Reading Comprehension

PT107 · S2 · P4 · Q25 Medieval English Law and Women

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Until about 1970, anyone who wanted to write a comprehensive history of medieval English law as it actually affected women would have found a dearth of published books or articles concerned with specific legal topics relating to women and derived from extensive research in actual court records.

Topic

The lack of comprehensive research on how medieval English law actually affected women in practice.

Framework

Problem / Solution

Main Point

There's a major gap in understanding medieval English women's legal history because nearly all research has relied on published treatises and statutes, not on court records that show how laws worked in reality for women; only recently has this started to improve, but knowledge remains fragmented. The Most Valuable Sentence: The second sentence of the first paragraph sets up the main problem, and the final sentence of the passage summarizes the state of knowledge ().

P1: The Problem—Lack of Research on Real Legal Experiences of Women

For a long time, there weren't many books or studies looking at how medieval English law impacted women in real court cases. Most scholars just looked at formal legal writings, which only tell you what laws were supposed to do, not how they played out for actual women. Figuring out what really happened requires analyzing lots of court records, which few people have done.

P2: Why So Little Research Has Been Done

It's not just because the records are hard to access and interpret (they're huge, messy, and in old languages), but also because most historians just haven't been that interested in women's legal history specifically. Most legal historians started with a focus on laws themselves, not their impact on women. As a result, what we know about law and medieval Englishwomen is still incomplete, though slowly getting better.

25.

According to the passage, the sources consulted by legal scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provided adequate information concerning which one of the following topics?

  1. Correct

    the intent of medieval English

    Why this is right

    This looks like a strong match for those "latter questions that can be answered". We wanted "how the law was intended to affect them or thought to affect them" . This answer encompasses both, speaking about the intent of the law and the opinions of commentators about how they thought the law affected women.

    Skill tested: Locate Detail · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    73% picked this

  2. the overall effectiveness of English

    Unrelated to Goal

    We wanted "how the law was intended to affect women or thought to affect women" . This answer talks about the overall effectiveness of English law in the medieval period, which definitely doesn't match our target.

    14% picked this

  3. the degree of probability that

    Too Specific: probability of winning

    We wanted "how the law was intended to affect women or thought to affect women" . This is in the same realm, but if scholars were answering the question about what probability females had of winning in court, that would probably fall more into the category of "how the law actually affected women", which our author says these sources are of little help in determining.

    3% picked this

  4. the degree to which the

    Unrelated to Goal

    We wanted "how the law was intended to affect women or thought to affect women" . This answer talks about the male relatives of medieval Englishwomen, which definitely doesn't match our target.

    1% picked this

  5. which of the legal rights

    Opposite: in practice

    We wanted "how the law was intended to affect women or thought to affect women" . The sources studied by these scholars are of little help in determining how the law actually affected women. This answer is saying, "forget about what legal rights are theoretically intended to be guaranteed to men. In actual practice, what legal rights were only guaranteed to men?" So this is speaking to the blind spot of what these sources are of little help in determining.

    9% picked this

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