Introduction to Modern Drama Study — Quiz Answers

Based on the article "Introduction to Modern Drama Study," what is a common issue addressed in feminist dramas?

Read the excerpt from The Feminine Mystique . But on an April morning in 1959, I heard a mother of four, having coffee with four other mothers in a suburban development fifteen miles from New York, say in a tone of quiet desperation , “the problem.” And the others knew, without words, that she was not talking about a problem with her husband, or her children, or her home. Suddenly they realized they all shared the same problem, the problem that has no name. Which best describes the connotation of the word “desperation”?

Read the excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique . I heard echoes of the problem in college dormitories and semiprivate maternity wards, at PTA meetings and luncheons of the League of Women Voters, at suburban cocktail parties, in station wagons waiting for trains, and in snatches of conversation overheard at Schrafft’s. The groping words I heard from other women, on quiet afternoons when children were at school or on quiet evenings when husbands worked late, I think I understood first as a woman long before I understood their larger social and psychological implications. Based on the underlined words and phrases, what is Friedan most likely trying to express?

Read the excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique . A mother of four who left college at nineteen to get married told me: “I’ve tried everything women are supposed to do—hobbies, gardening, pickling, canning, being very social with my neighbors, joining committees, running PTA teas. I can do it all, and I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about—any feeling of who you are . . . . I’m a server of food and a putter-on of pants and a bedmaker, somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I? ” The underlined words and phrases in the excerpt most contribute to a tone of

Read the excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique . Sometimes a woman would tell me that the feeling gets so strong she runs out of the house and walks through the streets. Or she stays inside her house and cries. Or her children tell her a joke, and she doesn’t laugh because she doesn’t hear it. Which best describes the tone of the excerpt?

Read the excerpt from The Feminine Mystique . Millions of women lived their lives in the image of those pretty pictures of the American suburban housewife, kissing their husbands goodbye in front of the picture window, depositing their stationwagonsful of children at school, and smiling as they ran the new electric waxer over the spotless kitchen floor. Which keywords from the excerpt most relate to the issue of domesticity?

Read the excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. In the late fifties, a sociological phenomenon was suddenly remarked: a third of American women now worked, but most were no longer young and very few were pursuing careers. They were married women who held part-time jobs, selling or secretarial, to put their husbands through school, their sons through college, or to help pay the mortgage. The key terms in the excerpt most contribute to which of the following ideas?

Read the following excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique . The suburban housewife—she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife— freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth, and the illnesses of her grandmother. She was healthy , beautiful , educated , concerned only about her husband, her children, her home. She had found true feminine fulfillment . The underlined key terms most relate to what issue?

Read the excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique . For over fifteen years there was no word of this yearning in the millions of words written about women, for women, in all the columns, books and articles by experts telling women their role was to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers. Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity. Which words best emphasize society’s view of the “experts” who claimed to understand women’s needs?

Read the excerpt from The Feminine Mystique . “If I have only one life, let me live it as a blonde,” a larger-than-life-sized picture of a pretty , vacuous woman proclaimed from newspaper, magazine, and drugstore ads. And across America, three out of every ten women dyed their hair blonde . They ate a chalk called Metrecal, instead of food, to shrink to the size of the thin young models . Department-store buyers reported that American women, since 1939, had become three and four sizes smaller . The underlined terms in this excerpt most relate to which issue?