2017年12月英语四级阅读理解50篇：17世纪的英国妇女

　　Women’s Positions in the 17th Century

　　Social circumstances in Early Modern England mostly served to repress women’s voices. Patriarchal culture and institutions constructed them as chaste, silent, obedient, andsubordinate. At the beginning of the 17th century, the ideology of patriarchy, politicalabsolutism, and gender hierarchy were reaffirmed powerfully by King James in The Trew Lawof Free Monarchie and the Basilikon Doron; by that ideology the absolute power of God thesupreme patriarch was seen to be imaged in the absolute monarch of the state and in thehusband and father of a family. Accordingly, a woman’s subjection, first to her father and thento her husband, imaged the subjection of English people to their monarch, and of allChristians to God. Also, the period saw an outpouring of repressive or overtly misogynistsermons, tracts, and plays, detailing women’s physical and mental defects, spiritual evils, rebelliousness, shrewish ness, and natural inferiority to men.

　　Yet some social and cultural conditions served to empower women. During the Elizabethanera (1558—1603) the culture was dominated by a powerful Queen, who provided animpressive female example though she left scant cultural space for other women. Elizabethanwomen writers began to produce original texts but were occupied chiefly with translation. Inthe 17th century, however, various circumstances enabled women to write original texts insome numbers. For one thing, some counterweight to patriarchy was provided by femalecommunities—mothers and daughters, extended kinship networks, close female friends, theseparate court of Queen Anne (King James’ consort) and her often oppositional masques andpolitical activities. For another, most of these women had a reasonably good education (modernlanguages, history, literature, religion, music, occasionally Latin) and some apparently foundin romances and histories more expansive terms for imagining women’s lives. Also, representation of vigorous and rebellious female characters in literature and especially on thestage no doubt helped to undermine any monolithic social construct of women’s matureand role.

　　Most important, perhaps, was the radical potential inherent in the Protestant insistence onevery Christian’s immediate relationship with God and primary responsibility to follow his orher individual conscience. There is plenty of support in St Paul’s epistles and elsewhere in theBible for patriarchy and a wife’s subjection to her husband, but some texts (notably Galatians3:28) inscribe a very different politics, promoting women’s spiritual equality: “There isneither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for yeare all one in Jesus Christ.” Such texts encouraged some women to claim the support of Godthe supreme patriarch against the various earthly patriarchs who claimed to stand towardthem in his stead.

　　There is also the gap or slippage between ideology and common experience. English womenthroughout the 17th century exercised a good deal of accrual power: as managers of estates intheir husbands’ absences at court or on military and diplomatic missions; as members ofguilds; as wives and mothers who apex during the English Civil War and Interregnum

　　 as the execution of the King and the attendant disruption of social hierarchies led manywomen to seize new roles—as preachers, as prophetesses, as deputies for exiled royalisthusbands, as writers of religious and political tracts.

　　1. What is the best title for this passage?

　　[A]. Women’s Position in the 17th Century.

　　[B]. Women’s Subjection to Patriarchy.

　　[C]. Social Circumstances in the 17th Century.

　　[D]. Women’s objection in the 17th Century.

　　2. What did the Queen Elizabeth do for the women in culture?

　　[A]. She set an impressive female example to follow.

　　[B]. She dominated the culture.

　　[C]. She did little.

　　[D]. She allowed women to translate something.

　　3. Which of the following is Not mention as a reason to enable women to originaltexts?

　　[A].Female communities provided some counterweight to patriarchy.

　　[B]. Queen Anne’s political activities.

　　[C]. Most women had a good education.

　　[D]. Queen Elizabeth’s political activities.

　　4. What did the religion so for the women?

　　[A]. It did nothing.

　　[B]. It too asked women to be obedient except some texts.

　　[C]. It supported women.

　　[D]. It appealed to the God.