GRE Reading Comprehension
Home > GRE Test > GRE Reading Comprehension Questions
Next steps
- Use your browser's back button to return to your test results.
- Do more GRE Reading Comprehension Questions.
Source: NO9
Many critics of Family Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights see its second part as a counterpoint that comments on, if it does not reverse, the first part, where a "romantic" reading receives more confirmation. Seeing the two parts as a whole is encouraged by the novel's sophisticated structure, revealed in its complex use of narrators and time shifts. Granted that the presence of these elements need not argue an authorial awareness of novelistic construction comparable to that of Henry James, their presence does encourage attempts to unify the novel's heterogeneous parts. However, any interpretation that seeks to unify all of the novel's diverse elements is bound to be somewhat unconvincing. This is not because such an interpretation necessarily stiffens into a thesis (although rigidity in any interpretation of this or of any novel is always a danger), but because Wuthering Heights has recalcitrant elements of undeniable power that, ultimately, resist inclusion in an all-encompassing interpretation. In this respect, Wuthering Heights shares a feature of Hamlet.
The author of the passage suggests which of the following about Hamlet?
I. Hamlet has usually attracted critical interpretations that tend to stiffen into theses.
II. Hamlet has elements that are not amenable to an all-encompassing critical interpretation.
III. Hamlet is less open to an all- encompassing critical interpretation than is Wuthering Heights.
IV. Hamlet has not received a critical interpretation that has been widely accepted by readers.
- A I only
- B II only
- C I and IV only
- D III and IV only
- E I, II, and III only