Thomas Eakins' powerful style and his choices of subject - the discipline of sport, the strains of individual in tension with society or even with themselves - was as disturbing to his own time as it is compelling for ours

A) was as disturbing to his own time as it is
B) were as disturbing to his own time as they are
C) has been as disturbing to his own time as they are
D) has been as disturbing in his own time as it was
E) have been as disturbing in his own time as

The OA is B. Seeing the problem in all other choices, I can figure out that it should be B. But my question is - in choice B the idiom as X As Y is not in parallel i.e. as disturbing(participle) as they (pronoun)
Is choice B correct gramatically?

Thanks,
Aishwary

Thomas Eakins' powerful style and his choices of subject - the discipline of sport, the strains of individual in tension with society or even with themselves - was as disturbing to his own time as it is compelling for ours

A) was as disturbing to his own time as it is
B) were as disturbing to his own time as they are
C) has been as disturbing to his own time as they are
D) has been as disturbing in his own time as it was
E) have been as disturbing in his own time as

The OA is B. Seeing the problem in all other choices, I can figure out that it should be B. But my question is - in choice B the idiom as X As Y is not in parallel i.e. as disturbing(participle) as they (pronoun)
Is choice B correct gramatically?

Thanks,
Aishwary



"Thomas Eakins' powerful style and his choices of subject " is a compound subject, so it require a plural verb. Moreover, simple past is the correct choice rather than past perfect

So the answer is B.

I hope instructors would provide more information on the right tense

Aishwary,

It's funny you'd refer to this problem, because I took issue with it on different grounds: I don't think 'as disturbing TO his own time' is proper idiomatic usage. 'Disturbing TO X' normally implies that X is an entity that feels disturbed - so, according to choice B, a time period has emotions. 'Compelling _for_ ours' is questionable too, for approximately the same reason.

In any case, no, the parallelism is fine. Consider this shorter sentence: 'The old man was as jaded from many decades' injustice as he was wise from many decades' experience.' If you remove 'he was,' this sentence becomes extremely difficult to read. The same phenomenon is at work in this sentence, although the 'garbage words' between the two dashes make it harder to see the connection.