Which sentence is in passive voice?
a)
emily dickinson is one of the greatest american poets.
b)
she was born in 1830 in amherst, massachusetts, to a very prominent family.
c)
after her death in 1886, her sister discovered packets of her poems in her drawer.
eliminate
d)
as she grew older, she began to isolate herself and even refuse to leave her home.

The sentence in passive voice is actually letter B:

She was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a very prominent family.

Explanation:

While in the active voice the subject of the sentence is the one performing the action, in the passive voice the subject is the one receiving the action. In other words, in the passive voice, the action is performed by an agent who is not the subject.

Sentences in the passive voice always have some form of the verb to be accompanying the past participle of the main verb. There may be other auxiliary verbs as well, it all depends on the tense we are using. Check the examples below:

- Pamela wrote this play when she was only 15. --> Active voice. The subject, Pamela, performed the action of writing the play.

- This play was written by Pamela when she was only 15. --> Passive voice. The play receives the action, even though it is the subject. The performer is still Pamela.

It may come as a surprise to some people, but the expression "to be born" is always in the passive voice. "Born" is the past participle of the verb to bear, which means to have/give birth to a child. For a person to be born, someone else had to bear them. Therefore, in the sentence "She was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a very prominent family," passive voice is being used. The subject "she" is not the agent of the verb to bear, but its receiver.