medium · LSAT Reading Comprehension
Historians have traditionally viewed the changes to marriage contracts in 18th-century England as a sign of progress for women. The legal scholar Staves, however, challenges this interpretation, arguing that the underlying legal protections remained far weaker than the contracts' language of equality implied.
Which one of the following inferences about the notion of 'progress for women' is most consistent with the passage?
- The traditional view held that the 18th-century contractual changes meaningfully advanced women's legal and financial standing.
- Staves measures progress exclusively by a wife's legal ability to own and to freely dispose of valuable commercial assets.
- The traditional view rested entirely on the belief that wives had thereby gained the legal right to sell off land they inherited.
- Staves firmly maintains that genuine progress for women is attainable only by abolishing marriage entirely as a legal institution.
- Both historians and Staves now openly agree that virtually no real progress for women actually occurred during the 18th century.
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