Passage 1
Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.
Much of the fiction written by American women in the twenty-first century can be termed "popular,"owing to its sustained engagement with an expansive but clearly defined readership. Since the 1990s, popular women's fiction has been dominated by "chick lit,"a term that has come to signify a particular brand of commercial fiction. In her article "Who's Laughing Now? A Short History of Chick Lit and the Perversion of a Genre,"novelist Cris Mazza credits herself with inventing the taxonomy in her capacity as co-editor of an anthology of new women's writing. The stories in Chick Lit sought "not to embrace an old silly or coquettish image of women but to take responsibility for our part in the damaging,lingering stereotype." Mazza coined the term hoping that critics would recognize its "ironic intention"; as she observes, the ironic inflection of the term evaporated with the inception of the "second incarnation”of Chick Lit. It is this second incarnation that became publishing phenomenon in the 1990s and continues to thrive in the twenty-first century.
Arguably, tone is the defining characteristic of the genre. The signature tone of chick lit is humorous, irreverent, and journalistic. Many writers of chick lit novels began their careers as columnists and use their social commentaries as source material for their fictional worlds. Bridget Jones's Diary(1996)evolved from British writer Helen Fielding's newspaper columns for the Independent and later the Daily Telegraph. Candace Bushnell's column "Sex and the City" provided the material for her first novel and the hugely influential HBO television series(1998-2004).
From its inception, chick lit secured the readership of the younger demographic through its engagement with contemporary issues and popular culture. Over the past decade, chick lit has sprouted a variety of subgenres.Although commentators on the genre regularly announce its decline, it continues to expand and attract a wider range of women readers.
The description of women in literature used to be____