Question
Edexcel Paper 2 Section A — 19th-century novel (40 marks)
Read the extract from Chapter 26 (the unveiling of Bertha Mason).
Explore how Brontë uses gothic conventions in this extract and elsewhere in the novel.
Mark scheme by AO band:
- AO1 (≈12 marks): Band 4–5 — clear or perceptive reading of the gothic as the externalisation of repressed female anger and colonial unease. Quotation from the extract and from Thornfield's red room, the burning of Thornfield, and the supernatural call.
- AO2 (≈12 marks): Band 4–5 — analysis of animalistic imagery for Bertha, the chiaroscuro lighting of the attic, the Doppelgänger structure (Bertha as Jane's "dark double").
- AO3 (8 marks): Band 4–5 — Victorian gothic conventions, Brontë's Yorkshire moor setting, the racialised colonial reading of Bertha (and the Wide Sargasso Sea counter-reading).
- AO4 (8 marks): Band 4–5 — accurate, varied prose; technical terms (gothic, Doppelgänger, chiaroscuro) used correctly.
Top responses argue the gothic in Jane Eyre is not decorative but structural — it carries what realism cannot.
40 marks · take your time before peeking.
Sign up to try the next 30 problems
Save your streak, mark answers against the spec, and build a daily revision habit. Free during public beta — no card, no auto-renew.
Generated by TopMyGrade AI · cross-check official sources before relying on the mark-scheme phrasing.