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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What are we often unaware of that we bring with us into a marriage?
(a) Our parent's relationship.
(b) The unfinished business of childhood.
(c) Perfect love.
(d) The Oedipus complex.

2. Viorst details which famous baby doctor in Chapter 18?
(a) Bill Sears.
(b) T. Berry Brazelton.
(c) B. F. Skinner.
(d) Benjamin Spock.

3. According to Chapter 13, there can be no human love without what?
(a) A caring parental relationship.
(b) Ambivalence.
(c) Passion and romance.
(d) Fear.

4. Parents have trouble seeing their children as what?
(a) Anything but perfect.
(b) Competent humans.
(c) A part of themselves.
(d) Separate people.

5. Madame Bovary uses what metaphor to describe marriage?
(a) A beautiful spring day spent in a field of wildflowers.
(b) An exquisite French dessert, delicious, but hard to create.
(c) An intimate and joyful day on a private beach in Fiji.
(d) A great rosy-plumaged bird soaring in the splendors of poetic skies.

6. According to Viorst, in middle age we inspire far less ________ than we do ___________.
(a) Hatred; love.
(b) Admiration; annoyance.
(c) Lust; respect.
(d) Respect; pity.

7. What is the first phase of mourning discussed in Chapter 16?
(a) Hatred of the person who left us.
(b) Shock.
(c) Endless crying.
(d) Renewed hope.

8. Who was Viorst describing when she said they fought death like a championship game?
(a) Her sister, Lois.
(b) Her mother.
(c) Her friend, Ruth.
(d) Her husband, Cecil.

9. How did Cecil and Julia Saunders die?
(a) Their plane crashed on the way to their granddaughter's wedding.
(b) Someone broke into their house and killed them.
(c) They shot themselves.
(d) They died in a car accident.

10. Viorst's poem, "I bring the children one more glass of water," is about what?
(a) Sex not being so sexy anymore.
(b) Being an overworked mother.
(c) A dream of helping children find clean water.
(d) The anxieties of going to sleep as a child.

11. Viorst quotes this book, written by Kathrin Perutz, in Chapter 13.
(a) Heaven on Earth.
(b) The Most Complicated Relationship.
(c) Marriage is Hell.
(d) I Hate You, Too.

12. Men pursue ______________; women yearn for _______________.
(a) Deep relationships; one night stands.
(b) Excitement; safety.
(c) Autonomy; intimacy.
(d) Sex; cuddling.

13. What famous author's memoir entitled Speak, Memory does Viorst reference at the end of Chapter 14?
(a) Frank McCourt
(b) James Joyce
(c) Vladimir Nabokov
(d) Leo Tolstoy

14. In Chapter 16, Viorst quotes which psychologist who wrote the book Loss?
(a) Erich Fromm.
(b) Jean Piaget.
(c) John Bowlby.
(d) Erik Erikson.

15. Which book referenced in Chapter 14 references the "good mother"?
(a) The World According to Garp by John Irving
(b) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.
(c) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
(d) The Mother Knot by Jane Lazarre

Short Answer Questions

1. Friends and intimate partners are considered what?

2. Which of the following psychoanalysts said we create religion to "exorcise the terrors" of nature?

3. According to Chapter 20, Viorst is living on what to beat her middle-aged spread?

4. Name the foiled romantic in Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

5. Viorst references The World According to Garp and a mishearing of this term by a child.

(see the answer keys)

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