P53
Late-eighteenth-century English cultural authorities seemingly concurred that women readers should favor history, seen as edifying, than fiction, which was regarded as frivolous and reductive. Readers of Marry Ann Hanway’s novel Andrew Stewart, or the Northern Wanderer, learning that its heroine delights in David Hume’s and Edward Gibbon’s histories, could conclude that she was more virtuous and intelligent than her sister, who disdains such reading. Likewise, while the naive, novel-addicted protagonist of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland, finds history a chore, the sophisticated, sensible character Eleanor Tilney enjoys it more than she does the Gothic fiction Catherine prefers. Yet in both cases, the praise of history is more double-edged than it might actually appear. Many readers have detected a protofeminist critique of history in Catherine’s protest that she dislikes reading books filled with men “and hardly any women at all.” Hanway, meanwhile, brings a controversial political edge to her heroine’s reading, listing the era’s two most famous religious skeptics among her preferred authors. While Hume’s history was generally seen as being less objectionable than his philosophy, there were widespread doubts about his moral soundness even as a historian by the time that Hanway was writing, and Gibbon’s perceived tendency to celebrate classical paganism sparked controversy from the first appearance of his history of Rome.
1. The author’s primary purpose is that
A. the evidence used in support of a particular argument is questionable
B. a distinction between two genres of writing has been overlooked
C. a particular issue is more complex than it might appear
D. two apparently different works share common features
E. two eighteenth-century authors held significantly different attitudes toward a particular
2. According to the passage, which of the following is true of Hume’s reputation in the late eighteenth century?
A. He was more regarded as a historian than Gibbon
B. His historical writing, like his philosophical writing, came to be regarded as problematic
C. He was more well-known for his historical writing than for his philosophical writing
D. His historic writing came to be regarded as morally questionable because of his association with Gibbon
E. His views about classical paganism brought him disapproval among the general reading public
3. The highlighted sentence exemplifies which of the following?
A. Cultural authorities’ attempt to use novels to support their view about the value of reading fiction
B. Eighteenth-century women authors’ attempts to embody in their work certain cultural authorities’ views about reading
C. A point about the educational value of reading books about history
D. An instance in which a particular judgment about the value of reading history is apparently presupposed
E. A challenge to an assumption about eighteenth-century women’s reading habits
4. The author mentions the “widespread doubts” in order to
A. support a point about the scholarly merit of Hume’s writings
B. contrast Hume’s philosophical writing with his writing on historical subjects
C. suggest that Hanway did not understand the implicit controversy depicting her heroine as reading Hume
D. identify an ambiguity in Hanway’s depiction of the philosopher in The Northern Wanderer
E. illustrate a point about a way eighteenth-century fiction sometimes represented historians
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