2. 职称英语
  3. (1) One of our most firmly entrenched ideas of masculinity is that a real ma

(1) One of our most firmly entrenched ideas of masculinity is that a real ma

游客2023-10-23  15
问题     (1) One of our most firmly entrenched ideas of masculinity is that a real man doesn’t cry. Although he might shed a discreet tear at a funeral, he is expected to quickly regain control. Sobbing openly is for girls.
    (2) This isn’t just a social expectation.  One study found that women report crying significantly more than men do—five times as often, on average, and almost twice as long per episode.
    (3) So it’s perhaps surprising to learn that the gender gap  in crying  seems to be a recent development. Historically, men routinely wept, and no one saw it as feminine or shameful.
    (4) For example, in chronicles of the Middle Ages, we find one ambassador repeatedly bursting into tears when addressing Philip the Good, and the entire audience at a peace congress throwing themselves on the ground, sobbing and groaning as they listen to the speeches. In medieval romances, knights cried purely because they missed their girlfriends. In Chretien de Troyes’s Lancelot, or, The Knight of the Cart, no less a hero than Lancelot weeps at a brief separation from Guinevere. At another point, he cries on a lady’s shoulder at the thought that he won’t get to go to a big tournament because of his captivity. What’s more, instead of being disgusted by this sniveling (哭诉) , the lady is moved to help.
    (5) There’s no mention of the men in these stories trying to restrain or hide their tears. No one pretends to have something in his eye. No one makes an excuse to leave the room. They cry in a crowded hall with their heads held high. Nor do their companions make fun of this public blubbering (大声哭); it’s universally regarded as an admirable expression of feeling.
    (6) So where did all the male tears go? There was no anti-crying movement. No leaders of church or state introduced measures to discourage them. Nevertheless, by the Romantic period, masculine tears were reserved for poets. From there, it was just a short leap to the poker-faced heroes of Ernest Hemingway, who, despite their poetic leanings, could not express grief by any means but drinking and shooting the occasional buffalo.
    (7) The most obvious possibility is that this shift is the result of changes that took place as we moved from a feudal agrarian society to one that was urban and industrial. In the Middle Ages, most people spent their lives among those they had known since birth. A typical village had around 250 to 300 inhabitants, most of them related by blood or marriage.  If men cried, they did so with people who would empathize.
    (8) But from the 18th to 20th centuries, the population became increasingly urbanized, and people were living in the midst of thousands of strangers. Furthermore, changes in the economy required men to work together in factories and offices where emotional expression and even private conversation were discouraged as time wasting. As Tom Lutz writes in Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears, "You don’t want emotions interfering with the smooth running of things. "
    (9) Yet human beings weren’t designed to swallow their emotions, and there’s reason to believe that suppressing tears can be hazardous to your well-being. Research from the 1980s has suggested a relationship between stress-related illnesses and inadequate crying. Weeping is also, somewhat counterintuitively, correlated with happiness and wealth. Countries where people cry the most tend to be more democratic and their populations more extroverted.
    (10) It’s time to open the floodgates. Time for men to give up emulating the stone-faced heroes of action movies and be more like the emotive heroes of Homer, like the weeping kings, saints, and statesmen of thousands of years of human history. When misfortune strikes, let us all—men and women— join together and cry until our sleeves are drenched. As the Old Testament has it: "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy." [br] Which of the following is the most likely reason for the disappearance of male tears?
选项 A、Measures introduced by church and state leaders.
B、Shift in expression of grief in fiction and poetry.
C、Changes in the attitude of their companions.
D、Changes from urbanization and industrialization.
答案 D
解析 细节题。由题干关键词reason和the disappearance of male tears定位至第七段第一句。定位句提到，最明显的可能是，这种转变是随着我们从封建农业社会转向城市化与工业化社会而带来的结果。由上文可知，定位句中的this shift是指男性从中世纪时常哭泣到海明威时期不再流泪的转变。可见，男性眼泪消失最有可能的原因是城市化与工业化社会带来的变化，故D为答案。第六段第一句指出男性不再流泪，紧接着第j句提到没有教会或国家领导人推行劝阻男性哭泣的措施，故排除A；第六段第四句表明浪漫主义时期的男性眼泪都留给了诗人，第五句则指出海明威小说中的主人公不能用喝酒和偶尔射杀野牛以外的方式表达悲伤，这些是为了说明浪漫主义时期和海明威时期男性不再流泪的现象，而不是导致男性不再流泪的原因，故排除B；第七段最后一句提到，中世纪的男性会和那些能感同身受的人一起哭，但并未提及同伴态度的改变是否会让男性的眼泪消失，故排除C。
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