A controversial GRE reading question(Buell’ study of village sketches...)

Question

Source

Buell’s study of village sketches (a type of fiction popular in the United States in the 1830s and 1840s) provides a valuable summary of sketches that portray the community as homogeneous and fixed, but it ignores those by women writers, which typically depicted the diversity that increasingly characterized actual village communities at that time. These women’s geographical mobility was restricted (although women writers of the time were not uniformly circumscribed in this way), and their subject matter reflected this fact. Yet their texts were enriched by what Gilligan, writing in a different context, has called the ability to attend to voices other than one’s own. To varying degrees, the women’s sketches portray differences among community members: all stress differences among men and among women (particularly the latter) as well as differences between the sexes, and some also depict cultural diversity. These writers represent community as dynamic, as something that must be negotiated and renegotiated because of its members’ divergent histories, positions, expectations, and beliefs.

3.The passage indicates that when Gilligan spoke of “the ability to attend to voices other than one’s own,” she

A. did not consider that ability to be a desirable psychological characteristic

B. did not believe that individuals differ greatly with respect to that ability

C. was implying that that ability enhances a sense of belonging in communities

D. was assuming that good writers are able to depict diverse characters

E. was not discussing the women who wrote village sketches

An unofficial answer to the question is E while many people choose D.

The relevant sentence in the passage is:

Yet their texts were enriched by what Gilligan, writing in a different context, has called the ability to attend to voices other than one’s own.

I think the possible reason for D to be incorrect is that the Gilligan didn't explicitly say whether the ability to depict diverse characters is "good". But on the other hand, I don't see why E is correct, who was Gilligan discussing here if not the women who wrote village sketches?

Answer 1

D is wrong because nothing in the text says Gilligan is asserting that this is a feature of good writers. In fact we know absolutely nothing about any of Gilligan's opinions, the only thing we know is that Gilligan came up with the phrase "attend[ing] to voices other than one's own".

E is correct because of the highlighted:

Yet their texts were enriched by what Gilligan, writing in a different context, has called the ability to attend to voices other than one’s own

Here, "writing in a different context" means Gilligan didn't make this statement about these women writers - it's the author of this passage that took one of Gilligan's ideas (Gilligan's idea about authors who can attend to voices other than their own) and applied that idea to these women writing about village life.