Reading Comprehension

When the history of women began to receive focused attention in the 1970's, Eleanor Roosevelt was one of a handful of female Americans who were well known to both historians and the general public. Despite the evidence that she had been important in social reform circles before her husband was elected President and that she continued to advocate different causes than he did, she held a place in the public imagination largely because she was the wife of a particularly influential President. Her own activities were seen as preparing the way for her husband's election or as a complement to his programs. Even Joseph Lash's two volumes of sympathetic biography, Eleanor and Franklin (1971) and Eleanor: The Years Alone (1972), reflected this assumption.
Lash's biography revealed a complicated woman who sought through political activity both to flee inner misery and to promote causes in which she passionately believed. However, she still appeared to be an idiosyncratic figure, somehow self-generated not amenable to any generalized explanation. She emerged from the biography as a mother to the entire nation, or as a busybody, but hardly as a social type, a figure comprehensible in terms of broader social developments.
But more recent work on the feminism of the post-suffrage years (following 1920) allows us to see Roosevelt in a different light and to bring her life into a more richly detailed context. Lois Scharf's Eleanor Roosevelt, written in 1987, depicts a generation of privileged women, born in the late nineteenth century and maturing in the twentieth, who made the transition from old patterns of female association to new ones. Their views and their lives were full of contradictions. They maintained female social networks but began to integrate women into mainstream politics; they demanded equal treatment but also argued that women's maternal responsibilities made them both wards and representatives of the public interest. Thanks to Scharf and others, Roosevelt's activities-for example, her support both for labor laws protecting women and for appointments of women to high public office-have become intelligible in terms of this social context rather than as the idiosyncratic career of a famous man's wife.


Which of the following studies would proceed in a way most similar to the way in which, according to the passage, Scharf's book interprets Eleanor Roosevelt's career?
A. An exploration of the activities of a wealthy social reformer in terms of the ideals held by the reformer
B. A history of the leaders of a political party which explained how the conflicting aims of its individual leaders thwarted and diverted the activities of each leader
C. An account of the legislative career of a conservative senator which showed his goals to have been derived from a national conservative movement of which the senator was a part
D. A biography of a famous athlete which explained her high level of motivation in terms of the kind of family in which she grew up
E. A history of the individuals who led the movement to end slavery in the United States which attributed the movement's success to the efforts of those exceptional individuals

Hello Experts,

Could you please highlight the approach to solve such questions? The OA to this question is A.

gmat_for_life wrote:Hello Experts,

Could you please highlight the approach to solve such questions?

First you could go back to the passage, find the discussion of Scharf's book and make sure that you have a general sense of how it works.

You would find the following.

- Scharf discussed certain patterns followed and ideas held by a group of women.

- Scharf's book made Eleanor Roosevelt's activities "intelligible in terms of this social context." In other words, Sharf's book showed the connection between the patterns and ideas of the group and Eleanor Roosevelt's activities.

Ok, now go to the answer choices.

Now I have a question for you. Did you purposely provide an incorrect OA? I think that once before there was a question you posted, and the OA you gave did not look right, and the provided OA here seems incorrect as well.

(A) This answer choice does discuss the relationship between the activities of a person and what motivated the person to engage in those activities. So it could be correct, but nothing is mentioned about studying the social context in which the person lived and operated. I don't think that it is correct, but I'll keep it for now.

(B) This is not like what goes on in Scharf's book.

(C) This explains the career activities of one person by looking at the social context in which he lived and operated. So it sounds a lot like what Scharf's book does in interpreting what Eleanor Roosevelt did.

(D) Scharf's book is not about motivation. It's about linking a person's engaging in certain activities to a certain social context.

(E) Unlike what is discussed in Scharf's book, this is about why something succeeded rather than why it happened in the first place.

So actually the best answer is C.

Hello Marty!

I didn't post the incorrect answer on purpose. In fact, this is the official answer that I've been provided with. If you have a look at the attached snapshot, you would realize that option A has been marked as the correct answer and an explanation has also been provided.

regards,
Amit

gmat_for_life wrote:Hello Marty!

I didn't post the incorrect answer on purpose. In fact, this is the official answer that I've been provided with. If you have a look at the attached snapshot, you would realize that option A has been marked as the correct answer and an explanation has also been provided.

regards,
Amit

Hmm. That explanation is not the greatest.

Scharf's book is all about social context, while the explanation emphasizes "ideals independent of any external influence". While money held is not the type of influence Scharf may have discussed, the passage does not say that Scharf says that there were no external influences. Rather, from what the passage says, it seems likely that social influences did play a part.

Meanwhile, "national conservative movement" is pretty vague. That phrase could describe something to a degree formalized or something more like what Scharf described as going on during Eleanor Roosevelt's time.

So, which is answer is best is clearly debatable.

While this question and explanation are not great, at least from our discussion you can take away some insights into how to get the right answer to a question like this one. On the actual test, any OA will likely be much more clearly, and correctly, defined than this one is.