Sentence Correction

Patience Lovell Wright, whose traveling waxworks exhibit preceded Madame Tuscan's work by 30 year, became well known as much because of having an eccentric personality as for having skillfully rendered popular public figures in wax.

(A)well known as much because of having an eccentric personality as for having skillfully rendered popular public figures in wax
(B)well known as much for having an eccentric personality as for skillful wax renderings of popular public figures.
(C)well known as much because of her eccentric personality as she was for her skillful wax renderings of popular public figures.
(D)as well known for having an eccentric personality as having skillfully rendered popular public figures in wax.
(E)as well known for her eccentric personality as for her skillful wax renderings of popular public figures.

[spoiler]OA: E[/spoiler]

Is it incorrect to say " as much for X as for Y"?

This sentence question is all about parallelism within the idiom. Once I started recognizing these, they became much easier because incorrect parallelism is WRONG, it's not a style preference.

So, the idiom here is as much _____ as _____

Choice A: as much BECAUSE OF HAVING.... as FOR HAVING......... BECAUSE and FOR do not match. Wrong.
Choice B: as much FOR HAVING.... as FOR SKILLFUL WAX.... The FOR matches but HAVING is not parallel to SKILLFUL WAX. One is a gerund (a verb ending in ING) and the other is a noun. Wrong.
Choice C: as much BECAUSE OF HER.... as SHE WAS... Doesn't match anything. Wrong.
Choice D: as well known FOR HAVING as HAVING. Second part doesn't have a FOR. Wrong.
Choice E: as well known FOR HER ECCENTRIC PERSONALITY as FOR HER SKILLFUL WAX RENDERINGS. FOR matches FOR. "Eccentric personality" matches "her skillful wax renderings" because they are both nouns. Correct.

I don't think saying "as much for X as for Y" is wrong necessarily if you have parallelism, but in this sentence there was never an option to use "as much for X as for Y"

IMO B.

A, C, D : easily eliminated .

between B and E ,

B looks parallel.

Can somebody explain how E is better than B ?

paes,

Choice B: as much FOR HAVING.... as FOR SKILLFUL WAX.... The FOR matches but HAVING is not parallel to SKILLFUL WAX. One is a gerund (a verb ending in ING) and the other is a noun. Wrong. Even though they both have "for" they are not parallel because what follows the "for" is not parallel.

Answer is E

as explained above, NOUN to NOUN parallelism
and the idiom (as much X as Y)...

You can add FOR (prepositions) before X and Y elements so long as the basic skeleton of idiom remains intact

Example,

#BOTH X AND Y
#BOTH FOR X and FOR Y