Before Colette, the female writers of France had been aristocrats

Official Explanation

Idiom; Diction

The sentence attempts to convey that, before Collette, female writers in France were members of the aristocracy. Furthermore, the sentence suggests that the explanation of why there were no non-aristocratic writers—as there had been in England—may be because there were almost no clergymen's daughters.

The sentence exemplifies the non-aristocratic writers of England by reference to Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. However, the sentence uses these authors to indicate a particular type of author. That is, the point is not to say, for example, that Jane Austen herself did not write in France at the time, but rather to say that no author like Jane Austen wrote in France at the time.

This is conveyed idiomatically by saying there were no Jane Austens or Brontë sisters, which the sentence correctly uses to indicate “there were no authors of the Jane Austen or Brontë sister type.” Several of the answer choices do not present this idiom correctly.

A. Correct. As indicated above, the sentence is clear and idiomatically correct.
B. Were not Jane Austens or Brontë sisters is not idiomatically correct.
C. Was not Jane Austen nor the Brontë sisters is not idiomatically correct.
D. Was not a Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters is not idiomatically correct.
E. Was no Jane Austen or no Brontë sisters is not idiomatically correct.

The correct answer is A.

This is an interesting question to see from GMAC! This is a weird idiom that we native speakers use, but I feel like it is a bit informal. Below is an example of how I may use this idiom in an everyday conversation.

"Mike, has the NBA ever seen a player as dominant as LeBron James?" - A young person.
"Of course! Before Lebron was around, you had your Kobe Bryants and your Michael Jordans. And before them, there were the Larry Birds and Magic Johnsons of the NBA." - Mike

Back to the question, there is obviously only one Jane Austen, so you may think that you need the singular "Austen" in (C), (D), or (E).

However, as daagh pointed out, "Brontë sisters" is not underlined. So we should see that as a clue and think about parallelism.

Since "Brontë sisters" is plural, we need the plural verb "were." (C), (D), (E)
Between A and B, we have an idiom decision.

(A) there were no X's or Y's.
(B) there were not X's or Y's.

Hi daagh

Can you please elaborate why we need plural verb? I am still not able to grasp the concept.

Pleased guide.



Posted from my mobile device

Dear ArtVandaley

Bronte sisters were three sisters by name Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte e and Anne Bronte. We don’t take the name Bronte sisters as singular proper nouns

It is just a style of writing that we magnify indivduals with the affix 's' to glorify their greatness

It is common to write that --today we don't have Abraham Lincolns. Mahatma Gandhis, Nelson Mandelas or Akbars among us to teach us forbearance.

We need a plural verb since structurally the given words are plural

Hello Everyone!

Let's tackle this question, one thing at a time, to quickly narrow down our choices to the right one! To begin, scan through the question and highlight the major differences we can find in orange:

Before Colette, the female writers of France had been aristocrats, from Mme de Lafayette to Anne de Noailles; there were no Jane Austens or Brontë sisters, perhaps because there were almost no clergymen’s daughters.

(A) were no Jane Austens or
(B) were not Jane Austens or
(C) was not Jane Austen nor the
(D) was not a Jane Austen or the
(E) was no Jane Austen or no

After a quick glance over the options, there are a few places we can focus on:

1. were vs. was
2. no vs. not
3. or / nor the / or the / or no

Let's start with #1 on our list: were vs. was. No matter which one we choose, it will eliminate 2-3 options rather quickly. We need to make sure that whichever verb we choose can apply to BOTH sets of people listed - not just the first one that's listed. To make this easier to spot, let's add "Brontë sisters" to each option:

(A) were no Jane Austens or Brontë sisters ("were" works with both items because they're both plural)
(B) were not Jane Austens or Brontë sisters ("were" works with both items because they're both plural)
(C) was not Jane Austen nor the Brontë sisters (singular "was" doesn't work with plural "sisters")
(D) was not a Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters (singular "was" doesn't work with plural "sisters")
(E) was no Jane Austen or no Brontë sisters (singular "was" doesn't work with plural "sisters")

We can eliminate options C, D, & E because they use a singular verb with the plural Brontë sisters.

Now that we have it narrowed down to only 2 options, let's look at the only difference we have left: no vs. not. This is an idiom issue! When we say that we're lacking two sets of things, there is a certain way we express that in English:

There were no Xs or Ys = CORRECT
There were not Xs or Ys = INCORRECT

Let's see how our options break down:

(A) were no Jane Austens or
(B) were not Jane Austens or

There you have it - option A was the correct choice all along! By focusing on the key differences, we were able to eliminate a lot of options right off the bat, leaving us with only a simple decision to make in the end!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

Before Colette, the female writers of France had been aristocrats, from Mme de Lafayette to Anne de Noailles; there were no Jane Austens or Brontë sisters, perhaps because there were almost no clergymen’s daughters.

(A) were no Jane Austens or
(B) were not Jane Austens or - the usage of 'not' seems incorrect
(C) was not Jane Austen nor the - the usage of 'not' seems incorrect
(D) was not a Jane Austen or the - the usage of 'not' seems incorrect
(E) was no Jane Austen or no-

1. Can we use subject-verb agreement here to eliminate option C, D and E? Because, in my opinion the verb that follows ';there' should agree in number with the what follows it(before the 'or' or 'nor')? Although Bronte sisters is plural, the verb needs to agree ONLY with Jane Austen.
2. Can you please explain the usage of 'Jane Austens' in OA(A)?
3. Is the usage of a Jane Austen vs the Brontë sisters correct?
4. In option E, is the usage of 'no' that follows 'or' redundant?


AjiteshArun , GMATNinja , MagooshExpert , GMATGuruNY , VeritasPrepBrian , MartyTargetTestPrep , DmitryFarber , VeritasKarishma , generis , EducationAisle , other experts - please enlighten

One final doubt about this question.

Which of the following is correct?

1- there were sun or planets
2- there was sun or planets.

Does the verb agree to the sun or to planets, and why?

Posted from my mobile device

Dear Art,
Reg your query



Before deciding the verb agreement, let's decide the order of the subjects first. The actual sentence is ' The sun or the plants 'were/was' there. 'There' is only a placeholder and not the actual subject.

Now it becomes easy to decide the verb; the verb should be the plural 'were' because 'planets' is the nearest subject before the verb and therefore the verb has to fall in line.

I was able to eliminate B,C and D, but was stuck between A and E. Chose E which is a wrong answer. I have read the thread and understand why A is correct.
My doubt is regarding E.
If we remove the second "no" after or in E, would then E be correct?

I don't think there's a rule that would clearly answer your question, but I'd argue that using the plural makes the intended meaning more clear. We aren't trying to literally say that Jane Austen or a Brontë sister did not exist before Colette. Instead, we are trying to say that no female writers LIKE Jane Austen or LIKE the Brontë sisters existed before Colette.

In other words, we aren't necessarily interested in those specific female writers (Austen and the Brontë sisters). Instead, we are interested in writers LIKE them (who apparently were NOT aristocrats). This is also the case when we say something like "the Jane Austens of the world..."

I'm sure you've seen this in our posts before, but here it comes again: there's little use in analyzing made-up or tweaked versions of the answer choices. On the GMAT, your job is to select the BEST answer choice out of the five available options. Looking at a single sentence in a bubble and trying to determine whether it's "correct" or "incorrect" based on grammar "rules" is an entirely different job -- one that you'll never have to do on the GMAT!


My response above applies to this question as well. Would "... was no Jane Austen or Brontë sisters" be okay? Maybe, but the GMAT isn't asking us to make that call.

(A) is the best choice out of the five available options, and that's all we really need to understand here.

I hope that helps!

EducationAisle MartyTargetTestPrep AndrewN
Wondering if you could help me understand this from a parallelism perspective? I was wondering what would be the parallelism marker here, which requires the cause and effect to be parallel? Does "because" trigger parallelism here? If so, could you please expand on the specific parallelism requirement here?

I wouldn't really look at it from a parallelism perspective; because is just a subordinating conjunction that marks the start of a dependent clause.

Hello, TargetMBA007. I agree with Ashish above. The more important point to take from this question is the idea that Jane Austen herself, without mention of the Brontë sisters, is simply being held up as an example of a writer and would still need to be pluralized in this type of sentence, similar to saying,

Without the contributions of the Einsteins, physics and indeed all of science would likely be 100 years behind where it is today.

We understand that the sentence is talking about a group of people similar to an extraordinary individual, not just that individual.

I hope that helps. Thank you for thinking to ask me about the question.

- Andrew

EducationAisle AndrewN

Thanks for your inputs. The plural with Austens makes complete sense now that you have explained it, but was confusing with "or" when I was solving the question, so I just wanted to see if parallelism could be an additional tool to attack questions like this where SV Agreement is not always clear, especially given the seemingly parallel structure of the subordinate clause with the right answer choice. But I guess parallelism is a non-issue here.

Glad to be of help, TargetMBA007. Your query about or reminded me of this question, in which a similar sort of negation occurs. If you have not seen that question already, happy solving. (If you have, then it may be worth studying again to appreciate the finer points.)

- Andrew

How do Know that Jane Austens is the original name or only Jane Austen.

Posted from my mobile device

Although it is helpful to know that the author's name is "Jane Austen," that knowledge is not required to correctly answer this question.

The key here is the split between "was" and "were." Because "the Bronte sisters" is plural, we know that the verb must be the plural "were." That rules out everything except (A) and (B), which both have "Jane Austens."

Side note: this is a somewhat unusual construction, in which the author mentions plural Jane Austens in order to make his/her point. I can't think of any other official questions with a similar issue, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

I hope that helps!