View a FREE sample

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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Where does Deborah go to live after serving her jail sentence in “Life in the Iron Mills”?
(a) With her mother
(b) With the Quakers
(c) With Old Wolfe
(d) With Janey and her husband

2. The narrator in “Life in the Iron Mills” describes Hugh Wolfe as “no favorite in the mill; he had the taint of” what on him?
(a) Old money
(b) Politics and corruption
(c) Secrecy and politeness
(d) School-learning

3. Mitchell claims in “Life in the Iron Mills,” “Reform is born of need, not” what?
(a) Empathy
(b) Pity
(c) Poverty
(d) Criticism

4. When was “Life in the Iron Mills” first published in a periodical?
(a) June, 1843
(b) April, 1861
(c) September, 1900
(d) July, 1912

5. The narrator compares the “wild, eager face” of the sculpture in “Life in the Iron Mills” to what?
(a) A hungry child’s
(b) An enraged goddess’s
(c) A seductive snake’s
(d) A starving wolf’s

Short Answer Questions

1. How many centuries ago does the narrator describe Christ rising up from the people in “Life in the Iron Mills”?

2. 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?

3. The narrator says in “Life in the Iron Mills,” “Man cannot live by” what?

4. The narrator in “Life in the Iron Mills” describes Hugh Wolfe’s father as being an immigrant from where?

5. Where does Deborah say Hugh was born in “Life in the Iron Mills”?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the author of “A Biographical Interpretation” describe Rebecca Harding Davis’s early years of marriage?

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

3. What kind of education did Rebecca Harding Davis receive, according to the author of “A Biographical Interpretation”?

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

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

6. What is the basic story related in the plot of “Life in the Iron Mills”? How would you “sum up” the story in one or two sentences?

7. What realization does Hugh have after his interaction with the visitors at the mill in “Life in the Iron Mills”? What does he do next?

8. What is the outcome for Hugh in the denouement of “Life in the Iron Mills”?

9. How does the author of “A Biographical Interpretation” depict Rebecca Harding Davis’s relationship with her first publisher?

10. How is the character of Janey described in “Life in the Iron Mills”? What is Janey’s relationship to the other characters?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 907 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample