Reading comp PrepTest 107 · Section 2 · Question 23

Topic: Legal

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • There is a lack of scholarship based on court records to show how medieval English law affected women.
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Court records are vital to ascertaining how law actually affected women in medieval period (second sentence)
    • Examples of what could be ascertained by study of court records:
      • show how often women evaded statutory limitations (fourth sentence)
      • Show how often special statutory privileges were enjoyed (fourth sentence)
      • show how general law not directed specifically at women affected them compared to men (fifth sentence)
    • Only quantitative studies of large numbers of cases would allow any steps towards ascertaining these facts (sixth sentence)
  • Treatises, commentaries, statutes - used by scholars of 19th and early 20th century to ascertain how law was thought or intended to affect women (second-third sentences)
  • Author’s attitude: “dearth” (first sentence); “serious deficiency” (second sentence); “vital importance” (second sentence); “of little help” (fourth sentence); “only quantitative studies” (sixth sentence)

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Scholars have not explored court records not only because it would be cumbersome to do so, but principally because there has been little scholarly interest in women’s legal history generally.
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
  • Studying court records from Medieval period is cumbersome: language antiquated, never been published, many long pages of records (second-third sentences)
  • Real reason these studies have not been undertaken is that few academics have been interested in women’s legal history (fourth sentence)
  • Most scholars active in this field have begun with an interest in another area and come upon women’s legal history incidentally, not as their primary concern (fifth sentence)
  • Knowledge of English medieval law as it affected women is fragmentary but slowly growing (seventh sentence)
  • Author’s attitude: “easily imagine” (first sentence); “daunting” (second sentence); “difficulty” (fourth sentence); “the fact is” (fourth sentence); “very few legal historians” (sixth sentence); “fragmentary at best” (seventh sentence); “slowly improving” (seventh sentence)

Main Point: The dearth of scholarship based on actual court records regarding how medieval English law affected women is due to a lack of academic interest in women’s legal history.

Paragraph 1, Sentence 1(P1 S1) - Statement of phenomenon

P1 S2 - Importance of phenomenon

P2 S2-3 - Superficial explanation

P2 S3 - Author’s explanation

Phenomenon/Explanation: This passage uses a Phenomenon/Explanation Meta-Structure. The phenomenon to be explained is the distinct lack of scholarship on how medieval English law actually affected women. Scholarly work on this topic in the 19th-early 20th centuries has been based on commentaries and treatises and other sources other than court records, which makes this scholarly work a poor gauge of how the law affected women in practice. The superficial explanation of this lack of study is the difficulty of going through the old, voluminous, and challenging source material, but the author argues that this is not the real explanation for why there is a dearth of scholarship. The real reason, the author argues, is a lack of scholarly interest in women’s legal history, including in the medieval period. Legal historians are simply not interested in approaching the subject in the way the author has framed it, so scholarship on how medieval English laws affected women is scarce but growing.

This is a legal passage with a distinctly academic bent, however, the points the author makes about why it is important to look at actual court records instead of commentaries or treatises when studying how medieval English law affected women are interesting ones. The subject may be esoteric, but some of the author’s arguments are based on common sense, and are actually quite accessible.