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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 Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, what does Deborah say her older daughter did?

2. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, what author does Deborah say wrote a poem about bees that Deborah remembers?

3. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, what does Deborah say is her imaginary bathroom manifesto?

4. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, what does Deborah say was above the water when the woman came up?

5. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, what does Deborah say the young woman did when she talked to the older man?

Short Essay Questions

1. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, what does Deborah write about her supporting her family in this time? What does she say about her freedom?

2. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, who does Deborah say she met at a funeral? What was his story?

3. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, why did Deborah say she painted her walls yellow? Why did she paint them back to white?

4. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, what metaphor from earlier in the book did Deborah apply to the party she went to? How did she apply this metaphor to women?

5. In Chapter Three: Nets, what does Deborah say she and her ex-husband did to the family home? What did this action send her back to?

6. In Chapter One: The Big Silver, who was the couple Deborah Levy said she oversaw talking? How does she say they met?

7. In Chapter Four: Living in Yellow, where does Deborah say she moved? How does she say she thought about this move?

8. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, what did Deborah say she noticed about her male friends and colleagues? What did this lead her to question?

9. In Chapter Two: The Tempest, how does Deborah apply the Big Silver metaphor to herself? How does she say she applied it to in her own life?

10. In Chapter Six: The Body Electric, what does Deborah say she bought? Why did she buy this?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Levvy says: "I was more interested in a major unwritten female character" (123).

Does the autobiography write this female character? If so, what does it write? If not, where does it fall short? How are Deborah and the other women in the book either this unwritten female character or different variations of her? How, according to the book, does it become possible to write the unwritten?

Essay Topic 2

The debate of minor versus major character is prominent in the Cost of Living as Deborah assigns minor and major characterization both to her characters and the people in her life. Who, in your opinion, is a minor character, and who is a major character in the autobiography? Why is it this way? How has the author arranged characterization of her life to achieve the kind of minorization and majorization, the shifts in the patriarchy's story, that she has wanted to achieve?

Essay Topic 3

Naming and its importance, is a major topic as Deborah becomes irritated that her male colleagues only refer to their spouses as "wife." As she says, "If we don't have names, who are we?" (8).

Apply this idea to how Deborah writes the autobiography. Who is named and who is unnamed in the autobiography? Which of the "characters" are male and female who are named and unnamed? Consider this about the naming and unnaming of wives for Deborah's male friends. What are considerations of naming someone, and how does Deborah use this in her autobiography account? Also consider how naming is a kind of seeing, and not naming is a kind of unseeing.

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