Sentence Correction

This question is testing MODIFIER usage. "Lucretia Mott published her DoW" is an independent clause; the underline begins after that clause must be modifying it.


(A) arguing in a treatise for women to have equal political and legal rights
The participle "arguing" creates an adverbial modifier, modifying the entire clause before it. If this had said "LM published her DoW, arguing for the rights of women." that would have been correct. Here, though, "arguing in a treatise" makes it seem like the "treatise" and the DoW are two different things. The DoW is the treatise, so this is nonsensical.

(B) arguing in a treatise for equal political and legal rights for women
Same issue as in A.

(C) a treatise that advocates women's equal political and legal rights
"a treatise" properly modifies the DoW. If the sentence ended after this underline, this answer choice would be fine. However, after the underlined portion we have "and for changes..." We need a parallel structure: FOR X and FOR Y.

(D) a treatise advocating women's equal political and legal rights
Same parallelism issue as in C.

(E) a treatise that argued for equal political and legal rights for women
Correct! "... argued FOR ______ and FOR _____" is the correct structure.