Regardless of which 19th-century novel you study, the type of question you’ll need to write an essay for will be the same. You will be asked a question that asks you to analyse and write in detail about an aspect of the novel. Your answer will need to address both an extract from the novel that you will be given and the novel as a whole.
It is tempting to jump straight in and start analysing the extract immediately. However, completing the steps below first will ensure you answer the question in the way that examiners are looking for.
6 key steps to answer the 19th-century novel exam question effectively:
1. The very first thing you should do once you open your exam paper is to look at the question:
- This sounds obvious, but it’s really crucial to read through the question a few times
- Why is this important? Regardless of what subject you’re being examined in, the single biggest mistake most students make in their exams is not reading the question through carefully enough that they answer the question they think they’re being asked, rather than the question they’ve actually been asked
- It’s especially important to get this right in your GCSE English Literature exams because you only have five essay questions to answer across two papers, so if you misread a question, you’re potentially costing yourself a large number of marks
2. Identify the keywords of the question
- The keywords are the focus of the question: the specific themes, ideas, or characters the examiners want you to focus on
- For the above question, the key words of question are “how Stevenson presents good and evil”
- This is the theme the examiners want you to explore in your essay
- Do not be tempted to write a question on a related theme, even if you have revised more for it: this will affect your overall mark badly, as you won’t be directly answering the question!
- In the example above, the theme is about good and evil, so make sure you plan and write an essay about good and evil, rather than, for example, the role of religion in the novel
- Although this could be viewed as a related theme, your answer won’t be focused on the question and will lose you marks
3. Critically evaluate the idea or theme of the question in terms of the novel as a whole
- Think: what is this question asking, and what is it not asking?
- It is asking you to explore ideas about good and evil – a duality between what is considered morally right with what is considered wicked and wrong
- The question is not asking you to explore any other themes
- Again, writing about related ideas will actually lose you marks as you aren’t answering the exact question you have been set. The examiner isn’t going to reward you extra marks for information that is factually correct or demonstrates a great understanding of the novel if the information is not relevant to the question being asked
4. Now you have identified and evaluated the key idea or theme of the question, read the contextual information above the extract:
5. Contextualise the extract further yourself, before reading it
- Understanding where the extract comes from in the novel will also give you clues to understand the extract more completely
- Think: what else happens before and after this point in the novel?
- Which characters are involved?
- How does it link to other parts of the text?
- Examiners repeatedly state that the very best answers are those that move beyond the extract and consider the question in the context of the novel as a whole:
- Therefore, even at this stage, it is good to think about how the theme of the question develops before and after this point in the novel
6. Read the extract with all of the above information (the keywords from the question; the context) in mind
- This will enable you to pick out quotations and analyse only the most relevant parts of the extract in the context of the novel as a whole, and the question you have been set