Women and gender — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Women and gender
Themes
What you need to know
How Austen explores women's limited choices, the entail, accomplishments and the pressure to marry 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: 'which, unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation', 'the improvement of her mind by extensive reading', 'an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum', 'Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you', 'your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness', 'it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune', 'must be their pleasantest preservative from want', 'one false step involves her in endless ruin', 'her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful'.
Elizabeth's independence of mind against the ideal of the accomplished young lady, and the different choices the Bennet sisters and Charlotte make.
Context: the entail, a married woman's lack of property and legal rights, the accomplishments expected of a young lady, and the few respectable ways a gentleman's daughter could earn a living.
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.
