Question

Select the correct text in the passage. Which detail best characterizes the woman in the excerpt as a lonely person?

(passage below)
adapted excerpt from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life—the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with thundering names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most pleasant. In post beds behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her—the opportunity, the courage. If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a hand. But as the familiarity of their life became deeper, the greater became the gulf that separated her from him. Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theater to see the actors from Paris. He could n

Answer 1

Details that best characterize the woman as a lonely person include her feeling of a growing gulf between herself and her partner, her inability to express an undefinable uneasiness, and statements of her experiencing loneliness in New York.

Step-by-step explanation:

To determine the detail that best characterizes the woman in the excerpt as a lonely person, one must look for textual evidence that reflects her isolation or emotional distance from others. In the given passages, three specific details stand out: "If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a hand.

But as the familiarity of their life became deeper, the greater became the gulf that separated her from him." "Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her—the opportunity, the courage."

"She was lonely in New York. Perhaps it was the first time in her life that she had felt so. The days dragged on emptily." These details indicate the character's emotional distance, desire for connection, and the pervasive feeling of loneliness that she experiences in her life.