Read the excerpt from Trifles, by Susan Glaspell.COUNTY ATTORNEY. I guess before we’re through she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about. HALE. Well, women are used to worrying over trifles. (The two women move a little closer together.) COUNTY ATTORNEY (with the gallantry of a young politician). And yet, for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies? (The women do not unbend. He goes to the sink, takes a dipperful of water from the pail and, pouring it into a basin, washes his hands. Starts to wipe them on the roller-towel, turns it for a cleaner place.) Dirty towels! (Kicks his foot against the pans under the sink.) Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?Which theme of early feminist drama is reflected in the excerpt?
Based on the article "Introduction to Modern Drama Study," what is a common issue addressed in feminist dramas?
Read the excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. But the actual unhappiness of the American housewife was suddenly being reported—from The New York Times and Newsweek to Good Housekeeping and CBS television (“The Trapped Housewife”), although almost everybody who talked about it found some superficial reason to dismiss it.Which best describes the connotation of the word “superficial” in the excerpt?
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.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 excerpt from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.And so she must accept the fact that “American women’s unhappiness is merely the most recently won of women’s rights,” and adjust and say with the happy housewife found by Newsweek: “We ought to salute the wonderful freedom we all have and be proud of our lives today. I have had college and I’ve worked, but being a housewife is the most rewarding and satisfying role.”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.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?
According to the article "Introduction to Modern Drama Study," which of the following best explains why more women began to emerge as playwrights in the 1960s?
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?
Did you find these answers helpful?