Q13

[hyewonkim89]

I got this question right by POE.

But I'm not completely sure why (C) is the correct answer.

I looked at lines 52-57 to look for the differences between the Awakening and the New Women. I'm not sure where it says anything about more consistence. Is "more... uneven length unified" similar to more consistent?

Thanks in advance!

[matthew.mainen]

Line 50 tells us they experimented with impressionism. In other words, it wasn't a central aspect. 52-53 tells us flat out that she embraced impressionism MORE FULLY in "the awakening! (and then we are given a brief description of a work that seems very grounded in impressionism).

[tommywallach]

Hey Guys,

Yeah, Matthew nailed it. There's only one place in the passage where any type of contrast is drawn between the New Women and The Awakening (which is mentioned as an example of the New Women's work!). This is the line Matthew quoted:

In The Awakening, Chopin embraced this impressionistic approach more fully...

We're then told that this methodology lasts for the entire book. This allows us to infer (C), though I agree it's a very tricky one!

-t

[phil.ogea]

I actually eliminated C because I felt that "embraced more fully" (L53) =/= "employed more consistently" (Choice C) and I thought this difference between text and answer choice was significant.

I thought A was a really good answer choice because the text says New Women used "interlude and parable...dream of an entirely different world" (L44-47) which I don't feel is equal to Chopin's "Rendering the protagonist's mind" (L57). This difference in the text is what I played on to feel confident about choice A.

Am I being too nit-picky here? I didn't even mark this question for review, so I was/am pretty surprised and confused by the answer.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[christine.defenbaugh]

Great question phil.ogea!

You're getting caught in a common danger loop of hairsplitting. This is a really common trap to fall into after you've been working on the LSAT for a while - you've been training yourself to be more and more specific (even arguably pedantic at times!) with language use in order to really zero in on easily missable differences that change the meaning.

However, it is entirely possible to go to far with the specificity. When we engage in hairsplitting, we start focusing on superficial differences in wording, or the tiny difference in nuance between one word and another word that is an essential synonym. If these tiny differences in minor connotation were enough to make answers wrong, for instance, the LSAT would never be allowed to phrase and answer choice in any language but verbatim quotes - and obviously, that's not what's generally going on for the LSAT!

When we get stuck in hairsplitting, it's as if we have blinders on to the larger issues in play. It's the same fundamental problem that people have when they overfocus on one detail in an RC passage - they miss the big picture!

Here, there's no compelling difference between "embraced more fully" and "employed more consistently". It's not identical language, but it's easy to see how an author could use those two phrases interchangeably to express the same essential idea. Consider what it would actually mean for The Awakening to embrace impressionism more fully - it probably means that it uses impressionism more throughout the work!

Now, it's perfectly rational to be wary of that language and want to make sure you can eliminate everything else.

Looking to (A) - you've gotten caught up once again in hairsplitting, this time between the description of the New Women (interlude and parable) and The Awakening (rendering the mind). While those two descriptions are not identical to one another, I'm not at all sure that they provide clear evidence of any significant contrast between the works. Couldn't these both be argued to qualify as "exploring aspects of female consciousness"?

Additionally, in your focus on these two quotes, and the small differences between them, you missed a much more significant quote in lines 51-52: the New Women used impressionism "in an effort to explore hitherto unrecorded aspects of female consciousness". We have clear cut support that the New Women are attempting to explore female consciousness, and that would directly contradict (A)!

It's important to get comfortable with the difference between strong sensitivity to real differences in language meaning, and hairsplitting on superficial mismatches - the latter can blind you to the real differences at play elsewhere!

Please let me know if this helps clear up this issue!

[AmyH231]

Hi there,

I feel like the only reason I got this answer right was because I read the book (which is not something I can count on for test day!). While I eliminated A,C, and E easily, I could not figure out out why the language implied that Chopin didn't rely more on fantasy, but the dream world, as they are described as related in the sentence "make room for interludes of fantasy and parable, especially in episodes in which women dream of an entirely different world." Since we know that Chopin is "faithfully rendering the workings of the protagonist's mind," how do we determine that D, "relied more on fantasy to suggest psychological states" is out? Isn't the mind of the protagonist a bridge to this answer? How did others eliminate it?

[obobob]

Hi there,

I feel like the only reason I got this answer right was because I read the book (which is not something I can count on for test day!). While I eliminated A,C, and E easily, I could not figure out out why the language implied that Chopin didn't rely more on fantasy, but the dream world, as they are described as related in the sentence "make room for interludes of fantasy and parable, especially in episodes in which women dream of an entirely different world." Since we know that Chopin is "faithfully rendering the workings of the protagonist's mind," how do we determine that D, "relied more on fantasy to suggest psychological states" is out? Isn't the mind of the protagonist a bridge to this answer? How did others eliminate it?

I also don't understand why (D) is wrong also. Can someone explain (D)????

[ohthatpatrick]

When you first read the question stem, make sure you go hunting in the passage for your answer or for your Proof Window (the area of the passage you think they're testing).

This question stem asks us for something pretty specific:
a difference between The Awakening and the work of the New Women.

I would re-read the 4th paragraph, looking for where they draw any contrast between The Awakening and the work of the New Women.

It didn't look to me like they ever did mention a contrast, when I re-read that paragraph. So I switched into thinking what it was Chopin was taking from the local colorists and what we was taking from New Women.

I knew that Chopin seemed to reject the sentimental novel and wanted instead to tell some grittier, darker stuff about women's psychology.

I thought that we could take line 29-30 and say The Awakening was probably about "loneliness, isolation, and frustration", and then contrast that with lines 44-46, where it sounds like the work of the New Women was about more positive stuff "interludes of fantasy where women dream of a different world".

None of the answers reflected that.
(A) was definitely wrong because line 51-52 definitely establish that New Women were exploring female consciousness.

(B) was wrong because it sounds more verbatim like what we heard about New Women in 44-46.

(C) didn't seem right, since impressionism seemed like something Chopin took FROM the New Women (i.e. they would have it in common)

(D) was just like (B). It sounds more like the direct quote we have about New Women in 44-46.

(E) seems to go against line 55, where we learn that The Awakening is not very unified in style or content.


So after rejecting all five and seeing that none of them were getting at the distinction we could identify between "rejecting sentimental novel in order to focus on loneliness, isolation" vs. "modifying the form of the sentimental novel to make room for fantasy and dreams".

I had already looked up the lines for A/B/D/E and found that the available text made it seem more like a wrong answer (switched up point of view ... it's emphasizing what we might say about the New Women)

So I would check the wording about impressionistic style in (C) and find 52-54 and accept that if they tell me that The Awakening "embraced the impressionistic approach more fully".

That gives me a leg to stand on! I can pick (C), since I can point to my support for it. And in retrospect, I'm mad at myself for having not found that line reference when I was explicitly searching that paragraph for any comparative wording between The Awakening and New Women.

Hope this helps.

[bindll93]

What really bothered me about this one and why i picked D instead of C is because of the specific language.

They say that Chopin embraced the impressionistic more fully (I'll give you that) but also imply that the sections of The Awakening are not that unified by their style...To me I took this to mean that while she may have embraced impressionism as her style, she did not do it consistently. Hence why I excluded C because it explicitly states consistently. I guess it's kind of a lot of hoops to jump through but still I'm a bit miffed at the LSAT choice of language. I guess for this one you really have to embrace the "pick the *BEST* answer" mentality, even if it isn't necessarily a good answer...