This instinctual profundity of insight was the first curse of Sarah’s life; the second was her education.
It was not a very great education, no better than could be got in a third –rate young ladies’ seminary in Exeter, where she had learnt during the day and paid for her learning during the evening – and sometimes well into the night – by darning and other menial tasks. Sje did not gets on well with the other pupils, They looked down on her and she looked up through them. Thus it had come about that she had read far more fiction, and far more poetry, those two sanctuaries of the lonely, than most of her kind. They served as a substitute for experience. Without realizing it she juged people as much by the standards of Walter Scott and Jane Austen as by any empirically arrived at; seeing those around her as fictional characters, and making poetic judgements on them. Given the veneer of a lady, she was made the perfect victim of a caste society. Her father had forced her out of her own class, but could not raise her to the next. To the young men of the one she had left she had become too select to marry; to those of the one she aspired to, she remained too banal.
by John Fowles
ANSWERS
1. At the seminary in Exeter, Sarah
A. had many friends
B. played truant.
C. was entirely self-supporting.
D. was a straight A student.
2. What did Sarah learn from books?
A. Interesting facts about life.
B. Details about Walter Scott and Jane Austen
C. How to deal with loneliness.
D. How to communicate with people
3. For Sarah, it was difficult to find a husband
A. on account of the rigidity of society’s class system.
B. because her father did not allow her to marry.
C. because the young men she knew had a strong dislike of her.
D. because she was prejudiced against men.
4. It would appear from the passage that Sarah
A. was unable to judge people.
B. was self-conceited and unimaginative.
C. read far more fiction than poetry.
D. had the appearance of a lady which helped her rise in the world.
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