Family and marriage — OCR GCSE English Literature J352
OCR GCSE English Literature · J352
Family and marriage
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores parents and children, arranged marriage and a daughter's duty 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: 'My child is yet a stranger in the world', 'It is an honour that I dream not of', 'Deny thy father and refuse thy name', 'Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch!', 'I would the fool were married to her grave!', 'Death is my son-in-law'.
Context: arranged marriage, daughters as property, and the Nurse as a substitute mother.
OCR's question on this play is one essay, from a choice of two, for 40 marks: an extract-based question on the printed extract and the play elsewhere, or a discursive question on a view of the play, using at least two moments. Response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2) carry the most weight and equal weight, context (AO3) counts as the play shows it, 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.
