Mrs Reed and Mr Brocklehurst — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Mrs Reed and Mr Brocklehurst
Characters
What you need to know
How Brontë presents Mrs Reed and Mr Brocklehurst, and how the character develops across the text: the guardian and the clergyman who mistreat Jane as a child, and what they show about cruelty and hypocrisy.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children', 'a tendency to deceit', 'a black pillar', 'No sight so sad as that of a naughty child', 'A pit full of fire', 'not with braided hair and costly apparel', 'you little think how you starve their immortal souls', 'splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs', 'worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma', 'I had a dislike to her mother always', 'You were born, I think, to be my torment', 'Love me, then, or hate me, as you will'.
Context: Brocklehurst drawn from William Carus Wilson, founder of the Cowan Bridge school, whose magazine for children dwelt on death, sin and punishment.
Mrs Reed's deathbed confession and the letter she kept from Jane, and Brocklehurst's family in silks as proof of his hypocrisy.
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.
