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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. Where does Ellen Ash go to sit after her husband has died?

2. Who will go and spy on Cropper and Hildebrand Ash?

3. What has happened to Roland's landlady's cats?

4. What does Cropper entice Sir George by offering?

5. What does Ellen do with the box?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is Maud and Roland's relationship in France like?

2. How does the subject of Christabel and Ash's letters come up at the race track?

3. Describe Cropper's lectures.

4. What does Maud fear in relationships?

5. How does Ash show Christabel that she is not a possession?

6. What do Leonora and Blackadder do when Cropper's Mercedes passes them on the road?

7. What does Beatrice Nest overhear?

8. What offer does Blackadder make to Roland?

9. How does Blackadder feel about talking about Ash on television?

10. How does Blanche Glover feel at the end of her life?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The characters pursue knowledge, but they find only an interpretation, not an objective truth. Discuss objective reality in the novel.

1) How do the characters judge the relationship of their knowledge to objective truth? Can the characters ever know that they've accessed objective truth, and how might they?

2) Does objective truth have meaning to the characters? Which is more powerful in affecting the characters' lives, objective truth or the accepted understanding of reality that the characters' share?

3) How does the characters' literary investigation compare to a scientific investigation?

Essay Topic 2

Discus the role of objects in the story, and how they are and are not invested with meaning.

1) What gives an object meaning? How do the letters that Roland finds have meaning, and why is the meaning only identified when Roland reads the letters?

2) How does context relate to meaning? Why can Maud only interpret Christabel's doll poem correctly in the context of Christabel's room? What other examples are there in the novel of context giving meaning to objects or words?

3) What meanings do the physical objects in Ash's box have? How are these meanings different for different people, in different contexts?

Essay Topic 3

In many ways, the novel is a mystery. Discuss the aspects of mystery in the novel.

1) How do the characters gather clues in order to unravel the story? How is this similar to a traditional detective story, and how is it different?

2) What mysteries do the characters resolve in the course of the story? What remains a mystery? Why are parts of the mystery left unsolved?

3) How is literature a kind of puzzle in the novel?

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