Women and gender — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Women and gender
Themes
What you need to know
How Austen explores women's limited choices, the entail, accomplishments and the pressure to marry across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'which, unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation', 'the improvement of her mind by extensive reading', 'an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum', 'Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you', 'your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness', 'it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune', 'must be their pleasantest preservative from want', 'one false step involves her in endless ruin', 'her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful'.
Elizabeth's independence of mind against the ideal of the accomplished young lady, and the different choices the Bennet sisters and Charlotte make.
Context: the entail, coverture and a married woman's lack of property, the accomplishments expected of a young lady, and the few respectable ways a gentleman's daughter could earn a living.
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.
