View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, what does Deborah say she bought?

2. In Chapter Five: Gravity, which fictional character does Deborah say she thought she was?

3. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, what does Deborah say she repaired in her house?

4. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, how does Deborah say her father had taught her to check if fruit was ripe?

5. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, what does Deborah say she thought of Holloway Road as?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, who does Deborah say was named "Big Silver"? Why was he called this?

2. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, what does Deborah Levy say she wrote about the Big Silver conversation after she witnessed it? What does she say she thought about the young woman?

3. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, what does Deborah say she resented most about her divorce? How does she say she thought of her unhappiness?

4. In Chapter Five: Gravity, how does Deborah say she set up her shed? What did she furnish it with?

5. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, what did Deborah say she noticed about her male friends and colleagues? What did this lead her to question?

6. In Chapter Five: Gravity, what did Deborah say she started going through? What does she say the paragraph she read reminded her of?

7. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, how does Deborah apply the Big Silver metaphor to herself? How does she say she applied it to in her own life?

8. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, what metaphor from earlier in the book did Deborah apply to the party she went to? How did she apply this metaphor to women?

9. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, what does Deborah say she repaired? How did this repair become a metaphor?

10. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, what does Deborah write about her supporting her family in this time? What does she say about her freedom?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Deborah's grief over her mother and the sense of unmooring from the physical places her mother inhabited are alongside her grief over her marriage and the sense of unmooring from everything Levy spent her life creating. How does Levy show these griefs as similar and different? How are they both dealt with and how are they mourned both by actions described or by the act of writing the book?

Essay Topic 2

The debate of minor versus major character is prominent in the Cost of Living as Deborah assigns minor and major characterization both to her characters and the people in her life. Who, in your opinion, is a minor character, and who is a major character in the autobiography? Why is it this way? How has the author arranged characterization of her life to achieve the kind of minorization and majorization, the shifts in the patriarchy's story, that she has wanted to achieve?

Essay Topic 3

Read the short story, the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In the autobiography, there are several instances of wallpaper discussed. First, Deborah has a problem with her walls being painted yellow, then she references the short story, by Gilman. Alongside the metaphor of the Family Home being taken apart, Deborah also talks about her writing student having, "torn the wallpaper off the walls of her family house and slipped her hand inside the naked bricks for something she knew was there" (71).

After reading Gilman's short story (it is 10 pages), write on what is happening. How does Deborah transform Gilman's metaphor into her lived reality? How is it similar or different how Deborah applies this metaphor for her own use to how she sees it in her student? How does the continued metaphor reflect the evolving struggles that a woman feels trying to be herself? (consider how Gilman uses the wallpaper and what her character experiences versus Deborah, her student, and other women you may want to bring into the conversation, such as Deborah's mother).

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,127 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample