184 ❯ STEP 5. Build Your Test-Taking Confidence
- The thesis of the entire passage can be found in
line(s)
A. 1–2
B. 9 –10
C. 22
D. 27–29
E. 33–36 - The purpose of the first paragraph is to
A. criticize historians
B. define family
C. prove the author’s scholarly intent
D. ease the reader into a scholarly topic
E. establish the time frame of the
passage - Footnote 4 is an example of a(n)
A. primary source
B. secondary source
C. assumption of the reader’s background
D. author’s aside
E. link to other sources
24. The opening sentence of the passage is an
example of a(n)
A. cautionary tale
B. analogy
C. paradox
D. ad hoc argument
E. interrogative
25. The primary rhetorical technique employed by
the author to develop this passage is
A. cause and effect
B. narration
C. description
D. process
E. definition
26. The tone of the passage can most accurately be
described as
A. sarcastic and vituperative
B. conversational and scholarly
C. formal and pedantic
D. erudite and exhortative
E. humorous and detached
5055employed either for domestic work about the house or as an additional resident labour
force for the field or shop,” writes historian Lawrence Stone of the British between 1500
and 1800. “This composite group was confusingly known as a ‘family.’”^8 A baker might
have a family of a dozen or fifteen, including four journeymen, two apprentices, two
maidservants, and three or four bio-children, all of whom worked, lived, and ate under
his roof, at his table, and by his rules. A baronet might have a family of thirty-seven,
including seven daughters and twenty-eight servants. Or was that ten daughters and
twenty-five servants? Historians grind their teeth as they try to figure out from church,
census, and tax records which “menservants” and “maids” were children, stepchildren,
or nephews, and which were hired labor. Children, apprentices, servants—all were
under the master’s rule.
In other words, until very recently, not love, not biology, but labor made a family.(^1) “The Romans rarely used it to mean family”: Dixon, 2. [All notes are the author’s, except 4, 13, 14, 23–26, 33, and 35.]
(^2) The Roman patriarch’s legal authority to kill his family members was used mostly for newborns; there were social
limits on his right to kill his family’s adults, although the symbolic threat could be usefully wielded. Dixon, 36, and
Susan Treggiari, personal communication.
(^3) “ in some ways resembled kinship”: Dixon, 114.
(^4) Baby M: The child in a nationally publicized legal case in which a surrogate mother fought the biological father for
legal custody.
(^5) “A citizen of Rome did not ‘have’ a child”: Veyne, “The Roman Empire,” in Ariès and Duby, vol. 1, 9.
(^6) For fuller discussions of the frustrating plasticity of “the family” (and, therefore, the impossibility of defining it
and studying it as a single phenomenon), see, for instance, Dixon, Ch. 1; Gies and Gies, introduction; Burguière and
Lebrun, “The One Hundred and One Families of Europe,” in Burguière et al., vol. 2, 1–39; Cherlin, 85–87; Stone,
FSM, 37–66; Laslett, Oosterveen, and Smith, introduction; and de La Roncière, “Tuscan Notables on the Eve of the
Renaissance,” in Ariès and Duby, vol. 2, 157–170.
(^7) “Before the eighteenth century no European language”: Gies and Gies, 4.
(^8) “Most households included non-kin”: Stone, FSM, 28. For illuminating glimpses of demographic and family historians
straining to determine which “servants” were or were not biological children, see, for instance, Laslett, Osterveen, and
Smith, and Rotberg and Rabb.