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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. When was Rebecca Harding Davis born?
(a) 1911
(b) 1865
(c) 1916
(d) 1831

2. The narrator in the beginning of “Life in the Iron Mills” refers to the reader as “You, Egoist, or Pantheist, or” what?
(a) Leonine
(b) Arminian
(c) Argentine
(d) Polarized

3. The narrator says in “Life in the Iron Mills,” “About this man Mitchell hung the impalpable atmosphere belonging to the” what?
(a) Thoroughbred gentleman
(b) Lowest class
(c) Undercover policeman
(d) Royal classes

4. What action is referenced in “Life in the Iron Mills” as “the peculiar action of a man dying of thirst”?
(a) Clinging
(b) Pursing
(c) Slinking
(d) Clutching

5. What broken figure does the narrator describe as “pointing upward from the mantle shelf” in the beginning of “Life in the Iron Mills”?
(a) An angel
(b) A lion
(c) A tiger
(d) A goddess

Short Answer Questions

1. How long has Deborah stood at the spools at her job in the beginning of “Life in the Iron Mills”?

2. The woman who stays behind at the jail after Hugh’s suicide is described as a Quaker or what, “as they call themselves” in “Life in the Iron Mills”?

3. Where did Rebecca Harding Davis largely grow up?

4. Of Deborah, the narrator says in “Life in the Iron Mills,” “Perhaps the weak, flaccid wretch had some stimulant in her pale life to keep her up—some love or hope, it might be, or urgent need. When that stimulant was gone, she would take to” what?

5. Rebecca Harding and L. Clarke Davis met where?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did the outbreak of the Civil War impact Rebecca Harding Davis’s work, according to the author of “A Biographical Interpretation”?

2. How would you describe the language style in “Life in the Iron Mills”?

3. How is Hugh’s death described in “Life in the Iron Mills”? How does Hugh die?

4. Who did Rebecca Harding Davis meet on her first trip North, according to the author of “A Biographical Interpretation”?

5. What do the visitors at the mill tell Hugh Wolfe regarding his future as an artist in “Life in the Iron Mills”?

6. Where did Rebecca Harding Davis grow up, according to the author of “A Biographical Interpretation”? How is her family described?

7. What are the impressions of the visitors when they see the sculpture in “Life in the Iron Mills”?

8. What elements of social change did Rebecca Harding Davis encounter during finishing school?

9. How is the sculpted figure discovered by one of the visitors at the mill described in “Life in the Iron Mills”?

10. How is the plot of “Life in the Iron Mills” structured? Are there subplots in the story?

(see the answer keys)

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