英语专业四级八级考试必背单词

Why are the lions in the Git Forest especially vulnerable to disease?

A．They are physically weaker than the African lions.

B．They are small in size.

C．They do not have enough to eat.

D．They have descended from a dozen or so ancestors.

During the traditional wedding ceremony, the

CD＃6bridal couple promises each other lifelong 【M1】______

devotion. Yet, about one out of four American

marriages ends in divorce. Since 1940, the

divorce rate has more than doubled, and

experts predict that, of all marriages that

occured in the 1970s, about【M10】% will end in 【M2】______

divorce. The USA is one of the highest divorce 【M3】______

rates in the world, perhaps even the highest.

What goes wrong? That fact that divorce is so

common in the United States does not mean that

Americans consider marriage a casual, unimportant

relationship. Just opposite is true. Americans 【M4】______

expect a great deal from marriage. They seek physical

, emotional, and intellectual compatibility.

They want to be loved deep and understood. It 【M5】______

is because Americans expect so much from

marriage that so many get divorce. They prefer 【M6】______

no marriage at all to a marriage without love

and understanding. Which typical American

optimist, they end one marriage in the 【M7】______

hope of that the next will be happier. With 【M8】______

no fault divorce laws in many states, it is

easier than never to get a divorce. Some American 【M9】______

women stay in unhappy marriages because they

do not have the education or job experience

to support themselves and their children.

But most American women believe that, ff necessary,

they can make it lonely without a 【M10】______

husband. All things considered, Americans

have little reason to continue an unhappy

marriage.

【M1】

Thomas Hardy's impulses as a writer, all of which he indulged in his novels, were numerous and divergent, and they did not always work together in harmony. Hardy was to some degree interested in exploring his characters' psychologies, though impelled less by curiosity than by sympathy. Occasionally he felt the impulse to comedy (in all its detached coldness) as well as the impulse to farce, but he was more often inclined to see tragedy and record it. He was also inclined to literary realism in the several senses of that phrase. He wanted to describe ordinary human beings; he wanted to speculate on their dilemma rationally (and, unfortunately, even schematically); and he wanted to record precisely the material universe. Finally, he wanted to be more than a realist. He wanted to transcend what he considered to be the banality of solely recording things exactly and to express as well his awareness of the occult and the strange.

In his novels these various impulses were sacrificed to each other inevitably and often. Inevitably, because Hardy did not care in the way that novelists such as Flaubert or James cared, and therefore took paths of least resistance. Thus, one impulse often surrendered to a fresher one and, unfortunately, instead of exacting a compromise, simply disappeared. A desire to throw over reality a light that never was might give way abruptly to the desire on the part of what we might consider a novelist-scientist to record exactly and concretely the structure and texture of a flower. In this instance, the new impulse was at least an energetic one, and thus its indulgence did not result in a relaxed style. But on other occasions Hardy abandoned a perilous, risky, and highly energizing impulse in favor of what was for him the fatally relaxing impulse to classify and schematize abstractly. When a relaxing impulse was indulged, the style. —that sure index of an author's literary worth —was certain to become verbose. Hardy's weakness derived from his apparent inability to control the comings and goings of these divergent impulses and from his unwillingness to cultivate and sustain the energetic and risky ones. He submitted to first one and then another, and the spirit blew where it listed; hence the unevenness of any one of his novels. His most controlled novel, Under the Greenwood Tree, prominently exhibits two different but reconcilable impulses —a desire to be a realist-historian and a desire to be a psychologist of love —but the slight interlockings of plot are not enough to bind the two completely together. Thus even this book splits into two distinct parts.

The most appropriate title for the passage could be ______.

A．Under the Greenwood Tree: Hardy's Ambiguous Triumph

B．The Real and the Strange: the Novelist's Shifting Realms

C．Hardy's Novelistic Impulses: the Problem of Control

D．Divergent Impulses: the Issue of Unity in the Novel