1000+ Literary Theory MCQs – Part 14: Feminism I: Woolf, Beauvoir, Showalter, Gilbert & Gubar

1. Mary Wollstonecraft’s treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman deals with ________. Fill in the blank with the most appropriate option from the list given below.

1. the issue of fundamental rights with regard to women
2. the spread of a refined aesthetic sensibility among women
3. the economic privilege that men enjoyed within 17th-century British society
4. none of the above

2. Choose the incorrect statement vis-à-vis the life of Mary Wollstonecraft.

1. She was born in England in the latter half of the eighteenth century.
2. She did not receive any formal education.
3. She worked as a lady’s companion and a governess for a period before becoming a contributor to the Analytical Review.
4. She married an American merchant, Gilbert Imlay, and had a child named Fanny.

3. Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is ________. Pick out the appropriate option from the list given below.

1. a feminist treatise published in 1792
2. a fiction that explored the idea of women as rational subjects
3. a feminist treatise published in 1797
4. a fiction that criticised the patriarchal educational policies of England in the 1790s

4. Who among the following was not a member of the Bloomsbury Group?

1. Desmond MacCarthy
2. Leslie Stephen
3. Lytton Strachey
4. E. M. Forster

5. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is actually a/an ________.

1. anthology of poems
2. collection of lectures
3. collection of short stories
4. novel

6. Judith Shakespeare is a fictional character created by Woolf in the text ________.

1. A Room of One’s Own
2. Mrs Dalloway
3. To the Lighthouse
4. Jacob’s Room

7. While foregrounding the marginal presence of women in history in A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf refers to ______ History of England.

1. Campbell’s
2. Carter’s
3. Sander’s
4. Trevelyan’s

8. Which of the following books is written by a woman?

1. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
2. The Social Contract
3. A Treatise of Human Nature
4. The Wealth of Nations

9. In which essay does Virginia Woolf observe that “if a writer were a free man [sic] and not a slave” to the conventions of the literary market-place, there would be “no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it”?

1. “How It Strikes a Contemporary”
2. “Modern Fiction”
3. “The Russian Point of View”
4. “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown”

10. Which among the following titles set a course for academic literary feminism?

1. Nostromo
2. From Ritual to Romance
3. A Dance to the Music of Time
4. A Room of One’s Own

11. “Yet it is the masculine values that prevail,” observed a famous writer. “Speaking crudely,” she continued, “football and sport are ‘important’; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes ‘trivial’.” Name the author and the text.

1. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
2. Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class and Sex”
3. Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie
4. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

12. Who is the author of Mary and the unfinished The Wrongs of Woman?

1. Mary Wollstonecraft
2. William Godwin
3. Mary Hays
4. Elizabeth Inchbald

13. In her essay “Professions for Women” Virginia Woolf finds an analogy between the act of writing and

1. driving a motor car
2. fishing
3. riding a horse
4. gardening

14. Virginia Woolf argues that women’s creativity in literature requires:

1. Noble heredity
2. Sympathetic readership
3. Privacy and financial independence
4. Radical political ideology

15. Virginia Woolf exemplifies the idea ‘tyranny at home, within patriarchy, is connected to tyranny abroad’ in her work:

1. A Haunted House
2. Orlando
3. Night and Day
4. Three Guineas

16. The work, published in 1792, which denounced the educational system of the times for training women to be ‘frivolous and incapable’:

1. The Declaration of the Rights of Woman
2. The Female Citizen
3. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
4. On the Equality of the Sexes

17. “Yet it is the masculine values that prevail,” observed a famous writer. “Speaking crudely,” she continued, “football and sport are ‘important’; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes ‘trivial’.” Identify the writer and the work.

1. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
2. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
3. Audre Lorde, Age, Race, Class and Sex
4. Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie

18. Through which work did Mary Wollstonecraft defend the French Revolution?

1. A Vindication of the Rights of Men
2. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
3. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
4. Mary: A Fiction

19. Choose the correct statement with regard to A Room of One’s Own:

1. It was initially delivered as two separate lectures at the University of Cambridge.
2. It was published as a treatise in 1929.
3. It is a fiction based on the imaginary life of Shakespeare’s “wonderfully gifted” sister.
4. None of the above.

20. “No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds… I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.” These are lines from:

1. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
2. Three Guineas
3. A Room of One’s Own
4. The Second Sex

21. Simone de Beauvoir’s understanding of gender identity heavily critiqued the ________ school of thought.

1. Freudian
2. Phenomenologist
3. Lacanian
4. Behaviourist

22. Who among the following has NOT been discussed by Simone de Beauvoir in “The Myth of Woman in Five Authors” in The Second Sex?

1. Montherlant
2. Lawrence
3. Stendhal
4. Kafka

23. ‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ is a quote from:

1. Germaine Greer
2. Simone de Beauvoir
3. Susan Gubar
4. Mary Wollstonecraft

24. Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe was published in two volumes in the year:

1. 1947
2. 1949
3. 1953
4. 1956

25. The critic who identified woman as the “Other” and man as the dominating Subject:

1. Elaine Showalter
2. John Stuart Mill
3. Simone de Beauvoir
4. Kate Millett

26. Who wrote The Second Sex?

1. Sigmund Freud
2. Virginia Woolf
3. Julia Kristeva
4. Simone de Beauvoir

27. “Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute truth.” This statement is made by ____.

1. Simone de Beauvoir
2. Mary Wollstonecraft
3. Elaine Showalter
4. Sigmund Freud

28. The Female Eunuch is written by:

1. Judith Butler
2. Hannah Arendt
3. Germaine Greer
4. Simone de Beauvoir

29. Two pioneering feminist tracts, Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, were published in

1. 1969
2. 1970
3. 1968
4. 1967

30. The Female Eunuch is a feminist work by:

1. Betty Friedan
2. Kate Millett
3. Toril Moi
4. Germaine Greer

31. It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement is a work published in 1976 by:

1. Betty Friedan
2. Naomi Klein
3. Gloria Steinem
4. Simone de Beauvoir

32. Who described the change in feminist criticism in the late 1970s as a shift of attention from “andro-texts” to “gyno-texts”?

1. Katherine Mansfield
2. Elaine Showalter
3. Jane Austen
4. Daisy Bates

33. Who among the following is not a gynocritic?

1. Charlotte Brontë
2. Ellen Moers
3. Elaine Showalter
4. Patricia Meyer Spacks

34. Identify the gynocritics in the following list:

1. I and II
2. II and IV
3. II and III
4. III and IV

35. In the work ____, Elaine Showalter traces the history of women’s literature in three phases, which are ____, ____ and ____.

1. Feminist Manifesto; female, feminist, femme fatale
2. Gynocritique; feminine, feminist, femme de guerre
3. Feminist Poetics; feminine, feminist, female
4. Towards a Feminist Poetics; feminine, feminist, female

36. What does gynocriticism recommend as an approach to literature?

1. Considering women’s literature from men’s point of view
2. Examining women’s literature confirming gender stereotypes only
3. Becoming more familiar with the history of women and women’s writing
4. Becoming more familiar with gerontology

37. ________ divided the female literary tradition into three stages: the feminine, the feminist and the female.

1. Mary Wollstonecraft
2. Virginia Woolf
3. Elaine Showalter
4. Simone de Beauvoir

38. Which one of the following is not one of Elaine Showalter’s four models of sexual difference?

1. Occasional
2. Biological
3. Linguistic
4. Psychoanalytic

39. ‘Gynocriticism’ was a term coined by ____.

1. Simone de Beauvoir
2. Elaine Showalter
3. Virginia Woolf
4. Kate Millett

40. With which feminist theorist is gynocriticism most closely associated?

1. Louise M. Rosenblatt
2. Julia Kristeva
3. Luce Irigaray
4. Elaine Showalter

41. The “madwoman in the attic” is a specific reference to

1. the narrator of “Goblin Market”
2. Augustus Egg’s 1858 narrative painting
3. the heroine of “The Yellow Wallpaper”
4. Bertha Mason of Jane Eyre

42. Which of the following works does not have a madwoman as a character in it?

1. The Madwoman in the Attic
2. The Yellow Wallpaper
3. Jane Eyre
4. Wide Sargasso Sea

43. The title of the feminist work The Madwoman in the Attic derives from:

1. A Greek myth about woman’s creativity
2. A story alluded to by Simone de Beauvoir
3. The novel Jane Eyre
4. A poem by Amy Lowell

44. Who is the madwoman referred to in the title of Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s book The Madwoman in the Attic?

1. Charlotte Brontë
2. Bertha Mason
3. Emily Brontë
4. Jane Eyre

45. Which author said “I want to produce a feminine equivalent of the current masculine realism”?

1. Anaïs Nin
2. Dorothy Richardson
3. Simone de Beauvoir
4. Virginia Woolf

46. The feminist literary criticism of today is the direct product of the “women’s movement” of the ________.

1. 1960s
2. 1910s
3. 1980s
4. 1930s

47. Feminist criticism became much more ________, meaning that it began to draw upon the findings and approaches of other kinds of criticism.

1. Rhetoric
2. Trope
3. Eclectic
4. Perlocutionary

48. In feminist criticism, when did the “Anglo-American” tradition appear?

1. Mid 1980s
2. Early 1960s
3. Early 1990s
4. Late 1970s

49. The thesis that language is “masculine” was developed by ________ in the early 1980s in her book Man Made Language, which also argues that language is not a neutral medium.

1. Laurell K. Hamilton
2. Iris Murdoch
3. Dale Spender
4. Evelyn Waugh

50. Who among the following proposed that the English language is “man made”, not “woman made”?

1. Dale Spender
2. Dorothy L. Sayers
3. Mary Hays
4. Carol Chomsky

51. Which two of the following statements are applicable to feminist criticism?

1. A and B only
2. B and C only
3. A and D only
4. A and C only

52. Which two texts among the following are linked to literary feminism?

1. A and D only
2. C and D only
3. B and D only
4. A and C only

53. Protection for Women was published by Jane Anger in ________.

1. 1598
2. 1589
3. 1789
4. 1798

54. Who was Nancy Armstrong?

1. An American student
2. An American poet
3. An American leader
4. An American critic

55. According to Nancy Armstrong, what is a product of 18th-century novels?

1. The modern individual
2. The angry woman
3. The strong man
4. The frazzled student

56. According to Nancy Armstrong, feelings and personal qualities in characters became more important than _____________.

1. Education level
2. The ability to be clever
3. Class distinctions
4. Beauty

57. Who among the following belongs to the group of radical feminists?

1. Monique Wittig
2. Hélène Cixous
3. Simone de Beauvoir
4. Luce Irigaray

58. The earliest tract on feminism among the following is

1. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex
2. Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
3. Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
4. Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

59. Which two among the following critics have dealt with the reproduction of motherhood in feminist theory?

1. I and II
2. II and IV
3. I and IV
4. III and IV

60. The label ‘material feminism’ refers to the work of those thinkers who study inequality in terms of

1. gender differences
2. class differences
3. both gender and class differences
4. female consumerism

61. Which of the following does not describe the practices or beliefs of feminist literary criticism?

1. Feminist criticism recuperates female writers ignored by the canon.
2. Feminist literary critics offer a criticism of the construction of gender.
3. Feminist literary critics mostly reject the essentializing of ‘male’ and ‘female’.
4. Feminist literary critics argue that the traditional canon is justified.

62. Material feminism studies inequality in terms of

1. both class and gender
2. only class
3. only gender
4. only patriarchy

63. Match the title with the author:

1. (iv) (iii) (i) (ii)
2. (iv) (ii) (i) (iii)
3. (iii) (iv) (i) (ii)
4. (iv) (i) (ii) (iii)

64. Match the works with their authors:

1. (a)-(i), (b)-(ii), (c)-(iii), (d)-(iv)
2. (a)-(ii), (b)-(iii), (c)-(iv), (d)-(i)
3. (a)-(iv), (b)-(iii), (c)-(ii), (d)-(i)
4. (a)-(iii), (b)-(iv), (c)-(i), (d)-(ii)

65. Sexual/Textual Politics is a book written by

1. Simone de Beauvoir
2. Toril Moi
3. Julia Kristeva
4. Elaine Showalter

66. Who has written the essay “A Cyborg Manifesto”?

1. Francesca Ferrando
2. Donna Haraway
3. Friedrich Engels
4. Katherine Hayles

67. Given below are an Assertion (A) and a Reason (R).

1. Both (A) and (R) are correct and (R) is the correct explanation for (A).
2. Both (A) and (R) are incorrect and (R) is not the correct explanation for (A).
3. Assertion (A) is correct but Reason (R) is incorrect.
4. Assertion (A) is incorrect but Reason (R) is correct.

68. The essay “A Cyborg Manifesto”, written by Donna Haraway, was published in 1985 in:

1. Camera Obscura
2. Differences
3. Continuum
4. Socialist Review

69. A woman with literary or intellectual interests used to be referred to as a:

1. yellow bane
2. black widow
3. bluestocking
4. white heart

70. Match the theorists with their works:

1. A-2, B-1, C-4, D-3
2. A-4, B-3, C-1, D-2
3. A-1, B-3, C-2, D-4
4. A-3, B-1, C-4, D-2

71. The popularity of the slogan “The personal is political” is credited to the American feminist:

1. Carol Hanisch
2. Simone de Beauvoir
3. Virginia Woolf
4. Anne Sexton

72. The Subjection of Women is a work by:

1. Mary Shelley
2. J.S. Ross
3. Mary Wollstonecraft
4. J.S. Mill

73. A specific theory of the “male gaze” was elaborated by ____ in the essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”.

1. Laura Mulvey
2. Stanley Fish
3. Roland Barthes
4. Linda Hutcheon

74. Match each term with the work of criticism:

1. I-a, II-c, III-d, IV-b
2. I-d, II-a, III-b, IV-c
3. I-b, II-d, III-a, IV-c
4. I-c, II-a, III-d, IV-b

75. The Second Wave of Feminism was associated with

1. The Suffragist Movement
2. The Anti-Slavery Movement
3. The Civil Rights Movement
4. The Chartist Movement

76. Which of the following statements is not true with regard to the first wave of the feminist movement?

1. It was concerned with women’s right to vote.
2. It was concerned with the rights of women of colour in America.
3. It was concerned with ushering in gender equality.
4. It was concerned with legal issues pertaining to women.

77. The second wave of feminism is mostly associated with which of the following decades?

1. 1960s
2. 1930s
3. 1980s
4. 1990s

78. “Feminism is a politics. It is a politics directed at changing existing power relations between women and men in society.” These are lines from the text ________.

1. Protection for Women
2. Feminism: A Very Short Introduction
3. Oxford English Dictionary
4. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory

79. “The Personal is Political” is an essay written by ____.

1. Betty Friedan
2. Sylvia Plath
3. Carol Hanisch
4. Alice Walker

80. Who coined the term ‘backlash’ for a strategy that ‘blames the victim’ by suggesting that the women’s liberation movement is itself the cause of many problems that plague women?

1. Shulamith Firestone
2. Susan Faludi
3. Kathie Sarachild
4. Hélène Cixous

81. All liberal feminists advocate ____.

1. equal treatment in the public sphere
2. the strict segregation of the sexes
3. discrimination in economic terms only
4. no role in political matters

82. Feminist criticism does/is NOT ____.

1. concerned with the marginalisation of women in a patriarchal culture
2. try to explain how the subordination of women is reflected in or challenged by literary texts
3. try to examine the experiences of women from all races, classes and cultures
4. explain how and when women become responsible mothers

83. ‘The Dialectic of Sex’ is written by ____.

1. Luce Irigaray
2. Shulamith Firestone
3. Julia Kristeva
4. Simone de Beauvoir