Lady Catherine de Bourgh — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Lady Catherine de Bourgh
Characters
What you need to know
How Austen presents Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and how the character develops across the text: rank, pride and interference, from her drawing room at Rosings to her failed attempt to stop Elizabeth's marriage.
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: 'such affability and condescension', 'delivering her opinion on every subject in so decisive a manner', 'Her air was not conciliating', 'Without a governess, you must have been neglected', 'you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person', 'If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient', 'Miss Bennet, I insist on being satisfied', 'the upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, connections, or fortune', 'Your alliance will be a disgrace', 'I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet', 'in spite of that pollution which its woods had received'.
Lady Catherine's questions and commands as comedy, and the gap between Mr Collins's praise of her and what Elizabeth sees at Rosings.
Context: aristocratic rank and patronage, and her plan to marry Darcy to her own daughter.
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.
