The supernatural — Jane Eyre — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
The supernatural
Themes
What you need to know
How Brontë explores the supernatural and the Gothic, from the red-room to dreams, omens and the voice that calls Jane back 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: 'herald of some coming vision from another world', 'my heart beat thick, my head grew hot', 'a North-of-England spirit called a Gytrash', 'For the men in green', 'you had bewitched my horse', 'Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owls', 'I dreamt another dream, sir', 'Down superstition!', 'It is the work of nature'.
Context: Gothic conventions such as the gloomy mansion and the imprisoned madwoman, alongside the novel's ghosts, omens and dreams.
How the novel explains most of its mysteries, such as the laugh and the torn veil, but leaves the voice that calls Jane back unexplained.
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.
