Social class and the gentleman — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Social class and the gentleman
Themes
What you need to know
How Dickens explores social class, snobbery, money and what makes a true gentleman 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: 'He's a gentleman, if you please, this villain', 'that I was a common labouring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick', 'I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence', 'while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew', 'no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner', 'Don't know yah!', 'I'll make that boy a gentleman!', 'what a gentleman Compeyson looked', 'what a common sort of a wretch I looked'.
Context: the 19th-century argument over what made a gentleman, whether birth, wealth, occupation, education or conduct.
Money and where it comes from: a brewer's fortune, a convict's earnings, and Pip's debts.
OCR's question on this novel is one essay, from a choice of two, for 40 marks: an extract-based question on the printed extract and the novel elsewhere, or a discursive question on a view of the novel, using at least two moments. Response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2) carry the most weight and equal weight, context (AO3) counts when it is relevant to the question, and 4 marks are for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (AO4). An extract-based answer that never leaves the extract, or a discursive answer built on one moment, cannot go above Level 3. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the question it is for.
