CAT 2024 Question Paper | VARC Slot 3

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Question 20 : The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

When the tradwife puts on that georgic, pinstriped dress, she is not just admiring the visual cues of a fantastical past. She takes these dreams of storybook bliss literally, tracing them backward in time until she reaches a logical conclusion that satisfies her. And by doing so, she ends up delivering an unhappy reminder of just how much our lives consist of artifice and playacting. The tradwife outrages people because of her deliberately regressive ideals. And yet her behaviour is, on some level, indistinguishable from the nontradwife's. The tradwife's trollish genius is to beat us at our own dress-up game. By insisting that the idyllic cottage daydream should be real, right down to the primitive gender roles, she leaves others feeling hollow, cheated. The hullabaloo and headaches she causes may be the price we pay for taking too many things at face value: our just deserts, served Instagram-perfect by a manicured hand on a gorgeous ceramic dish, with fat, mouthwatering maraschino cherries on top.

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Explanatory Answer

The paragraph says that when the tradwife (traditional housewife) puts on her pinstriped dress, displays her deliberately regressive ideals and re-creates the past, she ends up reminding us of just how much our lives consist of artifice and playacting and just how much we take too many things at face value. For, the tradwife's behaviour is not, at some level, different from the nontradwife's. By insisting that the idyllic cottage daydream she presents is real and her open display of primitive gender roles, the tradwife beats us at our own game of Instagrammed reality, thereby challenging us to face up to what we are.
Option 1, which states that the tradwife highlights the superficiality of modern life and challenges current societal norms, is a good summary.
Option 2 is easily eliminated. The paragraph does not say the tradwife critiques-- that is, that she critically examines -- the superficiality of today's societal ideals.
Option 3 is also out because the paragraph does not say the tradwife mocks societal norms by promoting an idealized past.
Option 4 seems close, though. But this option implies that (a) the tradwife’s vintage dress and (b) adherence to traditional roles reveal the artificial nature of modern life. But it is not the dress as such or the role adhered to that reveals the superficiality of modern life, it is the tradwife's insistence on the reality of the idyllic cottage daydream that prompts us to see how we too take too many things at face value and how our current societal norms are not so ideal too. Option 4 is not as good a summary as 1.

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The answer is 'The tradwife, with her vintage dress and traditional roles, highlights the superficiality of modern life and challenges current societal norms.'

Choice A is the correct answer.

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