Question

we are all like flies trying to crawl over the edge of the saucer, mabel thought, and repeated the phrase as if she were crossing herself, as if she were trying to find some spell to annul this pain, to make this agony endurable. tags of shakespeare, lines from books she had read ages ago, that over often enough and make herself see the flies, she would become numb, chill, frozen, dumb. now she could see flies crawling slowly out of a saucer of milk with their wings stuck together, and she strained and strained (standing in front of the looking - glass, listening to rose shaw) to make herself see rose shaw and all the other people there as flies, trying to hoist themselves out of something, or into something, insignificant, toiling flies. but she could not see them like that, not other people. she saw herself like that—she was a fly, but the others were dragonflies, butterflies, beautiful insects, dancing, fluttering, skimming, while she alone dragged herself up out of the saucer. (envy and spite, the most detestable of the vices, were her chief faults)
a. like the ugly fly trying to crawl to safety, mabel is searching desperately for something to help her with her anxieties about the party
b. in her mind, the other partygoers are as beautiful as butterflies and dragonflies; mabel, ugly like the fly she imagines, wants only to fit in with them
c. mabel fantasizes about drowning in milk to avoid her current reality
d. mabel detests what she sees in the mirror and wishes she could be more like rose shaw

Explanation:

• Option A: Mabel compares herself to a struggling fly, using this metaphor to cope with her party anxiety and feels isolated while others seem "beautiful" like butterflies/dragonflies, so she is desperate to escape her distress.
• Option B: Mabel sees others as "beautiful insects" (butterflies/dragonflies) while viewing herself as the ugly fly, not that she thinks others are equal to her in being ugly.
• Option C: Mabel's repeated phrase about flies is to cope with her pain, not a fantasy of drowning in milk to avoid reality.
• Option D: Mabel is straining to see Rose Shaw but envies her; she does not wish to be like Rose Shaw, she is just fixated on her own distress.

Answer:

A. Like the ugly fly trying to crawl to safety, Mabel is searching desperately for something to help her with her anxieties about the party