Direction: Read the following passage carefully and answer the given questions.
PASSAGE
Emily Dickinson, who was born nearly 200 years ago, has long been an enigma. She was so reclusive that the townsfolk of Amherst, Massachusetts, where she spent her life, called her “the myth”, as if her very existence were in question. Few got so much as a glimpse of her white dress— as an adult she only wore white—and only ten of her poems were published in her lifetime. After her death in 1886, hundreds of others were discovered in a wooden chest, and a new legend grew up, sweet with pathos, of a woman too delicate for this world, disappointed in love. Emily Dickinson lived with her unmarried sister Lavinia in an elegant house called The Homestead. Next door, at Evergreens, was the family home of her brother Austin; his wife, Sue, was Emily’s intimate, and she addressed much of her poetry to her. But their comparative Eden was shattered by the arrival in Amherst of Mabel Loomis Todd, a young faculty wife. Musical, artistic and ambitious, the ruthless Mabel insinuated herself into the Dickinsons’ lives. In 1882 she embarked on an affair with Emily’s brother Austin, who ensured Mr Todd’s compliance by promoting his academic career. The lovers thought their passion was so special that normal rules did not apply. The spurned wife, Sue, was devastated, and the resulting family feud would echo down the generations. Mabel effectively destroyed the Dickinson family. The irony is, however, that she was one of the only people to recognise Emily’s originality and brilliance in her lifetime. After Emily died, Mabel determined that the public should read the poetry, and devoted herself to editing, publishing and promoting it. In doing so, she suppressed some of its originality, conventionalising Emily’s odd punctuation. She also constructed the sentimental view of the mythic poetess and her milieu which Ms Gordon’s biography has now so effectively dispelled.
MEANINGS OF DIFFICULT WORDS/PHRASES
(1) enigma (N.) : mystery
(2) reclusive (Adj.) : seeking solitude
(3) pathos (N.) : a style that has the power to evoke feelings
(4) insinuated (V.) : give to understand
(5) embarked (V.) :proceed some where despite the risk of possible dangers
(6) compliance (N.) : surrendering power to another
(7) spurned (Adj.) : rejected by a lover without warning
(8) devastated (V.) : to make somebody feel extremely shocked and sad
(9) feud (N.) : a bitter quarrel between two parties
(10) irony (N.) : the amusing/strange aspect of a situation that is very different from what you expect
(11) conventionalising (V.) : normalising
(12) mythic (Adj.) : that has become very famous, like somebody/something in a myth
(13) dispelled (V.) : to make something, especially a feeling/belief, go away/disappear