Question
The final decades of the twentieth century not only saw an explosion of the literary production among women, but there was also an intense interest in the lives and works of women writers.
Option A
Option B
Option C
Option D
Option E
(This question is from Official Guide. Therefore, because of copyrights, the complete question cannot be copied here. The question can be accessed at GMAT Club)
Solution
Sentence Analysis
- The final decades of the twentieth century (Main Subject: final decades)
- not only saw an explosion of the literary production among women, (Main Verb: saw)
- but there was alsoan intense interest in the lives and works of women writers. (Another independent clause – Subject: an intense interest; Verb: was; Needs to be parallel to the above part)
The sentence talks about what happened in the final decades of the twentieth century: an explosion of literary production among women and an intense interest in the lives and works of women writers.
The sentence is deterministically incorrect for the lack of parallelism. If we replace the list with individual elements, we get:
- The final decades of the twentieth century saw an explosion of the literary production among women. (Correct)
- The final decades of the twentieth century there was an intense interest in the lives and works of women writers. (Grammatically and logically incorrect.)
Since the second structure above is incorrect, the list is incorrect.
Option Analysis
(A) Incorrect. For the reason mentioned above.
(B) Incorrect. For the same reason as in the original sentence. Also, the preposition ‘in’ in ‘production in women’ is incorrect. It should be either ‘among’ or ‘by’.
(C) Correct.
(D) Incorrect. For the lack of parallelism. The noun ‘an explosion’ is not parallel to the clause ‘it saw’.
(E) Incorrect. For the lack of parallelism. The noun ‘an explosion’ is not parallel to the predicate ‘saw an intense interest’.
If you have any doubts regarding any part of this solution, please feel free to ask in the comments section.
Hi CJ, Is there a difference between ‘literary production among women’ and ‘ literary production by women” in the sentence context – grammatically or logically?
In “explosion of literary production among women”, ‘among women’ modifies ‘explosion’. There is some explosion among women. Which explosion? Explosion of literary production.
In “explosion of literary production by women”, ‘by women’ modifies ‘production’. There is an explosion of something. What something? literary production by women.
Both are sensible and mean, more or less, the same.
Hi CJ,
Isn’t “the literary production” parallel to “an intense interest” or only “literary production” is fine as in the correct option C?
Are you thinking that since there’s an article ‘an’ in, there should be an article ‘the’ in ?
Leave a comment