Context

Question 1

What is Gothicism?

Answer 1

genre of fiction
reflects political, social and cultural context in which they were written.
takes place at moments of transition

Question 2

What is the female gothic?

Answer 2

exploring woman’s entrapment within domestic space and subjection to patriarchal authority.
Gothic is used through the imagery of enclosed spaces of the house to explore the constrictions placed on the female body

Question 3

Spiritual biography

Answer 3

• The narrative follows the believer from a state of damnation to a state of grace

Question 4

Attitudes to women authors

Answer 4

• Female writers of the Eighteenth Century often focused on the role of the female imagination in novel writing, poetry composition, and as an outlet for temporarily escaping a harsh world.

Question 5

Serialisation

Answer 5

printing format in which a single larger work of narrative fiction is published in smaller, sequential instalments

Question 6

Calvinism

Answer 6

• Believe God institutes in the scriptures everything he requires for worship in the church and everything else is prohibited
Associates music with iconography (prohibited in 10 commandments)

Question 7

Bildungsroman

Answer 7

Novel dealing with one person’s formative years or spiritual education
Goal is maturity and protagonist achieve it gradually and with difficulty

Question 8

Teleology

Answer 8

• Suggests that all things are to be designed for or directed toward a result, that there is an inherent purpose or final cause got all that exists
Love stories place implicit importance in the teleological progress – everything leads up to the love unification and importance of the happy ending.

Question 9

Realism

Answer 9

A depiction of subjects as they appear in everyday life, without embellishment or interpretation
Jane Eyre wants the truth to prevail – beginning when she wants them to realise, she is being mistreated

Question 10

Role of women

Answer 10

They relied on the wealth of their fathers/ male relatives

Governesses – one of only jobs respectable, MC women could take up

Question 11

Marriage

Answer 11

Virginity and purity were important traits for future wives

1882 Married Property Act – women’s wealth is passed to husband. If she earned a wage, this belonged to husband.

Question 12

Chartism

Answer 12

‘To seek by every legal means to place all classes of society in possession of their equal, political, and social rights.’

Question 13

Revolution

Answer 13

In the years before her birth, society had been transformed by ‘revolution’.

Question 14

Angel in the House

Answer 14

• The text discusses the construct of the ‘angel on the hearth’, the angel referring to the purity of women and the hearth indicating their domestic role.
In relation to this extract, Jane attempts to restrain her inwards passions and desires (inner conflict) in order to conform to this societal construct.

Question 15

Romanticism

Answer 15

They preferred/encouraged spontaneous and emotional responses over logical thought

Question 16

Byronic hero

Answer 16

Unusually handsome, or inextricably attractive, often to both sexes
Wounded or physically disabled in some way
Passionate (both in terms of sexuality and deep emotions)
Remorse laden (for some unnamed sin)