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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. How did Assia Wevill die?
(a) A heart attack.
(b) Cancer.
(c) She was hit by a car.
(d) She gassed herself.

2. The man whom Sylvia Plath was dating when she met Ted Hughes did not return her _____________.
(a) Love of literature.
(b) Mistrust of humanity.
(c) Passion.
(d) Love of art.

3. Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes during her last year at which school?
(a) Yale University.
(b) Smith College.
(c) Brown University.
(d) Dartmouth College.

4. How many children did Assia Wevill have with Ted Hughes?
(a) Three.
(b) Two.
(c) One.
(d) Zero.

5. Sylvia saw a therapist who felt that her relationship with whom was central to her problems?
(a) Ted.
(b) Her mother.
(c) Her father.
(d) Clarissa.

Short Answer Questions

1. When did Malcolm meet with Trevor Thomas?

2. What is the name of the protagonist in The Bell Jar?

3. Anne Stevenson wrote that "it took me two unhappy marriages and ____ children to make me reconsider my assumptions."

4. In a letter to her former lover at the end of their relationship, Sylvia told him, "Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything it is because we are dangerously near to wanting __________."

5. What poem written by Sylvia Plath, originally collected in the posthumously published volume Ariel, describes the speaker's oppression with the use of World War II Nazi Germany allusions and images?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Sylvia Plath demonstrate her "not nice" side in her journals?

2. What public dispute did Alvarez and Ted Hughes have via letters?

3. What did Alvarez tell Malcolm about Ted and Sylvia's relationship in Part Two: Chapter VII?

4. Where did Malcolm detour on her way to visit Clarissa Roche? Why?

5. How did Elizabeth Sigmund describe Olwyn Hughes?

6. Who was Trevor Thomas? What did Malcolm learn from him?

7. When and why did Clarissa Roche begin a biography on Sylvia? What was it like?

8. What outraged Ted Hughes in The Haunting of Sylvia Plath? What response did the author write?

9. What did Anne Stevenson reveal about Ted Hughes in her interview with Malcolm in Part Two: Chapter IV?

10. Describe the letters that Malcolm read between Anne Stevenson and Olwyn Hughes. What was the relationship between the women like?

(see the answer keys)

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