Modern texts 1945-Present Day Contexts

A2 ENGLISH LITERATURE: TEXTS IN SHARED CONTEXTS REVISION
1 hour 30 mins
SECTION A
UNSEEN
PROSE
SECTION B
COMPARATIVE
TEXTS
25 marks
You will be assessed on your ability to
response to an unseen extract from
Literature 1945-Present Day. You will be
asked to explore the representation of a
theme/idea.
25 marks
You will be assessed on your
comparisons across poetry and prose
texts: Feminine Gospels and The Help.

1 hour 30 mins
SECTION A
UNSEEN
PROSE
SECTION B
COMPARATIVE
TEXTS
25 marks
You will be assessed on your ability to
response to an unseen extract from
Literature 1945-Present Day. You will be
asked to explore the representation of a
theme/idea.
25 marks
You will be assessed on your
comparisons across poetry and prose
texts: Feminine Gospels and The Help.

EDUCATION
The Education Act of 1944 paved the way for the removal of
inequalities within the British education system. After 1945, grammar
and secondary modern schools were introduced by the Labour
government.
A smaller proportion of pupils attended the more academic grammar
schools, securing their place by passing what was known as the 11-plus
examination.
The intention was to provide equality of opportunity
for all children whatever background they came from.
Alongside these schools, fee-paying independent schools, including
boarding schools, catered for a small minority of pupils.
Consider how this contributes to class tensions within
Literature of the post 1945 period.

EDUCATION
By 2015, most but not all grammar schools and the 11-plus had long
since been abandoned in favour of comprehensive schools, introduced
by a later Labour government in 1965.
The comprehensive ideal meant that pupils from all backgrounds and
abilities would be educated within the same comprehensive school,
which ideally removed the need for selection based on an exam taken
at the age of 11. In 2015, ninety per cent of
pupils attend comprehensive schools, including high schools, free
schools or academies. The Guardian reported in April 2015 that more
than 1,200 private schools between them enrolled 517,000 pupils,
probably a record.
Reflect on how Modern Literature of more recent decades
could reflect the image of a more equal society.

EDUCATION AND SOCIAL MOBILITY
Today 57 per cent of places on undergraduate courses at Oxford go to applicants from the
state sector – including a disproportionately high number from the remaining grammar
schools – and 42 per cent of places go to applicants from independent schools. And this is
after universities have
been told they risk being stripped of the right to charge higher fees if they fail to attract a
wide mix of students.
The attempt by Labour education minister Tony Crosland to 'destroy every
fucking grammar school in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was wrong not because
his intentions were nefarious – the dissolution of grammar schools was supposed to do
away with what Crosland called the 'extreme social division segregation into schools of
widely divergent status' -but
because the result has been a disaster for bright working class kids, who are crammed into
classrooms with the disinterested, the idle and those who will simply always struggle with
academic subjects. Rather than ushering
in equality, comprehensives have resulted in mediocrity or worse for most children and a
bonanza for wealthy families who despised the 11-plus but who can now buy their way
into the best schools.
How do you respond to the argument James Bloodworth makes in his
article in The Independent?

What picture does Richard
Hoggart depict of the life of the
working class mother of the
1950s?
CLASS AND GENDER

Representations of Class and Gender in Post-1945 Literature
You can have little but admiration for the position such a mother naturally assumes
in her household. I am thinking of her chiefly in early-middle or middle age, when
she has fully established herself as the mother of the family, when she comes into
her own. She is then the pivot of the home, as it is practically the whole of her
world. She, more than the father, holds it together; writes with
difficulty to a son in the Services or to a daughter working away. She keeps close
contact with those other members of the family who live nearer, with the
grandparents, brothers, sisters, and cousins; occasionally she may go sit with one
of them or with a neighbour for an hour. She leaves the outer world of politics and
even of the 'news' to her husband; she knows little about his job; such friends as
she has from outside are usually his, since on her marriage she drops her own.
So far this is too boldly drawn, but it is necessary to establish first the
close, the myopic nature of the lives of most working-class mothers. The pressure
is so strong that in those who have special troubles or are very poorly
gifted imaginatively it can produce a turned-in-upon-itself world into which
nothing which does not concern the family penetrates.

It is a hard life, in which it is assumed the mother will be 'at it' from getting up to going
to bed: she will cook, mend, scrub, wash, see to the children, shop, and satisfy
her husband's desires. Even today, it is often a life with few modern aids such as
vacuum cleaners and electric washers, and yet with more dirt to fight than in the more
prosperous districts. Curtains can hardly be kept 'a good colour' even with frequent
washing in dolly blue or cream; the fireplace and range may need black-leading and
hard nursing'. Everywhere the smoke and soot from the nearby factories and railway
lines creep in, and most women can’t abide the thought of dirt getting a hold' ...
Partly because the husband is at work but also because women are simply
expected to look after such things, it will be the mother who has the long waits in
public places, at the doctor's for 'a bottle', at the clinic with a child who has eye-
trouble, at the municipal offices to see about the instalment on the electricity bill.
All this is made more difficult because there is in most cases, or has been
until the last few years, little room for manoeuvre financially, only just enough to 'wag
on'; the housekeeping is usually 'mortgaged' to a penny or so. To manage on a tight
string like this requires considerable skill, and that often conies hard, but come it must
or the family is likely to be in trouble.

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit——
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
What does this poem reveal about attitudes towards women
in the late C20th?

How far do you agree with
Germaine Greer’s arguments
here in this foreward from The
Female Eunuch?

Twenty years ago I wrote in the Introduction to The Female Eunuch that I thought that
the book should quickly date and disappear. I hoped that a new breed of woman
would come upon the earth for whom my analysis of sex oppression in the developed
world in the second half of the twentieth century would be utterly irrelevant.
Many new breeds of woman are upon the earth: there are female body
builders whose pectorals are as hard as any man's; there are women marathon
runners with musculature as stringy and tight as any man s; there are women
administrators with as much power as any man; there are women paying alimony and
women being paid
palimony; there are up-front lesbians demanding the right to marry and have children
by artificial insemination; there are men who mutilate themselves and are given
passports as statutory females; there are prostitutes who have combined in highly
visible professional organizations; there are armed women in the front line of the
most powerful armies on earth; there are full colonels with vivid lipstick and painted
nails; there are women who write books about their sexual conquests, naming names
and describing positions, sizes of members and so forth. None of these female
phenomena was to be observed in any numbers twenty years ago.

Women's magazines are now written for grown-ups, and discuss not only pre-marital
sex, contraception and abortion, but venereal disease, incest, sexual perversion, and,
even more surprising, finance high and low, politics, conservation, animal rights and
consumer power.
Contraception having saturated its market and severer curtailed the money to be
made out of menstruation, the pharmaceutical multinationals have at last turned
their attention to the menopausal and post-menopausal women who represent a
new, huge, unexploited market for HRT. Geriatric sex can be seen in every television
soap opera. What more could women want?
Freedom, that's what.
Is Greer’s assessment of twentieth
century attitudes towards women fair?

SO HOW DO YOU TACKLE…
A04 (EXPLORE CONNECTIONS ACROSS LITERARY TEXTS)

In Paper 2B Section B, where two prose texts are compared, it is
obvious what to do. Elsewhere, single texts are the focus so AO4
is implicit in awareness of typicality of:
 Subject matter
 Characters and situations
 Themes
 Methods
Recognition of typicality/atypicality is sufficient to cover
this AO. Discussing methods involves AO2 so it may be
that you show your awareness of typical/atypical
methods and cover both AO2 and AO4 at the same
time.

INTRODUCTIONS
Stereotypically, women are portrayed as the weaker sex in pre-1900
literature and they often suffer and endure unhappy marriages because of
the inequality of the sexes. In post-1900 literature, however, women are
shown as more equal and so writers don’t focus on their suffering alone but
also on the suffering of male characters in relationships. This is true of The
Great Gatsby and The Rotters’ Club where women do suffer and endure but
arguably men are presented as suffering even more.
The Great Gatsby focuses on the main character of Jay Gatsby and his
unrequited love for Daisy whereas The Rotters’ Club includes many
relationships. There are, however, similarities between Gatsby’s suffering
and that of Benjamin Trotter and Sam Chase, although the outcomes are
different, and so this essay will focus on those male characters.
What makes this a successful introduction?

Stereotypically, women are portrayed as the weaker sex in pre-1900 literature and they often
suffer and endure unhappy marriages because of the inequality of the sexes. In post-1900
literature, however, women are shown as more equal and so writers don’t focus on their
suffering alone but also on the suffering of male characters in relationships. This is true of The
Great Gatsby and The Rotters’ Club where women do suffer and endure but arguably men are
presented as suffering even more.
The Great Gatsby focuses on the main character of Jay Gatsby and his unrequited love for Daisy
whereas The Rotters’ Club includes many relationships. There are, however, similarities between
Gatsby’s suffering and that of Benjamin Trotter and Sam Chase, although the outcomes are
different, and so this essay will focus on those male characters.
AO1: The student has already outlined a critical, informed and personal response to
the question. It is very clear that the student has already planned out an argument
prior to starting the essay.
AO3: The students has already demonstrated a secure understanding of the relevant
socio-historical contexts for both the C19th and C20th. This context has also been
directly linked to the text and the writer’s methods.
AO4: The student has started to outline some similarities between both texts as a
way of establishing their argument and recognising connections between the male
protagonists.
AO5: The student has already considered ways to engage with the statement

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Modern texts 1945-Present Day Contexts

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