Context — A Christmas Carol — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Context
Introduction
What you need to know
The Victorian context of A Christmas Carol: poverty in 1840s London, the Poor Law and workhouses, Malthus, child labour,
Dickens's own childhood and his campaigning, and the Victorian Christmas.
How to use this context in an answer about the novella rather than as background.
'Stave' as a verse of a song: the novella as a carol in five verses.
Dickens's visit to the Field Lane Ragged School and the 1843 report on children's employment, and his Manchester speech of October 1843.
Edexcel's 19th-century novel question doesn't mark context: knowing it helps you understand the novel, but exam answers spend their time on the extract's language in part (a) and on the whole novel in part (b).
Edexcel's novel question has two parts, and neither marks context: part (a) on the printed extract marks language, form and structure (AO2); part (b) on the novel elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1), not language analysis. Use context only where it explains a reading, and say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
