Men and women — Eduqas GCSE English Literature C720
Eduqas GCSE English Literature · C720
Men and women
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores how men see and treat women in the play: as property to be guarded, as wives judged by their faithfulness, and the women's own voices in Act 4 Scene 3 and the final scene 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: 'You are pictures out of doors, / Bells in your parlours, wild-cats in your kitchens', 'To suckle fools and chronicle small beer', 'Alas, she has no speech', 'Is there not charms / By which the property of youth and maidhood / May be abused?', 'Was this fair paper, this most goodly book', 'O, these men, these men!', 'Then let them use us well', 'Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men', 'Cold, cold, my girl! / Even like thy chastity', 'O ill-starr'd wench!'.
Women as property and as wives judged by their faithfulness, men's insults that have nothing to do with how the women behave, and the three women's different fates.
Context that helps a reading: women expected to obey fathers and husbands, and modern readings of the play as a tragedy of domestic violence.
Eduqas's Shakespeare questions don't mark context: the extract question (15 marks) and the whole-play essay (20 marks, plus 5 for spelling, punctuation, vocabulary and sentence structures) both mark response and analysis of language, form and structure (AO1 and AO2). Use context only in a phrase that supports an interpretation, and say which question each worked paragraph practises.
