Source: Revised GRE PDF 2nd Ed. Section 4; #12 (p. 67)
Anna Roberts
So I picked answer choice B because
I thought dramatic conventional tragedies showed tradegy in public sphere when there was passive obedience to the king, it showed how that was a tradegy and was bad.
But they expected this passive obedience to be maintained in private sphere, they expected passive obedience to male head.
So I thought they advocated obedience only in private sphere and not public.
Im confused to see how they actually thought both private and public to mirror? Isnt it a tradegy showing that the male protagonist undergoes fall and evokes pity. Doesnt that mean that they dont advocate obedience in public, and only in private.
Dec 29, 2017 • Comment
David Recine, Magoosh Tutor
Hi again, Anna. You already asked something very similar under a different question from this same passage (https://gre.magoosh.com/forum/116-the-passage-suggests-that-carnell-believes-behn). But you raise a lot of good points about the passage as a whole, and not just the individual questions. So for the benefit of students who may not have checked out our discussion on the other Magoosh GRE Forums page, I'm reproducing my original response to you below. :)
In conventional dramatic tragedy, the protagonist's downfall is meant to evoke pity. And if the protagonist's downfall is a punishment they receive because of disobedience in the public sphere, it's possible that the tragedy is portraying public hierarchy as wrong and unfair.
However, there are some things in the passage that cast doubt on your interpretation. For one thing, the passage doesn't say *why* the protagonists of these conventional tragedies siffer a downfall. Maybe it's because they disobeyed the monarchy and were unjustly punished. But maybe it's because they did something truly bad and were punished fairly, but the audience still sympathizes with the protagonist as a person who made a real mistake, but it still good. It's also possible that the protagonist has a downfall that doesn't involve disobeying the monarchy or being punished. Maybe the protagonist works too hard and becomes ill, or is treated unfairly by their family. The protagonist could even be a royal person who is unfairly disobeyed and deposed by their subjects.
So the exact nature of the protagonist's downfall isn't so important here. It's more important to look at two key lines from the passage:
"Behns own comic stage productions displayed the same partisanship for the
reigning Stuart monarchy that characterized most of the politically oriented dramatic tragedies of her day."
This line indicates that Behn supported the monarchy ("partisanship"), and that this support of the monarchy was common-- normal-- in conventional dramatic tragedies of Behn's era ("characterized most... tragedies..."). So that would strongly indicate the Behn did believe in hierarchy and obedience int he publicly ruled monarchy.
After you look at that line, you should then pay attention to this one:
"Behn questioned the view... that the ...public political idealpassive obedience to the nations kingought to be mirrored in the private sphere"
With this line and the previous one you can see that Behn believed two things:
1) That it was important, in public life, to obey the person who was the head of the state.
and
2) That private life was different, and that in the home, absolute obedience to the "head" of the household (the man, given the era) was not important, and that such hierarchy, while good and fair under the monarchy, was not good and fair in private/domestic homes.
Jan 15, 2018 • Reply
Riva Mitra
what about E?
Aug 29, 2017 • Comment
Adam
Answer choice E is incorrect because if we look back at the passage, the artificial distinction is *between the public and private spheres!* Answer choice E states that the distinction refers to the "*approach* taken by the dramatic tragedies in depicting male and female characters differently, depending on whether their roles were public or private." However, these authors paid *no attention* to private roles. If they did, they simply wished for a hierarchical structure and did not consider the role of female characters. They *did,* however, focus only on tragedies pertaining to the public sphere, which is what makes answer choice D correct.
Sep 1, 2017 • Reply
Keren Zhou
I like this explanation!
Initially, I have made a mistake that:
According to Carnell, Behn’s choice of literary form underscores the differences between her own approach to crafting a tragic story and (her own approach) that taken in the dramatic tragedies, with their ARTIFICIAL DISTINCTION between the public and private spheres.
So I was perplexed about what is the ARTIFICIAL DISTINCTION in Behn's literary...
After reading your explanation, now I know that it is Dryden's approach that includes ARTIFICIAL DISTINCTION.
Aug 15, 2014 • Comment
Lucas Fink, Magoosh Tutor
Jun 20, 2013 • Comment
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