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Language analysis — Fire and ice imagery

GCSE · English Literature · WJEC · C2.B.M4Jane Eyre — Charlotte Brontë

Question

Question (15 marks): Explore Brontë's use of fire and ice imagery across the novel.

Mark scheme (Band 5, 13–15):

  • Tracks Rochester as fire (literal bed-burning in Ch. 15) versus St John as ice ("a cold cumbrous column", Ch. 34).
  • Reads the lightning-split chestnut tree (Ch. 23) as fractured union foreshadowed.
  • Connects Bertha's arson to repressed female passion (Gilbert and Gubar).
  • Considers Jane's own thermal mediation — neither extreme — as moral resolution.
  • Confident terminology: motif, leitmotif, pathetic fallacy.

15 marks · take your time before peeking.

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Generated by TopMyGrade AI · cross-check official sources before relying on the mark-scheme phrasing.