I answered your question regarding the main point of this passage and provided a deeper overview of the passage there.
A high overview of this passage is that the author discusses the "golden age" theory in the first paragraph and its influences on the studies of nineteenth-century middle-class women in the second paragraph. The purpose of these two paragraphs is to build up to the main idea that, while widely-supported by scholars, the "golden age" theory is too oversimplified and relies on minimal evidence to make its overarching claims about colonial women.
Hoff-Wilson is discussed from lines 35 to 40. The author writes, "Joan Hoff-Wilson asserted that there was no 'golden age' and yet emphasized that the nineteenth century brought 'increased loss of function and authentic status' for middle-class women."
The "golden age" theory has long been used to support the argument that there was a perceptible decline in the quality of life for women from the colonial era to the nineteenth-century. The author starts the passage with the statement, "historians have long accepted the notion" [of this perceptible decline], demonstrating the widespread and persistent acceptance of this argument and, by proxy, the theory.
Prior to citing Hoff-Wilson, the author states: "even scholars who have questioned the 'golden age' view of colonial women's status have continued to accept the paradigm of a nineteenth-century decline from a more desirable past." The author then provides Hoff-Wilson as an example of someone who does not support the "golden age" theory, but still believes in the decline in quality of life for women between the colonial era and the nineteenth-century as posited by the "golden age" theory. This is restated by answer choice D, making it the correct answer.
A is incorrect as, though Hoff-Wilson explicitly denounces the concept of a "golden age," she still implicitly supports Dexter's theory by emphasizing the decline in function and authentic status for women between the colonial era and the nineteenth-century.
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denleybishopFebruary 6, 2022
yep bingo I did the same Bradley I felt A was too we are not alone
denleybishopFebruary 6, 2022
yes I do
denleybishopFebruary 6, 2022
are they not refuting the golden age theory?
RaviFebruary 8, 2022
@denleybishop, you're right that Dexter's theory was the golden age theory. It's true that Hoff-Wilson questioned the theory, but she did not totally refute it; rather, she thought that the 19th century did bring about a decline in status for women. That's why we can remove A.
