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GCSE English Literature · key term
Resentment of another person’s qualities, achievements or possessions, often accompanied by a wish to have them oneself.
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Paper 1
Resentment of another person’s advantages or success, often accompanied by a desire to possess them.
Revise: CassiusThe description encourages the audience to recognise Cassius’s envy, but also his intelligence. Caesar acknowledges that Cassius studies people closely. His distrust has a historical parallel in an account of Caesar’s dislike of Cassius’s pale appearance.
Paper 2
Integrate context into your argument: Roman opposition to kingship helps explain Cassius’s appeal to freedom, but does not remove evidence of personal envy.
Part (b): Choose Envy when it answers the question’s particular focus, such as inner conflict, sympathy or the possibility of ending conflict. Keep returning to that focus.
Parts (a) and (b): Explain what a technique achieves. Calling the rose-tree an extended metaphor is only the beginning; show how it makes envy seem self-defeating.
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Mary Lamb’s Envy explores a familiar kind of unhappiness: wanting somebody else’s gifts so much that you overlook your own. Its conflict is not a battle between armies. It is an internal conflict between what a person is and what they wish they could be.
Component 1
Resentment of another person's qualities, possessions, success or position.
Revise: JealousyShakespeare also explores envy: resentment of advantages another person possesses. Iago envies Cassio's promotion, Roderigo resents Othello's marriage, and Bianca fears that Cassio has found another lover. These smaller jealousies surround the central tragedy: Othello comes to believe that Desdemona has betrayed him and murders the innocent woman he loves.
