Gender and independence — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Gender and independence
Themes
What you need to know
How Brontë explores women's position and Jane's struggle for independence, equality and a voice of her own 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: 'Anybody may blame me who likes', 'women feel just as men feel', 'they need exercise for their faculties', 'confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings', 'Do you think I am an automaton?—a machine without feelings?', 'dressed like a doll by Mr. Rochester', 'I'll not stand you an inch in the stead of a seraglio', 'I am not an angel ... I will be myself', 'if I had ever so small an independency', 'I am an independent woman now', 'I am my own mistress'.
Context: the governess as an educated woman who had to earn her own living, most women's dependence on a father or husband, and a wife's dowry passing to her husband.
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.
