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marshaehayes9444
marshaehayes9444
19.05.2020 • 
English

From the background reading, British Literature and History, The Victorian Age, what is most closely the central idea of the passage below (paragraph 33)?

The Realist novel, which had proved itself so effective in rousing emotion, began to seem too good at raising falsely comforting feelings. A new generation of novelists were influenced in part by Darwinism to look for natural, rather than spiritual, forces guiding the course of human life. In France, for example, the novelist Emile Zola wrote novels according to a set of beliefs called Naturalism. Naturalistic novels, plays, and poems tend to present a grim, almost fatalistic view of the world, in which mostly lower-class characters are trapped in circumstances beyond their control for reasons that they cannot determine. Zola observed that he was subjecting his fictional characters to “the same analytical examination that surgeons perform on corpses.” For novelists following in the path of Zola, clinical knowledge of the human condition replaced teary sympathy.

Question 23 options:

A) Emile Zola wanted to be a surgeon, but turned to writing fiction instead
B) Most audiences preferred novels that contained positive messages.Incorrect. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the material presented here.
C) The Realist novel was judged too sentimental by writers who sought a more straightforward examination of the challenges faced by ordinary people
D) Darwin’s theories as applied to social and economic relations were rendered as entertainment in Realist novels; in Naturalist novels, as instruction.

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