Read the following passage carefully before choosing your answer:
Madame Beatrice adjusted the easel with a sharp, decisive snap, her movements conveying the same intolerance that made her the terror of the local gentry. She had twice dismissed the Mayor's daughter from her studio for the crime of sighing, and her ledger was a graveyard of unfinished commissions abandoned due to her patrons’ 'insufferable lack of poise.' Yet, as the afternoon light dissolved into a dusty amber, she remained bent over a canvas depicting not the sleek lines of a paying merchant, but the weathered, asymmetrical features of Old Martha, the fishmonger who had fallen asleep mid-sentence. Beatrice’s brush hovered, then descended with a tenderness that contradicted her fierce reputation. She did not correct the slope of Martha’s weary shoulders or the grime beneath her fingernails; instead, she recorded them with a devotion that bordered on reverence. When her apprentice quietly suggested that a softer chin might please the public, Beatrice snapped that the public deserved nothing but whitewashed lies, yet she carefully shielded the wet paint from the draft as if protecting a fragile flame.
Which of the following best analyzes the thematic significance of Madame Beatrice's contradictory behavior toward her subjects?
- AIt represents a lapse in narrative coherence where the character's established impatience is illogical when compared to her gentle painting style.
- BIt serves as a direct vehicle for the author to preach about the corrupting nature of wealth and the inherent virtue of labor.
- It suggests that her prickly and impatient demeanor is not a lack of empathy, but a rejection of social pretense in favor of authentic human vulnerability.Answer
- DIt explains the practical reason why she struggles to maintain financial stability and must paint local townspeople instead.
- EIt sets up a moral conflict that contrasts the wickedness of the mayor’s daughter with the pure innocence of the fishmonger.