Refer to the excerpt from "A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behavior of Married People". You can infer from the fifth sentence that "them" refers to
a. wives
b. husbands
c. old friends
d. sovereign princes
e. friendships
Fifth Sentence is: "With some limitations they can endure that: but that the good man should have dared to enter into a solemn league of friendship in which they were not consulted, though it happened before they knew him, -- before they that are now are man and wife ever met, -- this is impossible to them".
I thought the answer was friendships, but I was wrong. I think the answer is wives.
I think the key phrase is "man and wife". What do you think?
Well, if the key phrase I should focus on is man and wife, I believe my answer is c. old friends. This is all so confusing.
You are correct. In the given excerpt, "them" refers to wives. The speaker is expressing their frustration that the man (referred to as the "good man" in the sentence) dared to enter into a friendship without consulting his wife.
To determine the referent of the pronoun "them" in the fifth sentence, we need to analyze the context and refer back to the previous sentences. In the excerpt, the author is expressing his complaint about married people's behavior and how they tend to exclude their single friends.
In the fifth sentence, the author mentions a "solemn league of friendship" which the "good man" dared to enter into without consulting "them." The phrase "though it happened before they knew him" suggests that "them" refers to people who knew the good man before he entered this friendship.
Given the context of the excerpt, it is reasonable to infer that "them" refers to the author's "old friends" who now have become "man and wife." Therefore, the correct answer is c. old friends, not wives.