ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

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LITERATURE QUESTIONS

RESTORATION EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DRAMA

Question [CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
When Miss Millamant delivers the following speech in William Congreve’s “The Way of the World, ” what is the overall tone of her words? “Trifles; as liberty to pay and receive visits to and from whom I please; to write and receive letters, without interrogatories or wry faces on your part; to wear what I please, and choose conversation with regard only to my own taste; to have no obligation upon me to converse with wits that I don’t like, because they are your acquaintance, or to be intimate with fools, because they may be your relations. Come to dinner when I please, dine in my dressing-room when I’m out of humour, without giving a reason. To have my closet inviolate; to be sole empress of my tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave. And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in. These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.”
A
Cynical
B
Resigned
C
Realistic
D
Hopeless
E
Excited
Explanation: 

Detailed explanation-1: -The most noteworthy aspect of the Proviso Scene is Millamant’s witty style in which she puts her condition before her lover Mirabell. According to her first condition, she wants equal amount of love and affection on the part of her would husband throughout her life.

Detailed explanation-2: -The proviso scene is significant because it fleshes out the ideas of love that Millamant and Mirabell have. As self-willed as they are, they each propose marriage conditions after which they eventually agree to marry each other.

Detailed explanation-3: -The Way of the World, comedy of manners in five acts by William Congreve, performed and published in 1700. The play, which is considered Congreve’s masterpiece, ridicules the assumptions that governed the society of his time, especially those concerning love and marriage.

Detailed explanation-4: -He is the ideal Restoration beau, a combination of the cynical and the gracious. He has the vices and the virtues of his kind. In his day, he has been a successful woman-chaser. As a cover for an affair, he cynically arranged for the marriage of his mistress to a man presumably his friend.

There is 1 question to complete.
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