Victorian poetess Christina Rossetti's potent sensual imagery compelled Edmond Gosse, perhaps the
most influential literary critic in late Victorian England, to observe that she "does not shrink from strong
delineation of the pleasures of life even when denouncing them." In the face of Rossetti's virtual
canonization by critics at the end of the nineteenth century, however, Virginia Woolf ignores her apparent
conservatism, instead seeing in her curiosity value and a model of artistic purity and integrity for women
writers. In 1930, the centenary of Rossetti's birth,Woolf identified her as "one of Shakespeare's more
recent sisters" whose life had been reclusively Victorian but whose achievement as an artist was enduring.
Woolf remembers Rossetti for her four volumes of explosively original poems loaded with vivid images
and dense emotional energy. "A Birthday," for instance, is no typical Victorian poem and is certainly unlike
predictable works of the era's best known women poets. Rossetti's most famous poem, "Goblin Market,"
bridges the space between simplistic fairy tale and complex adult allegory-at once Christian,
psychological, and profeminist. Like many of Rossetti's works, it is extraordinarily original and unorthodox
in form. Its subject matter is radical and therefore risky for a Victorian poetess because it implies
castigation of an economic (and even marital) marketplace dominated by men, whose motives are, at best,
suspect. Its Christian allusions are obvious but grounded in opulent images whose lushness borders on
the erotic. From Rossetti's work emerge not only emotional force, artistic polish, frequently ironic
playfulness, and intellectual vigor but also an intriguing, enigmatic quality. "Winter: My Secret," for
example, combines these traits along with a very high (and un-Victorian) level of poetic selfconsciousness.
"How does one reconcile the aesthetic sensuality of Rossetti's poetry with her repressed, ascetic
lifestyle?" Woolf wondered. That Rossetti did indeed withhold a "secret" both from those intimate with her
and from posterity is Lona Packer's thesis in her 1963 biography of Rossetti. Packer's claim that
Rossetti's was a secret of the heart has since been disproved through the discovery of hundreds of letters
by Rossetti, which reinforce the conventional image of her as pious, scrupulously abstinent, and
semi-reclusive. Yet the passions expressed in her love poems do expose the "secret" at the heart of both
Rossetti's life and art: a willingness to forego worldly pleasures in favor of an aestheticized Christian
version of transcendent fulfillment in heaven. Her sonnet "The World," therefore, becomes pivotal in
understanding Rossetti's literary project as a whole-her rhymes for children, fairy tale narratives, love
poems, and devotional commentaries. The world, for Rossetti, is a fallen place. Her work is pervasively
designed to force upon readers this inescapable Christian truth. The beauty of her poetry must be seen
therefore as an artistic strategy, a means toward a moral end.
It can be inferred from the passage that Rossetti's "The World"

• A. is the most helpful expression of Rossetti's motives
• B. was Rossetti's last major work
• C. combines several genres of poetry in a single work
• D. reflects Rossetti's shift away from her earlier feminist viewpoint
• E. was Rossetti's longest work

Charles A. Lindbergh is remembered as the first person to make a nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic,
in 1927. This feat, when Lindbergh was only twenty-five years old, assured him a lifetime of fame and
public attention. Charles Augustus Lindbergh was more interested in flying airplanes than he was in
studying. He dropped out of the University of Wisconsin after two years to earn a living performing
daredevil airplane stunts at country fairs. Two years later, he joined the United States Army so that he
could go to the Army Air Service flight-training school. After completing his training, he was hired to fly
mail between St. Louis and Chicago. Then came the historic flight across the Atlantic. In 1919, a New
York City hotel owner offered a prize of $25,000 to the first pilot to fly nonstop from New York to Paris.
Nine St. Louis business leaders helped pay for the plane Lindbergh designed especially for the flight.
Lindbergh tested the plane by flying it from San Diego to New York, with an overnight stop in St. Louis.
The flight took only 20 hours and 21 minutes, a transcontinental record. Nine days later, on May 20,1927,
Lindbergh took off from Long Island, New York, at 7:52 A. M. He landed at Paris on May 21 at 10:21 P. M.
He had flown more than 3,600 miles in less than thirty four hours. His flight made news around the world.
He was given awards and parades everywhere he went. He was presented with the U. S. Congressional
Medal of Honor and the first Distinguished Flying Cross. For a long time, Lindbergh toured the world as a
U. S. goodwill ambassador. He met his future wife, Anne Morrow, in Mexico, where her father was the
United States ambassador. During the 1930s, Charles and Anne Lindbergh worked for various airline
companies, charting new commercial air routes. In 1931, for a major airline, they charted a new route from
the east coast of the United States to the Orient. The shortest, most efficient route was a great curve
across Canada, over Alaska, and down to China and Japan. Most pilots familiar with the Arctic did not
believe that such a route was possible. The Lindberghs took on the task of proving that it was. They
arranged for fuel and supplies to be set out along the route. On July 29, they took off from Long Island in a
specially equipped small seaplane. They flew by day and each night landed on a lake or a river and
camped. Near Nome, Alaska, they had their first serious emergency. Out of daylight and nearly out of fuel,
they were forced down in a small ocean inlet. In the next morning's light, they discovered they had landed
on barely three feet of water. On September 19, after two more emergency landings and numerous close
calls, they landed in China with the maps for a safe airline passenger route. Even while actively engaged
as a pioneering flier, Lindbergh was also working as an engineer.
In 1935, he and Dr. Alexis Carrel were given a patent for an artificial heart. During
World War I in the 1940s, Lindbergh served as a civilian technical advisor in aviation.
Although he was a civilian, he flew over fifty combat missions in the Pacific. In the
1 950s, Lindbergh helped design the famous 747 jet airliner. In the late 1960s, he spoke widely on
conservation issues. He died August 1974, having lived through aviation history from the time of the first
powered flight to the first steps on the moon and having influenced a big part of that history himself.
What happened immediately after Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic?

• A. He attended the Army flight-training school.
• B. He married Anne Morrow.
• C. He left college.
• D. He was given the Congressional Medal of Honor.
• E. He flew the mail between St. Louis and Chicago.

VERDANT:

• A. immature
• B. diminutive
• C. desolate
• D. incomplete
• E. forbidding

RAIL:

• A. conspire
• B. acquiesce
• C. esteem
• D. compromise
• E. tout