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Paper 2 - Comparative essay - what it involves

Exemplar essay starter on the supernatural as a key Gothic element

Topics for Gothic themed exam questions - these aren't from the OCR specification but there are some good questions to get you thinking about the Gothic genre here.

Context: Fairy Tales and Feminism

The Fairy Tale Genre: BBC Radio programme on Fairy Tales

Feminism: Timeline of the Women's Liberation Movement -useful for seeing how much was going on before and around the time Carter published The Bloody Chamber in 1979.

Exemplar essay writing on The Bloody Chamber

These examples are from the old A Level course but still provide excellent examples of students' writing that link to the Gothic. They will help you to think about which aspects of the texts and which quotations are useful to use in the exam, and show you how to debate the extent to which the statement about The Gothic in the question is true.

Just scroll down the text to find the relevant parts on The Bloody Chamber.

To what extent do you agree with the view that gothic writing shows that human beings are naturally inclined to be evil rather than good? Example 1

To what extent do you agree with the view that gothic writing shows that human beings are naturally inclined to be evil rather than good? Example 2

“It is ironic that the beasts are often more humane than the humans.” Consider at least two of the stories from the collection in the light of this comment.

How do you respond to the view that gothic writing explores potential threats to normal values?

“Mad, bad and dangerous.” How accurate is this as a description of the gothic villains in the texts you have studied?

Female Gothic essay

English and Media Centre essays