Antonia Castañeda has utilized scholarship from women’s studies and Me

1. The “apparent contradiction” mentioned in line 29 refers to the discrepancy between the

A. legal status of Mexican women in territorial California and their status in the United States
B. unflattering depiction of Mexicans in novels and the actual public sentiment about the Mexican-American War
C. existence of many marriages between Californianas and non-Hispanic merchants and the strictures against them expressed in novels
D. literary depiction of elite Californianas and the literary depiction of other Mexican individuals
E. novelistic portrayals of elite Californianas’ privileged lives and the actual circumstances of those lives




2. Which of the following could best serve as an example of the kind of fictional plot discussed by Antonia Castañeda?

A. A land speculator of English ancestry weds the daughter of a Mexican vineyard owner after the speculator has migrated to California to seek his fortune.
B. A Californian woman of Hispanic ancestry finds that her agricultural livelihood is threatened when her husband is forced to seek work in a textile mill.
C. A Mexican rancher who loses his land as a result of the Mexican-American War migrates to the northern United States and marries an immigrant schoolteacher.
D. A wealthy Californiana whose father has bequeathed her all his property contends with avaricious relatives for her inheritance.
E. A poor married couple emigrate from French Canada and gradually become wealthy as merchants in territorial California.




3. Which of the following, if true, would provide the most support for Castañeda’s explanation of the “stereotypical plot” mentioned in lines 18-19?

A. Non-Hispanic traders found business more profitable in California while it was a territory than when it became a state.
B. Very few marriages between Hispanic women and non-Hispanic men in nineteenth-century territorial California have actually been documented.
C. Records from the nineteenth century indicate that some large and valuable properties were owned by elite Californianas in their own right.
D. Unmarried non-Hispanic women in the nineteenth-century United States were sometimes able to control property in their own right.
E. Most of the property in nineteenth-century territorial California was controlled by Hispanic men.


4. The primary purpose of the passage is to

A. trace historical influences on the depiction of Mexican Americans in the nineteenth century
B. explain how research in history has been affected by scholarship in women's studies
C. describe the historical origins of a literary stereotype
D. discuss ways in which minority writers have sought to critique a dominant culture through their writing
E. evaluate both sides in a scholarly debate about a prominent literary stereotype

RC00548-01.02