Mrs Reed and Mr Brocklehurst — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Mrs Reed and Mr Brocklehurst
Characters
What you need to know
How Brontë presents Mrs Reed and Mr Brocklehurst, and how the character develops across the text: the guardian and the clergyman who mistreat Jane as a child, and what they show about cruelty and hypocrisy.
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: 'exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children', 'a tendency to deceit', 'a black pillar', 'No sight so sad as that of a naughty child', 'A pit full of fire', 'not with braided hair and costly apparel', 'you little think how you starve their immortal souls', 'splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs', 'worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma', 'I had a dislike to her mother always', 'You were born, I think, to be my torment', 'Love me, then, or hate me, as you will'.
Context: Brocklehurst drawn from William Carus Wilson, founder of the Cowan Bridge school, and the old pupils who later disagreed over whether the portrait was fair.
Mrs Reed's deathbed confession and the letter she kept from Jane, and Brocklehurst's family in silks as proof of his hypocrisy.
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.
