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  3. Though one may question the degree to which the Civil War represents a milestone in women’s pursuit of social, economic, and pol

Though one may question the degree to which the Civil War represents a milestone in women’s pursuit of social, economic, and pol

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问题     Though one may question the degree to which the Civil War represents a milestone in women’s pursuit of social, economic, and political equality, Leonard’s recent study has excelled that of her predecessor Ginzberg in debunking persistent myths about women’s primary relation to the war as weeping widows, self-sacrificing wives, patriotic fiancees, and loyal daughters. Leonard asks if the wartime work of northern women influenced popular perceptions of women’s abilities, and if home front production were seen as contributing to the readiness of soldiers. Finding in the affirmative, she argues that home front activities generated respect for women’s organizational talents and opened up new work opportunities for women, while participation reinforced their self-reliance and self-esteem.
    In contrast to her predecessors, who saw the war as transforming the ideology of benevolence, Leonard finds that women’s war work drew heavily upon the antebellum ideology of women’s nature and sphere. It was once believed that wartime benevolence heightened changes emerging in the 1850s by replacing the antebellum ideology of gender difference and female moral superiority with a new ideology of gender similarity and a more masculine ethos of discipline and efficiency. Leonard asserts instead that white, middle-class, Yankee, charitable women appropriated the antebellum moral definition of womanhood and, in particular, woman’s unique moral responsibility for maintaining community and her natural selflessness and caretaking abilities, to expand the boundaries of woman’s proper place. With determination and courage, women brought forth positive changes in popular characterizations of middle-class womanhood that opened new doors for women in the professions and in public life.
    A weak point of Leonard’s theory is her assessment of the themes of postwar histories of women’s wartime service. Leonard views these works as extolling women’s self-sacrifice and ability to cooperate men while downplaying women’s demands for status and pay and ignoring the scope of women’s administrative genius. But other theorists, most notably Ginzberg, have argued that these same works may also be viewed as praising the efficiency of the new centralized and national charitable organizations, women’s wage-earning capacity, and their subordination of feminine feeling and enthusiasm to business-like and war-like routinization and order. Two sets of values — older notions of benevolence and new demands of public service — were at war in the North, a war that can be plotted through tensions about paying wages, centralizing corporate functions of benevolence, relating benevolence to government, and using funds for administrative — as opposed to strictly charitable — purposes. It may well be that wartime masculinization of the ideology of benevolence pushed women further from both the symbolic and the real centers of power for social change and hastened instead a class-based alliance for social welfare. But we can agree with Leonard that the war forced men to yield ground, sharing and sometimes even surrendering territory, power, and status in the public realm.
With which of the following criticisms of Leonard’s theory would the author of the passage be most likely to agree?
选项 A、It lays too much importance upon the antebellum ideology of women’s nature and sphere.
B、It fails to acknowledge that masculinization of war-time efforts may have been detrimental to the feminist cause.
C、It tends to overemphasize the role of women in shifting their status over the course of the war.
D、It bases its thesis too exclusively on white, Yankee, middle-class women, ignoring every other social and racial class.
答案A
解析 推理判断题。通过文章第二段“In contrast to her predecessors，who saw the war as transforming theideology of benevolence，Leonard finds that women’s war work drew heavily upon the antebellum ideology ofwomen’s nature and sphere．”可知，其前辈把战争视为改变善行的意识形态，和他们相比，伦纳德发现，女性的战争工作大大利用了女人的天性和领域的战前意识形态。据此可知，答案是A。
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