Question

With which of the following characterizations of Lebsock's contribution to the controversy concerning women's status in the nineteenth-century United States would the author of the passage be most likely to agree?

• A. Lebsock has studied women from a formerly neglected region and time period.
• B. Lebsock has demonstrated the importance of frame of reference in answering questions about women's status.
• C. Lebsock has addressed the controversy by using women's current status as a frame of reference.
• D. Lebsock has analyzed statistics about occupations and property that were previously ignored.
• E. Lebsock has applied recent historiographical methods to the biography of a nineteenth-century woman.

Answer 1

Answer: (B)

Lebsock has demonstrated the importance of frame of reference in answering questions about women's status.

"More importantly, she shows that the debate itself depends on frame of reference: in many respects, women lost power in relation to men, for example, as certain jobs (delivering babies, supervising schools) were taken over by men. Yet women also gained power in comparison with their previous status, owning a higher proportion of real estate for example" - this extract from the passage, specifically the use of 'more importantly', lends support to option B as being the correct answer. The other choices do not fit the context as well.