Nancy Lammeter — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Nancy Lammeter
Characters
What you need to know
How Eliot presents Nancy Lammeter, and how the character develops across the text: the neat, principled beauty who marries Godfrey, bears a childless marriage and the loss of her baby, and forgives him when the truth comes out.
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: 'Did he suppose that Miss Nancy Lammeter was to be won by any man, squire or no squire, who led a bad life?', 'Everything belonging to Miss Nancy was of delicate purity and nattiness', 'love once, love always', 'I think those have the least feeling that act wrong to begin with', 'it ’ud be better if no change was wanted', 'her unalterable little code', 'a noble-hearted, childless woman', 'it’s the will of Providence', 'The wrong to me is but little, Godfrey', 'I wasn’t worth doing wrong for—nothing is in this world', 'her code allowed no question that a father by blood must have a claim above that of any foster-father', 'My only trouble would be gone if you resigned yourself to the lot that’s been given us'.
Priscilla as Nancy's blunt, plain-spoken sister and foil, happy to stay single and run her father's farm.
Context: a farmer's daughter with little schooling and firm ideas of duty, propriety and Providence, including her belief that adoption goes against Providence.
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.
