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GCSE English Literature · key term
An approach in which a powerful person provides care and protection for others while retaining authority over them.
Used by AQA, Edexcel, OCR and Eduqas
Paper 1
A relationship in which a person with greater power provides care and protection in a father-like way, while retaining authority over those helped.
Revise: Stave FiveBob remains dependent on his employer, and “second father” presents help through a protective but unequal relationship. This is paternalism: a powerful person cares for others while retaining authority. The Cratchits’ improved circumstances rely on one wealthy man choosing to act kindly.
Paper 1, Paper 2
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An attitude that treats someone as needing another person’s protection or control, rather than respecting their ability to decide for themselves.
Gerald’s wish to protect Sheila displays paternalism: he treats her as someone who should be sheltered rather than allowed to decide what she needs to hear. It also exposes a class and gender double standard. When Gerald agrees that young women should be protected from disturbing things, the Inspector replies in Act 2, “Well, we know one young woman who wasn’t, don’t we?”
An approach to supporting others that treats them as needing parent-like protection while retaining authority over them.
Paper 1
An attitude in which someone in authority decides what is best for others, limiting their choices or knowledge while claiming to protect them.
Treating someone as a dependent who needs protection or guidance, while retaining power over their choices.
Component 2
Revise: Stave Five“Second father” can therefore suggest paternalism: protection is offered, but power remains unequal. Dickens’s positive alternative to Scrooge’s earlier reliance on Poor Law institutions is personal care; however, that solution still places the family’s welfare in the hands of a benevolent employer. The ending transforms one employer rather than showing a wider change to the social structures that produce poverty.
