Section A: Exam question
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“In Wuthering heights the weather is often a signpost for tragedy.” How far do
you agree with this statement.
“The most daunting element of the Bloody Chamber is the use of setting.” How
far do you agree with this statement.
“Shakespeare’s use of the supernatural allows you to feel more sympathy for
Macbeth.” To what extent do you support this argument.
“In the Bloody Chamber the psychological entrapment faced by characters is
more impactful than any physical imprisonment.” To what extent do you
support this argument.
“Macbeth’s visions of the future are all of his own making.” How far do you
agree with this view?
“Heathcliff’s story is one of a victim turned Anti-hero whom the audience can’t
help liking.” To what extent do you support this argument.
“Despite her crimes Lady Macbeth is actually an atypical damsel in distress.” To
what extent do you support this argument.
“Revenge is always at the root of the narrative in Wuthering heights.” To what
extent do you support this argument.
“The use of blood in The Bloody Chamber merely shocks the reader and
doesn’t inspire real fear.” To what extent do you support this argument.
The typical approach…
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Introduce my argument
Introduce my moment/evidence
Signpost gothic concepts (you could do this after the quote)
Quote
Analysis language, form and structure
Relate analysis to the question – link back
Give another/different interpretation
Introduce more support/evidence/quote
Signpost gothic concepts
Consider gothic context or general context
Evaluate the author’s success
Link back to argument
What the examiners want…
Band 6 (34-40 marks)
AO1 use of appropriate critical vocabulary and technically fluent style/ well structured and coherent argument – Balance in the
argument but they will reward a fervent and passionate. Gothic vocabulary and terminology should be consistently signposted
and the arguments should stand up to scrutiny.
AO1 always relevant with very sharp focus on task and confidently ranging around texts – The best textual examples and
references are chosen not just moulded to fit the argument. The selection also shows scope and thorough knowledge of the
text.
AO2 exploration and analysis of key features of form and structure with perceptive evaluation of how they shape meanings – Are
you discussing the format? Do you discuss the structure of the narrative? How do these things link to your question and the
Gothic? Do the form/structure help or hinder the story?
AO2 exploration and analysis of key aspects of language with perceptive evaluation of how they shape meanings – Don’t just
identify features and comment, demonstrate the writer’s intentions with their use of language and how it links to the gothic.
Don’t be afraid to criticise.
AO3 detailed and perceptive understanding of issues raised in connecting texts through concept of gothic – Don’t just reference
the gothic concept in the question and demonstrate why the writer has developed this gothic concept.
AO3 perceptive consideration of different interpretations of texts with sharp evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses and with
excellent selection of supportive references – Always consider other readings of the text and how it is received. Is there anything
contradictory or controversial in the text? Which interpretation is the strongest and why?
AO4 excellent understanding of ways of contextualising gothic – How does the text relate to the gothic and gothic history? Where
does it rank with othr gothic texts? Which texts does it relate to? Is this intentional by the author?
AO4 excellent understanding of a range of other contextual factors with specific, detailed links between context/text/task – What
impact or significance does the context have on the novel?
Making Gothic Links: 1 Weather
1. How do your three texts link to the
gothic convention?
2. How has the writer used the gothic
convention?
Weather Quotes
Wuthering Heights:
Chp 1 pg2 “Atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather.”
“Power of the north wind blowing over the edge.”
“Gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving the alms of the sun.”
Chp2 pg5 “On that bleak hilltop the earth was hard with a black frost and the air made me shiver through every
limb.”
Macbeth:
Act 1 Scene 1 “When shall we three meet again? In thunder lightning or in rain?”
“Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
Act 1 Scene 5 “Shall sun that morrow see!”
Act 2 Scene 3 “But this place is too cold for hell.”
The Bloody Chamber
Pg 32 “Gouging tunnels through the shifting mist.”
Pg 35 “unearthly light of dawn filled the room.”
The Courtship of Mr Lyon
Pg 43 “Hedgrow glistened as if the snow possessed a light of its own…while still the soft flakes floated down.”
Erl King
Pg 96 “Cold of the approach of winter that grips hold of your belly and squeezes it tight.”
Pg 100 “The earth with its fragile fleece of last summer’s dying leaves.”
Making Gothic Links: 2 Setting
1. How do your three texts link to
the gothic convention?
2. How has the writer used the
gothic convention?
Setting Quotes
Making Gothic Links: 3 Supernatural
1. How do your three texts link to the
gothic convention?
2. How has the writer used the gothic
convention?
Supernatural Quotes
The Bloody Chamber
(Snow Child) “As soon as he complete his description, there she stood…she was the child of his desires.”
The girl began to melt. Soon there was nothing left of her but a feather.”
(Erl King) “He came alive from the desire of the woods.”
(Courtship of Mr Lyon) “No longer a lion in her arms but a man, a man with an unkempt mane of hair.”
“It seemed December still possessed his garden. The ground was hard as iron.”
Macbeth
“I see thee still art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art though but a dagger of the mind,
a false creation.”
“Thou hast no speculation in those eyes, which thou dost glare with.”
“My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, shakes so my single state of man that function.”
Wuthering heights
“Surrounded by a swarm of squealing puppies and other dogs haunted other recesses.”
“Knocking my knuckles through the glass and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch, instead of
which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little ice-cold hand.”
As it spoke I descended, obscurely a child’s face looking through the window.”
“Catherine Earnshaw may you not rest ad long as I am living! You said I killed you – haunt me then.”
Making Gothic Links: 4
Entrapment, imprisonment and claustrophobia
1. How do your three texts link to the
gothic convention?
2. How has the writer used the gothic
convention?
Entrapment, imprisonment and claustrophobia Quotes
Macbeth
Act 3 scene 4: Line 138 “I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade more.”
Act 5 scene 1 – “Infected in minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.”
“Here’s the smell of blood still all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
“They have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly.”
“We will eat our meal in fear and sleep in the affliction of these terrible dreams.”
Wuthering Heights
“I’d not exchange for a thousand lives, my condition here, for Edgar Linton’s at Thrushcross Grange.” – trapped in
social class.
“I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” Heathcliff on Cathy.
“I inquired what had urged her to escape from Wuthering heights.” Nelly on Isabella
“There I remained enclosed, the whole day, and the whole of the next night; and another, and another.” – Nelly’s
entrapment
“The Grange is not a prison, Ellen, and you are not my jailer.” Cathy Jr to Nelly
“She has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years.” – Heathcliff
The Bloody Chamber
“We shall have the absolute privacy for our last rites.”
“One false step and into the abyss of the ark you stumbled.”
“How long had he kept her in this obscene cell?”
Tiger’s bride
“In those distant years before he imposed seclusion on himself.”
Lady of the house of love
“She likes to hear it announce how it cannot escape.”
“…incarcerates her the castle of her inheritance.”
Erl King
“I had no wish to join the whistling congregation he kept in cages.”
“How cruel it is to keep wild birds in cages.”
Making Gothic Links: 5 Dreams, omens and visions
1. How do your three texts link to the
gothic convention?
2. How has the writer used the gothic
convention?
Dreams, Omens and Visions Quotes
Making Gothic Links: 6 Anti-Hero
1. How do your three texts link to the
gothic convention?
2. How has the writer used the gothic
convention?
Anti-Heroes Quotes
Wuthering heights:
(To Isabella) “’She abandoned them under an illusion’ he answered, ‘picturing in me a hero of romance
and expecting unlimited indulgences from chivalrous devotion.”
(By Isabella) “No, No! Even if he had doted on me the devilish nature would’ve revealed its existence
somehow. ‘Monster’ would that he could be blotted out of creation and out of memory.”
Macbeth:
“For brave Macbeth, well he deserves that name.”
“By the pricking of my thumbs something wicked this way comes.”
Bloody chamber:
‘As though he had laid by the face in which he had liked for so long in order to offer my youth a face
unsigned by the years.”
“My virgin of the arpeggios, prepare yourself for martyrdom.”
“I strained my nerves yet could not help but flinch, from the intimate touch for it made me think of the
piercing embrace of the iron maiden and of his lost lovers in the fault.”
Making Gothic Links: 7 Pursuit of the
Heroine/ Women in distress
1. How do your three texts link to the
gothic convention?
2. How has the writer used the gothic
convention?
Women in Distress Quotes
Wuthering heights
“I cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my soul.”
Recalled to a sense of physical weakness by the violent, unequal
throbbing of her heart.”
“since he asked you after that, he must either be hopelessly stupid or a
venturesome fool.”
The Bloody Chamber
(Courtship) “As if he himself were in awe of a young girl who looked as
if she had been carved out of a single pearl.”
(Courtship) “‘I’m dying, beauty,’ he said in a cracked whisper of his
former purr. ‘since you left me, I have been sick.’”
(Erl king) “He is the tender butcher who showed me now the price of
flesh is love; skin the rabbit he says! Off come all my clothes.”
Making Gothic Links: 8 Revenge
1. How do your three texts link to the
gothic convention?
2. How has the writer used the gothic
convention?
Revenge Quotes
Wuthering heights
“I felt that God had forsaken the stray sheep there to its own wicked wanderings and
an evil beast prowled between it and the fold, writing his time to spring and destroy.”
“We’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist
it.”
“I could not picture a father treating a dying child as tyrannically wickedly as I
afterwards learnt Heathcliff had treated him.”
The Bloody Chamber
(Erl King) “I shall sit, hereafter in my cage among the other singing birds but I shall be
dumb from spite…I shall strangle him…Then she will open the cages and let the birds
free.”
(Bloody chamber) “The heavy bearded figure roared out aloud braying with fury and
wielding the honourable sword as if it were a matter of death or glory.”
Macbeth
“Blood will have blood.”
“I have no words: my voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain than terms can give
thee out.”
(To Ghost) “Thous canst not say I did it: Never shake thy gory locks at me.”
Making Gothic Links: 9 Blood and Horror
1. How do your three texts link to the
gothic convention?
2. How has the writer used the gothic
convention?
Blood and Horror Quotes
Wuthering Heights:
Chp 3 “I pulled the wrist onto the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran
down and soaked the bedclothes.”
Chp 29 “I ought to have sweat blood the anguish of my yearning – from the fervour of my
supplications to have but one glimpse.”
Macbeth:
Act 1 scene 4 line 50 – “Stars hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires.”
Act 2 scene 1 line 46 – “On thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood.”
Bloody Chamber:
Pg 26 – There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of
torture.”
Pg 26 - “A metal figure, hinged at the side, which I knew to be spiked on the inside and to
have the name: the iron maiden.”
Pg 26 – “the walls of this stark torture chamber were the naked rock, they gleamed as if
they were sweating with fright.”
(Snow Child) pg 106 – “Weeping, the count got off his horse, unfastened his breeches and
thrust his virile member into the dead girl.”