Read the excerpt from Act I of The Importance of Being Earnest . Jack: Of course it’s mine. [Moving to him.] You have seen me with it a hundred times, and you have no right whatsoever to read what is written inside. It is a very ungentlemanly thing to read a private cigarette case. Algernon: Oh! it is absurd to have a hard and fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read. The epigram that Algernon uses in his last line provides a critique about
Answer
A
how the rules of Victorian society were not very strict and were not taken seriously.
B
how the rules of Victorian society dictated many things, even what was proper to read.
C
how members of high society rarely read books and were not concerned with cultural knowledge.
D
how members of the upper class were not concerned with the rules of society and rarely followed them.
Explanation
Algernon jokes that a large part of modern culture comes from reading things society says people should not read. His epigram pokes fun at Victorian rules that prescribed proper behavior, including what was acceptable to read. Choice B captures that critique; he is not suggesting that the rules were absent or that high society lacked interest in culture.
AI-written and checked against the verified answer.