Chapters 5 to 10: Lowood — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Chapters 5 to 10: Lowood
The plot, part by part
What you need to know
Lowood school: cold, hunger and Mr Brocklehurst's regime, Jane's friendships with Helen Burns and Miss Temple, her public shaming,
the typhus epidemic and Helen's death, and Jane's years as pupil and teacher until she advertises for a post.
Key quotations: 'by Naomi Brocklehurst, of Brocklehurst Hall', 'my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh', 'this girl is—a liar!', 'When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard', 'If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way', 'if others don't love me I would rather die than live', 'semi-starvation and neglected colds', 'I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer', 'grant me at least a new servitude'.
Structure: eight years passed over in a few pages after Helen's death, and Jane's restlessness as the push to her next stage.
Context: Cowan Bridge, the charity school for poor clergymen's daughters that Charlotte Brontë attended, and its founder William Carus Wilson.
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.
