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  3. One of the silliest things in our recent history was the use of "Victorian" as a term of contempt or abuse. It had been made fas

One of the silliest things in our recent history was the use of "Victorian" as a term of contempt or abuse. It had been made fas

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问题     One of the silliest things in our recent history was the use of "Victorian" as a term of contempt or abuse. It had been made fashionable by Lytton Strachey with his clever, superficial and ultimately empty book Eminent Victorians, in which he damned with faint praise such Victorian heroes as General Gordon and Florence Nightingale. Strachey’s demolition job was clever because it ridiculed the Victorians for exactly those qualities on which they prided themselves — their high mindedness, their marked moral intensity, their desire to improve the human condition and their confidence that they had done so.
    Yet one saw, even before the 100th anniversary of the death of Queen Victoria this year, that there were signs these sneering attitudes were beginning to change. Programmes on radio and television about Victoria and the age that was named after her managed to humble themselves only about half the time. People were beginning to realize that there was something heroic about that epoch and, perhaps, to fear that the Victorian age was the last age of greatness for this country.
    Now a new book, What The Victorians Did For Us, aims further to redress the balance and remind us that, in most essentials, our own age is really an extension of what the Victorians created. You can start with the list of Victorian inventions. They were great lovers of gadgets from the smallest domestic ones to new ways of propelling ships throughout the far-flung Empire. In medicine, anaesthesia (developed both here and in America) allowed surgeons much greater time in which to operate — and hence to work on the inner organs of the body — not to mention reducing the level of pain and fear of patients. To the Victorians we also owe lawn tennis, a nationwide football association under the modern rules, powered funfair rides, and theatres offering mass entertainment. And, of course, the modern seaside is almost entirely a Victorian invention. There is, of course, a darker side to the Victorian period. Everyone knows about it mostly because the Victorians catalogued it themselves. Henry Mayhew’s wonderful set of volumes on the lives of the London poor, and official reports on prostitution, on the workhouses and on child labour — reports and their statistics that were used by Marx when he wrote Das Kapital — testify to the social conscience that was at the center of "Victorian values".
    But now, surely, we can appreciate the Victorian achievement for what it was — the creation of the modern world. And when we compare the age of Tennyson and Darwin, of John Henry Newman and Carlyle, with our own, the only sensible reaction is one of humility: "We are our father’s shadows cast at noon".
Which of the following can exemplify the change in the attitudes towards the Victorians?
选项 A、The celebration of the 100th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s death.
B、The disclosure of the events or people about the Victorian age by the media.
C、The rising of the public awareness that Victoria was the last great epoch.
D、The appearance of a new book regarding Victorians as creators of the modern world.
答案D
解析 事实细节题。第二段首句提到“即使是今年维多利亚女王逝世一百周年纪念日到来之前，人们已看到这种嘲笑的态度正在开始转变”，由此可以先排除[A]，它只是作为时间状语被提到，而不是转变的表现；由第二段第二句得知，在转变发生之前，媒体们就已经在公开谈论维多利亚时代的人和事了，故[B]也不是转变的表现；[C]在第二段尾句谈到，但由原文可知，人们开始“害怕”维多利亚时代是最后一个伟大的时代，而并非“意识到”，故[C]也排除。因此，[D]为答案。第三段首句谈到，新书《维多利亚时代的人为我们做了什么?)旨在提醒我们“在大多数基本方面，我们的时代实际上是维多利亚时代创造的东西的延伸”，因此这本书的出现，可看作是人们态度转变的一种形式。
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