Q7

[jpchris3]

Hello,

Why is C incorrect? It seems like medieval scholars did not take into account the wealth controlled by medieval women.

Thanks!

[bbirdwell]

Find a line reference that says how much wealth the medievalists thought that women controlled!

You can't

In response to the question task, we should go back to the passage and ask "what do we know about these medievalists, and furthermore, about our author's opinion of them?"

Upon reading the first few lines of the passage, we get this: they distinguished public law from private law (government/military vs family, social, and land), and our author thinks this is "overly simplistic" (ie, wrong).

Then we get the tell-tell pivot word "Although" and the information that follows, "Although excluded from public roles, women's control of land had important political implications." Which is to say "Although the medievalists are right about X, they are wrong about Y."

Contrary to what the medievalists said, land and politics (ie public and private law) go together when it comes to women and land!

This is (E).

[jpchris3]

Thanks for breaking that down!

[Sweetangel]

What about lines 13-15: "Since land equaled wealth and wealth equaled power, certain women exercised influence by controlling land". To me this conditional relationship implies these women had wealth. Would this not be sufficient evidence for C) "the amount of wealth controlled by medieval women was greater than these medievalists have recorded"?

Having said this, I see why E is correct, I just don't think it's as easy to rule out C.

Thanks!

[WendyQ765]

Why D is wrong?

[ohthatpatrick]

What line reference are you using to support it?

We don't pick any answers on RC without having a line reference to back it up.

Where does the passage talk about "actual legal cases of the period"?

Line 55-57 mentions "English legal records", but I think that's it. And that's nowhere near the keywords of the question stem, so that would be a highly dubious place from which to be grabbing our support for Q7.

Line 5 says that "examining these women's LIVES shows the distinction to be overly simplistic".

(D) is saying that "examining actual legal cases shows the distinction to be overly simplistic".

Hope this helps.