Passion and reason — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Passion and reason
Themes
What you need to know
How Brontë explores the conflict between passion and reason, feeling and principle, in Jane's choices 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: 'like any other rebel slave', 'I was a trifle beside myself; or rather out of myself', 'Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time', 'as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding', 'a plain, unvarnished tale', 'Listen, then, Jane Eyre, to your sentence', 'Reason sits firm and holds the reins', 'she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms', 'Conscience, turned tyrant, held passion by the throat', 'Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation', 'I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man'.
How Jane learns to govern her feelings without giving them up, and why neither Rochester's passion nor St John's cold reason is enough on its own.
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.
