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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. What new feature of Eduard's character makes him more like Ottilie?

2. What is Charlotte and Eduard's son to be named?

3. What is the general content of Ottilie's fourth journal entry?

4. On which procession of people does the new house guest, who arrived during Ottilie's artistic activity, exercise his craft and calling?

5. Who is the Major?

Short Essay Questions

1. How do Eduard, Charlotte, and Ottilie act once they are all living in the same house together again?

2. How does Charlotte and Ottilie's relationship change after Otto's death?

3. Whom does Eduard meet when he walks through his own estate, and what is the significance of their meeting?

4. What is the first faux pas the foreign visitor commits, and why is it a social flub?

5. What does Eduard plan with the Major regarding their relationships with Charlotte and Ottilie?

6. How does Charlotte discover Eduard has rejoined the military, and how does she respond to this news?

7. Which of Luciane's experiments in "moral regeneration" goes wrong, which Charlotte hears about after Luciane leaves the estate?

8. What does Ottilie decide to embark upon as a career, and why?

9. What is the substance of Eduard's proposition to the Major, and the Major's response to it?

10. What plans does the architect have for the church?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Examine the role of human beings in shaping the natural landscape. What do the four protagonists use the land for? How do they view their use of it, and the general purpose the landscape has? Describe their relationship to the land in terms of the utilitarian, the picturesque, the beautiful, and/or the sublime? What does nature seem to symbolize for each character, and what is the significance of this symbolism? How might a reader interpret the protagonists' use of and relation to the land as a statement by Goethe about human interactions with nature in his own time and place?

Essay Topic 2

Consider the personalities of the characters; the insight the reader gets into each of their minds, feelings, and motivations; and the topic of losing one's rational sense. Why is it important that the narrative structure allows each character's thoughts and feelings to be "visible" to the reader? What is significant about each character truly having a "mind" that can explain his or her actions to the reader? Offer at least two examples each of when specific characters think and act rationally, and when specific characters do not think and act rationally--that is, when they allow their passions to overtake them. What are the outcomes of each situation? How are other characters impacted by each instance? How does the narrator treat rational and irrational situations, feelings, and choices through his tone, language, and style? Is there any concrete judgment of the merits of either rationality or irrationality over the other?

Essay Topic 3

Examine Luciane's character. What is her relation to Charlotte and Ottilie? How does Luciane's character compare specifically to Ottilie's character? What words or phrases best describe Luciane? What is notable about her interactions with others, and how do other characters feel about her and her presence at the estate? Does the narrator, through his use of tone or word choice, present Luciane in any particular manner? How does her characterization address the theme of self-contradiction in the novel? How does her character address the theme of public life versus private life in the novel?

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