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

Short Answer Questions

1. In section "V," who comes to visit Mary?

2. What event causes Mary to temporarily forget about the mysterious man they saw in October?

3. To what do Mary and Ned attribute the great beauty they see in England?

4. Ned asks Alida a question about the ghost's "signalement" (84). What is he asking about?

5. What does Mary find in the envelope addressed to her?

Short Essay Questions

1. How has Ned's mood changed on the morning after he and Mary first discussed the Blue Star lawsuit, and what does Mary believe changed his mood?

2. What horrifying chain of events does Mary understand once she sees Bob Elwell's picture?

3. What draws the Boynes to England?

4. What news does Mary learn from a newspaper clipping that someone sends her in the mail, and why is she so upset by it?

5. How does the narrator describe the life that the Boynes had in America?

6. Why does Parvis come to see Mary near the end of the story?

7. What does Ned tell Mary about the Blue Star lawsuit?

8. What is Mary doing on the morning that Ned disappears?

9. What does Mary remember happening earlier in the day in October when she and Ned first climbed Meldon Steep?

10. What does Alida Stair tell the Boynes about Lyng?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Edith Wharton once wrote in a letter to a friend, "The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background." She was talking about gardening and landscaping, which was a special interest of hers, and justifying her taste for importing European landscape fashions to her own property. Consider this quote in relationship to the setting and characterizations in "Afterward." What do you think that Wharton meant by the quote, and does her having said it make her seem more or less like the Boynes? Write an essay in which you explore the quote and then make and defend a claim about how it sheds light on Wharton's relationship to the Boynes.

Essay Topic 2

Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about "Afterward" as an example of American Realism. Offer textual evidence for your arguments and be sure to cite outside sources in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

Write an essay that proposes and supports a claim regarding the causes of Mary and Ned's downfall. What are the implications of everything that has happened for Mary's life after the story ends? Who or what is most at fault? Give textual support for your claims.

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