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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. Which character lends Hal a jacket for her walk to the village of St. Piran?

2. Who sends Hal a text message with a code enclosed that will act as her train ticket back toward Trepassen House?

3. Who is there to fetch Hal from the train station on her journey from Brighton back to Trepassen House?

4. Which character tells Hal that the photographer who created the picture she now has of her mother had been Ezra?

5. Which character urges Hal in Chapter 24 to use the night to think over the contents of Hester's will?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who is Lizzie?

2. What objects does Hal drop on the ground in Chapter 23 and what information about her is revealed to Ezra at that moment?

3. In Maggie's diary entry dated "11th December, 1994," (208) what action is Hester said to have taken after finding out about Maggie's pregnancy?

4. In Chapter 24, Hal announces to the Westaway family at Trepassen House that she has made what decision?

5. What feelings does Hal express to Ezra about the prospect of finding her biological father and how do they differ from her true feelings?

6. Describe an instance when Ware uses white space to intensify the impact of a particular sentence in the text.

7. What does Hal find out when she speaks with Lizzie?

8. What is the most popular theory among Abel, Ezra, and Harding in relation to their mother's motive for drawing up her will the way she had?

9. Describe a chapter that acts as a builder of tension and then as a diffuser of tension, for the purposes of maintaining suspense throughout the work.

10. How does Hal sustain a physical injury in Chapter 38?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

William Faulkner once famously claimed that the most important literature deals with the subject of the human heart in conflict with itself. Explain how the theme of Human versus Self is demonstrated within Ware’s novel The Death of Mrs. Westaway. Create a decisive, arguable claim and prove it with quotes from the novel.

Essay Topic 2

Discuss Ware's choice to tell the story of The Death of Mrs. Westaway using a third person omniscient narrator. What elements of the novel's themes lend themselves to this choice and what are Ware’s intended effects on the reader?

Essay Topic 3

Sensory details are used frequently by Ware in order to create vivid pictures of each character's progression through the narrative of The Death of Mrs. Westaway. Choose three scenes in which sensory details are heavily used and discuss how the sensory details used serve Ware’s creation of vivid characters to populate the narrative.

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