is necessarily incorrect.

I understood the first paragraph as delineating Dexter's view which focused solely on the lack of rigid gender roles in colonial women's lives.

Then the last paragraph describes new scholarship as encompassing "gender roles, the colonial economy, demographic patterns, religion, the law, and household organization" as all defining colonial women's lives.

Is this not perfectly encapsulated in (D), which claims that the new scholars would believe that Dexter put too much emphasis on gender roles? Or is the problem in the "too much" emphasis, where perhaps the new scholars believed instead that there was just not enough emphasis on other factors?

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

I think it's the latter, rwraulynaitis - the problem the new scholars have with Dexter is not that Dexter placed too much emphasis on gender roles, but that she did not put enough emphasis on other factors. She too readily assumed that because the society was simpler, with all hands needed to contribute to a growing society, that women could take on whatever role they saw fit to take. She overlooked the changing role of the family during the colonial period and the revolution that brought new changes to their lives. She overgeneralized.

[rwraulynaitis]

That makes sense, thanks Adam!