Context — Jekyll and Hyde — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Context
Introduction
What you need to know
The Victorian context of Jekyll and Hyde: respectability and reputation among gentlemen, Darwin and fears of degeneration,
science and religion, Stevenson's Edinburgh and Deacon Brodie, late-Victorian London, and the Gothic.
How to use this context in an answer about the novella rather than as background.
Victorian respectability: gentlemen, reputation and hidden vice, and the professional men of the novella.
Darwin's On the Origin of Species and fears of degeneration, and Hyde's 'ape-like' violence.
Stevenson's Edinburgh, Deacon Brodie's double life, and Stevenson's Calvinist upbringing.
Victorian science and religion, and the Gothic novella.
OCR credits context in this essay only where it is relevant to the question: social, historical and cultural ideas, or literary context such as the conventions of the Gothic or of science fiction, woven into the argument rather than written as a paragraph of background.
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.
