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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".
The darker side of the Victorian period is mentioned to
选项 A、give proof to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.
B、testify the social conscience of that period.
C、expose the social injustices and evils.
D、demonstrate the Victorians’ good sense of right and wrong.
答案D
解析 推理判断题。由题干关键词，将信息定位于第三段后半部分。该段前面介绍了许多维多利亚时代的伟大发明；在谈论了维多利亚时代的阴暗面之后，又说关于社会阴暗面的报道表明了社会良知是“维多利亚价值观”的核心内容。由此可见，谈论社会阴暗面的目的是要表明那个时代的人具有明辨是非的正义感，故[D]正确。[A]“为马克思的《资本论》提供论据”、[B]“证明那个时候的社会良知”都是对原文的错误理解；[C]“揭露社会的不公平和邪恶”与文意相反。
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