Digital PSAT Reading and Writing Practice Question 165: Answer and Explanation

Question: 165

The following is an excerpt from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (1814). The novel's protagonist, Fanny Price, returns home after many years of living with her wealthy relatives at Mansfield Park.

William was gone: and the home he had left her in was-Fanny could not conceal it from herself-in almost every respect the very reverse of what she could have wished. . . . On her father, her confidence had not been sanguine, but he was more negligent of his family, his habits were worse, and his manners coarser, than she had been prepared for.

He did not want abilities; but he had no curiosity, and no information beyond his profession; he read only the newspaper and the navy-list; he talked only of the dockyard, the harbor, Spithead, and the Motherbank; he swore and he drank, he was dirty and gross. She had never been able to recall anything approaching to tenderness in his former treatment of herself. There had remained only a general impression of roughness and loudness; and now he scarcely ever noticed her.

The text characterizes Fanny's father's intellectual interests as

• A. relevant and interesting.
• B. coarse and joking.
• C. overly pragmatic.
• D. arrogantly erudite.

Correct Answer: C

Explanation:

(C) The text depicts Fanny's father as a man without ambition, curiosity, or knowledge "beyond his profession," making overly pragmatic the correct answer. Pragmatic means "practical and realistic, uninterested in ideas or theories," so her father's simplemindedness fits this description. She finds him dull rather than interesting as in (A). (B) describes his personality, but not his intellectual interests. And erudite means "cultured" or "well-educated," making (D) the opposite of Fanny's description of her father.