2025年12月英语四级阅读理解训练：17世纪的英国妇女

　　英语四级阅读部分注重对文章信息的提取和分析。通过练习理解文章主旨和细节，并提高语法理解，能够有效提高答题得分。以下是“2025年12月英语四级阅读理解训练：17世纪的英国妇女”，希望能对大家的英语水平提升有所帮助!

　　2025年12月英语四级阅读理解训练：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.

　　1. A. 17世纪英国妇女地位。见上面文章大意。

　　B. 妇女服从于家族制。 D. 17世纪妇女的反抗，都是A.内容中的一部分，不能作为最佳标题。 C. 17世纪英国社会形式，只能作为背景出现。

　　2. C. 她没有做什么。英女皇伊丽莎白在位时期间在文化上并没有妇女做过什么。这在第二段讲得很清楚。“伊丽莎白统治时期(1558——1603)，文化领域为强有里女皇所控制，她本人确实树立了令人难忘的妇女形象，可是她并没有为其它妇女能够创作一些东西。”见前面列出之原因和下一道题的A. B. C.

　　3. D. 伊丽莎白女皇的政治活动。这文内没有提及。

　　A. 妇女亲情网对家长制进行抗衡。 B. 安娜女皇的政治活动。 C. 大多数妇女都受过良好教育。这三项在第二段中都提到。“首先，妇女亲情关系，如母亲，女儿，他们的亲戚网，好友;安娜女皇单独的宫殿，她那对立的化装舞会和政治活动都和族长制予以抗衡。”

　　4. B. 除了某些文本外，它也要求妇女服从。第一段，见上述内容。第三段集中论述这一点。“也许，最重要的是基督教固有潜在激进性。它坚持主张每个基督徒和上帝的直接关系，坚持人首先责任是服从她或他的良知。在圣•保罗使徒书以及在别的圣经中有许多对家长制，妻子对丈夫的服从支持。可是有些文本镌刻着一种完全不同的政治观点，鼓吹妇女精神平等：”人没有犹太和希腊之分，没有束缚或自由之分，没有男女之分，因为在耶酥基督面前，你们都是一样。“

　　A. 它什么也没有做。不对。 C. 它支持妇女。也不对，只有某些版本支持。 D. 它求助于上帝。它借上帝之名压制妇女。第一段：“因此，妇女首先服从父亲，然后服从丈夫，体现了(象征)英国人民服从他们的君主，所有基督徒服从上帝。”

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