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AP English Language: Mixed Skills II (Drill 3)

Drill 3 · Reading · Mixed Skills II

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About This Drill

AP English Language: Mixed Skills II (Drill 3) is a Reading practice drill covering Mixed Skills II. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Mixed Skills II drills feature more challenging passages, historical documents, speeches, and complex argumentative prose. This drill uses a scientific argument directed at a general audience, with questions focused on how the author manages the tension between technical accuracy and accessibility.

Passage

The following text is adapted from Virginia Woolf's essay "Professions for Women," delivered as a speech to the Women's Service League in London in 1931. When I came to write, I discovered that there was a very strange creature standing between me and the paper. I will describe her as shortly as I can. She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught, she herself sat in it, in short, she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others. Above all; I need not say it; she was pure. Her purity was supposed to be her chief beauty; her blushes, her great grace. In those days, the last of Queen Victoria, every house had its Angel in the House. And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the sound of her skirts in the room. Directly, that is to say, I took my pen in hand to review a man's book, she slipped behind me and whispered: 'My dear, you are a young woman. You are writing about a book that has been written by a man. Be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of our sex. Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all, be pure.' And she made as if to guide my pen. I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I am to have one, is that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her, she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. What is the use of telling you that I had to fight such a phantom, and that this phantom was part of my own self? For, as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a bad novel without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And for expressing such opinions, women writers have been criticized and silenced for generations. The freedom to write must therefore also mean the freedom to have an opinion, and to express it, without apology, regardless of whether it is pleasing, flattering, or pure.

Questions & Explanations

Question 1. The primary purpose of the essay is to

  • A) provide a biographical account of Woolf's early struggles to find paid employment as a professional writer.
  • B) argue that Victorian ideals of femininity were entirely external impositions that had no effect on women writers.
  • C) explore how an internalized ideal of feminine selflessness threatened her ability to write honestly and argue for the freedom to express one's own opinions. ✓
  • D) celebrate the accomplishments of women writers who successfully defied Victorian social expectations in the nineteenth century.

Explanation: Choice C is correct. Woolf describes the 'Angel in the House' as an internalized figure, 'part of my own self', that threatened her writing by demanding sympathy, flattery, and the suppression of genuine opinion. The essay argues that freedom to write requires freedom to have and express honest opinions. Choice A misidentifies the mode; the essay is argumentative, not biographical. Choice B inverts the argument; Woolf explicitly says the phantom was 'part of my own self,' not merely external. Choice D mischaracterizes the tone; Woolf is analyzing a threat she had to fight, not celebrating past victories.

Question 2. The extended list of the Angel's qualities in the first paragraph, 'intensely sympathetic,' 'immensely charming,' 'utterly unselfish', is best understood as

  • A) a catalog of idealized feminine virtues that Woolf presents with ironic accumulation to expose their suffocating effect on a woman who wishes to think for herself. ✓
  • B) a sincere tribute to the virtues of Victorian women that Woolf admires even as she acknowledges their incompatibility with professional life.
  • C) a description of an actual woman in Woolf's life who served as both a model and an obstacle in her career.
  • D) a satirical portrait of men's expectations that Woolf uses to argue for legislative reform of women's professional opportunities.

Explanation: Choice A is correct. The accumulation of superlatives, 'intensely,' 'immensely,' 'utterly', alongside the revelation that the Angel 'never had a mind or a wish of her own' transforms what sounds like praise into indictment. The virtues are real Victorian ideals, but Woolf's ironic presentation reveals their cost. Choice B misreads the tone; Woolf is not sincerely admiring these qualities. Choice C is contradicted by the third paragraph's revelation that the Angel is 'part of my own self', a psychological figure, not a real person. Choice D introduces legislative reform not present in the essay.

Question 3. Woolf's statement that 'Had I not killed her, she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing' primarily functions to

  • A) introduce a metaphor of physical violence that Woolf uses to critique the literal dangers faced by women in Victorian society.
  • B) concede that the Angel's values, while incompatible with writing, served important functions in domestic life.
  • C) signal a shift in the essay's tone from analytical reflection to personal memoir.
  • D) establish that the internalized ideal was not merely inconvenient but existentially threatening to her identity as a writer. ✓

Explanation: Choice D is correct. By framing the confrontation as mutual destruction, kill or be killed; Woolf argues that the Angel's demand for selflessness and suppressed opinion was incompatible with honest writing at the most fundamental level. This is not hyperbole but a claim about what writing requires: a self with genuine opinions. Choice A misreads the metaphor as literal; Woolf is not describing physical violence. Choice B introduces a concession about domestic life that Woolf does not make. Choice C misidentifies the shift; the essay does not pivot to memoir here, the personal voice has been present throughout.

Question 4. The phrase 'without apology, regardless of whether it is pleasing, flattering, or pure' in the final paragraph echoes language from which earlier part of the essay, and what does this echo accomplish?

  • A) It echoes the description of the Angel's purity in the first paragraph, suggesting that Woolf now embraces that ideal on her own terms.
  • B) It echoes the Angel's whispered instructions in the second paragraph, creating a structural contrast that defines honest writing as the direct inversion of the Angel's demands. ✓
  • C) It echoes the description of the chicken leg in the first paragraph, linking domestic sacrifice to professional silence.
  • D) It echoes Woolf's act of killing the Angel in the third paragraph, suggesting that the violence was ultimately unnecessary.

Explanation: Choice B is correct. The Angel instructs Woolf to 'be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive' and 'be pure.' The final paragraph defines freedom as writing 'without apology, regardless of whether it is pleasing, flattering, or pure', directly inverting each of the Angel's demands. This structural echo gives the conclusion its argumentative force. Choice A misreads the echo; Woolf is not embracing purity but rejecting its mandatory status. Choice C draws a connection to the chicken leg that the passage does not support. Choice D misreads the implication; the echo affirms the necessity of killing the Angel, not its superfluity.

Question 5. The overall tone of the essay can best be described as

  • A) bitterly satirical, using exaggerated humor to mock Victorian society's treatment of women who write.
  • B) nostalgic and ambivalent, mourning the loss of the Angel's virtues while acknowledging their incompatibility with professional life within the essay's framing.
  • C) wryly analytical, combining personal narrative with a clear-eyed examination of the psychological forces that constrain women's writing. ✓
  • D) urgently polemical, making a direct political argument for specific legal reforms to women's professional rights.

Explanation: Choice C is correct. Woolf's tone is personal and precise; she uses her own experience to analyze a general condition, with irony and clarity rather than bitterness or polemic. The essay is wry (the catalog of virtues, the throttling of the phantom) and analytical (the final paragraph's explicit argument about the relationship between writing and opinion). Choice A overstates the bitterness; Woolf is incisive rather than bitter. Choice B misreads the ambivalence; Woolf is not mourning the Angel. Choice D mischaracterizes the mode; the essay is exploratory and personal, not a political manifesto with specific demands.