Question: Because medieval women’s public participation in spiritual life was not welcomed by the male establishment, a compensating (i). __________ religious writings, inoffensive to the members of the establishment because of its (ii). _____________, became important for many women.
Blank (i). Answer Choices:
A). involvement with
B). dissatisfaction with
C). resistance to
Blank (ii). Answer Choices:
D). privacy
E). popularity
F). scarcity
I tried to apply the math strategy but i got stuck. I guessed “hatred” for Blank (ii) and “medium/alternative/escape” for Blank (i). The actual answers are: A and D. If anyone can help, that would be great! @gregmat
@admin_gregmat really really need help!!
Below is my thought process when I read the problem. It doesn’t explain the math strategy completely but you can hopefully get an idea of why the answers are what they are:
(i) so because medieval women were looked down upon for participating in spiritual life PUBLICLY, they had to “compensate” by getting involved with “religious writings”. In other words, spiritual writings were probably the only way they could practice their spirituality, they had no choice, etc.
(ii) religious writings were “inoffensive” to the members of the establishment (or the dumb men who were offended by the women’s PUBLIC spiritual displays) because the writings provided “PRIVACY”. The women could maybe write in isolation, in the privacy of their own homes, without worrying about offending the men.
1 Like
Because of the word “compensating”, we know that public participation and religious writing are contrast. Apply block of 4 if you want and put opposite of ‘not welcomed’ i.e ‘involvement towards’ in the first blank.
For the second blank, since it supports the idea of religious writing, it has to be opposite of public. Hence ‘private’ fits. Hope it helps.
Ohhhh so its the word “public” that influences the second blank? Makes sense. Although i find it really hard to figure out which word actually acts as the keyword whose opposite we have to find when its a contrast 
Yeah this makes sense, however I’ve not learnt the block of 4 strategy yet so i really dont know how to apply it. But i get your thought process. Thank you!
It’s a very simple but powerful strategy for Verbal. Make sure you learn to use it 
1 Like