English Lit revised CCEA A2 level

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Carrieeee

I'm doing The Illusionist for analysis, and Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea for the comparison :/
How are you feeling about it?

snap for the novels! How are you revising for it?? :s-smilie:

Reply 21

-CG-

Heya Guys,
I'm in the same boat as many...WOMEN IN SOCIETY
Jane Eyre + The Color Purple and The Illusionist.

Over the last week I've gone over all the York Notes on Jane Eyre and I'm almost finished the notes for The Color Purple and I can honestly say I don't believe it has helped.

The problem is it doesn't really matter how much you know about symbolism or imagery or tone if you can't intergrate it into the question and with something as generic as
'nearly always presented as victims'
I'm worried I won't know where to begin!

As for The Illusionist apparently a circular from CCEA went round recently saying that knowledge of the novel outside of the passage provided is not needed nor credited. So it's an 'unseen' basically. You analyse what you're given and thats it!

DIFFICULT!

Reply 22

_niamh_

Is anyone else doing the theme of the outsider for this exam tomorrow? My two novels are The Outsider and The Catcher In The Rye and my other book is The Butcher Boy and im terrified! lol

Reply 23

Carrieeee

sunshine10

snap for the novels! How are you revising for it?? :s-smilie:

I'm just learning quotations and context for Jane Eyre and WSS, but I don't know what else to do, the specimen paper was awful, but I'm hoping our paper will be a bit better :/

No idea how to revise for The Illusionist, just learn all the key terms to use in my analysis I guess, how about you?

Reply 24

jonnimo

_niamh_

Is anyone else doing the theme of the outsider for this exam tomorrow? My two novels are The Outsider and The Catcher In The Rye and my other book is The Butcher Boy and im terrified! lol

Finally! Someone doing the same books as me, what do you make of them? And how's your revision going? I was pretty lucky this year that for general studies our school ran an option of "Existentialism in film and literature" and my mate made me do it with him without me having a clue how helpful it'd be for The Outsider! Still fries my brain though.. :wink:

Reply 25

Carrieeee

So how did everyone find the paper today?

Reply 26

Caolanb2t6

Women In Society
I thought the Illusionist extract was a gift! Pleased with that
The other women Q where I did The Color Purple and Jane Eyre, now it was a bit like AHHH :L What was everyone's main points if you did that Q ?

Reply 27

alexix

Yesssssss why was I even worried. My finger is swollen that means I got an A for sure. B]

Caolanb2t6

Women In Society
The other women Q where I did The Color Purple and Jane Eyre, now it was a bit like AHHH :L What was everyone's main points if you did that Q ?

I can't remember I talked about marriage being a prison and used Bertha Mason as imagery and stuff. (No quotes I'm really dumb.) I talked briefly about the history and the rights of married women in the Victorian Age. Then I was like hey if marriage is like a prison in Jane Eyre, in The Color Purple you could liken it to a concentration camp.. B] Thank you B] and then I talked about the need for equality as shown with Jane and Rochester and Sofia and Harpo and stuff and how it's not all negative.

I feel really good, I'm not used to this, I bet I'll end up getting a D or something :frown:

Reply 28

-CG-

I hated the extract!
It was sooo long..there just wasn't enough time to analyse everything!
So I hope I hit on some of the most important things!

The JE and TCP one was good...
The first presentation of marriage in the novel is Miss Temple's marriage. A bit about her and how she's characterized as being a 'sanctuary' for Jane. Through her marriage, and by extension her conforming to Victorian society's expectations through marriage means the end of Jane's friendship with her and she loses her 'sanctuary'.
This is mirrored in the Color Purple Celie loses her bond of sisterhood to Nettie through her 'marriage into enslavement' with Mr-.
Then I made the point about Bertha being the outcome of the repressed Victorian woman who was simply required to be 'chaste, passive and inferior'. Clear evidence of the 'negativity' of the Victorian marriage.
Then St John Rivers- he tries to convince Jane to marry him. However she realises that she cannot. All the symbolism about his 'icy glacier' forcing her to keep 'the fire of her nature continually low'. How this is negative as it is loveless and passionless.
I then compared the negativity of both these examples with the presentation of marriage through Sofia and Harpo-clearly negative as Harpo, in keeping with his father's (and arguably society's) expectations he attempts to beat and brutalise Sophia. (I brought in context about black men often feeling the frustration of racism and powerlessness and this often meant they took out their grievances towards 'white folk' on their wives.)

Then I concluded that dispite the general view presented of negativity- both characters are generally contented by the end of their story-Jane is in a contented marriage of equals. Celie has achieved empowerment through her marriage and by extension her business and freedom. None of this would have been possible if she hadn't been married. Admittedly she was cruelly treated, but Walker uses this isolation and cruelty to eventually push her central character to empower herself (with the help of Shug) and become content.

So..it's negative...but not always. :/

it was an ok answer-felt like I didn't make enough points.
But i did get good quote in and all the methods in and a good comparison and contrast and good context. Sooo hopefully it will be ok!
So who knows..

Reply 29

Elrobi

We were doing Women in Society too, but our novels were The Color Purple and Wide Sargasso Sea... I made up loads of guff about how the unconventional marriages and relationships in the Color Purple were way better than the conventional ones in WSS. The Illusionist wasn't too bad, I think I wrote "strained relationship" about seventy times in the entire essay though. Anyone else do TCP and WSS?

Reply 30

lauren-kelly

i did childhood, Doyle was easy but sooo long. four pages to analyse took me an hour and 25 mins! i had 35 mins to do my Ballard and Morrison essay! oh god, the fact that question was **** didnt help either. fail