The question itself has a couple twists and turns, so let's straighten it out fully:

• The public held a certain view of ER in the 1970s.
• The author makes a case against that view.
• In doing so, the author cites a piece of evidence. What was that evidence?

To really stay on track, let's be clear about each part:

• The public held a certain view of ER in the 1970s. As dave13 has pointed out, ER "held a place in the public imagination largely because she was the wife of a particularly influential President. Her own activities were seen as preparing the way for her husband’s election or as a complement to his programs." If we were only to read the texts of the 1970s, we would learn about "the idiosyncratic career of a famous man’s wife."
• The author makes a case against that view. Right up front, the author states that ER "had been important in social reform circles before her husband was elected President and that she continued to advocate different causes than he did." Then, in the second paragraph, the author cites the work of Scharf to continue presenting this alternative view: That ER represented a generation of privileged women "who made the transition from old patterns of female association to new ones." The author suggests that this context of generational change helps us understand ER more than the previous public view.
• In doing so, the author cites a piece of evidence. What was that evidence? There's plenty of evidence in the passage to support the author's case, and only 5 answer choices. So let's go ahead and work through the answer choices.

We're going to eliminate anything that was not used by the author to go against the 1970's public view of Eleanor Roosevelt. We'll probably have to eliminate choices that sound right, because we need to check many more boxes than "Is this true, according to the passage?"


This is true, but does the author cite this fact in order to make a case against the 1970's view?

Not really. ER's wealth, on its own, plays a minor part in both the 1970s view and the author's view. The fact that ER was wealthy doesn't explain the context of change, contradiction, and political awakening that ER's generation lived through. That's why we eliminate (A).


The author never brings this up to go against the 1970's public view of ER. In fact, the only time the author mentions suffrage is to tell us that Scharf studied ER in the years after (not before) women in the U.S. achieved suffrage. Eliminate (B).


As with (B), the author doesn't discuss ER's career in the time period after her husband's death. Eliminate (C) as well.


This is true, but what does it have to do with the author's case? As with (A), this is more of a basic fact that could be incorporated into any view of ER. It's not evidence that the author uses to make a case against the 1970's public view of ER. Eliminate (D).


Aha! This is the first choice that actually cites a fact about ER in order to go against the 1970s view.

The 1970s view understood these activities as "preparing the way for her husband's election or as a complement to his programs." But choice (E) shows that ER was not simply the idiosyncratic wife of a famous man. She participated in the integration of women into mainstream politics, and had priorities that were separate from her husband's. This was part of the social change that she and her generation experienced.

(E) is the only choice that does what the question asked, so we'll stick with it.

I hope this helps!

HI workout, u1983, GMATNinja, SajjadAhmad

OA to the second question is C it is wrongly submitted as D here Screenshot attached


Below are the new questions to be added into the passage

1)The author mentions which of the following as one of the “contradictions” (see highlighted text) evident in the lives of the women discussed in the third paragraph?

1)They pursued political aims for personal motives.
2)They were idiosyncratic individuals who can nevertheless be seen as social types.
3)They came from wealthy families but sought to remedy the problems of the poor.
4)They demanded equal treatment for women but justified the privileges of wealth.
5)They maintained female social networks but promoted women's participation in mainstream politics.

OA:



Please highlight the text in the passage

2)The author credits which of the following for making possible the current understanding of Eleanor Roosevelt's career?

1)The work of historians in the 1970s
2)Accounts written by feminists in the 1920s
3)Recent studies of feminists of her generation
4)Official records of her husband's presidency
5)The discovery of the writings of her associates

OA:

HI GMATNinja, mikemcgarry, DmitryFarber, MagooshExpert (Carolyn), ccooley, GMATGuruNY, AjiteshArun EMPOWERgmatVerbal, EducationAisle

Can you help me with the below question. Eliminated Option A, & D

2)The author credits which of the following for making possible the current understanding of Eleanor Roosevelt's career?

A)The work of historians in the 1970s
B)Accounts written by feminists in the 1920s
C)Recent studies of feminists of her generation
D)Official records of her husband's presidency
E)The discovery of the writings of her associates

But more recent work on the feminism of the post-suffrage years (following 1920) allows us to see Roosevelt in a different light and to bring her life into a more richly detailed context. Lois Scharf’s Eleanor Roosevelt, written in 1987, depicts a generation of privileged women, born in the late nineteenth century and maturing in the twentieth, who made the transition from old patterns of female association to new ones.

Thanks to Scharf and others, Roosevelt’s activities—for example, her support both for labor laws protecting women and for appointments of women to high public office—have become intelligible in terms of this social context rather than as the idiosyncratic career of a famous man’s wife.