Women in Literature: Student Guide for A Level OCR

Rather than simply portraying women in literature, OCR’s selection of texts explores what it is to be a woman. It takes womanhood and femininity as a central theme, and unearths attitudes to women in various societies and contexts, seeking to subvert patriarchal views. Guide your students through this process with commanding notes and activities.

Component 02: Comparative and Contextual Study

Arm your students with an arsenal of ideas!

Give students a firm grounding in your chosen topic with student-friendly notes, essential context, and activities on carefully-chosen key aspects. A broad selection of extracts from set texts and unseen prose are analysed against topical features to prepare for the exam.

Key areas include…
  • Authorial Techniques
  • Characterisation
  • Themes and Motifs
  • Context
  • Setting
  • Literary Criticism
...and many more topic-specific areas

Target exam skills

  • Extract analyses model critical appreciations for unseen extracts
  • Reflective activities – matched to the AOs – encourage engagement and consolidate learning
  • Exam preparation questions build confidence and develop essay-writing skills
  • Practice essay questions and peer/self-assessment mark schemes track student progress

Answers included for easy delivery and marking

What do teachers say about this resource? (7219)

A well-organised and thorough resource which clearly was designed to give pupils a methodical overview of the topic of Women in Literature... I really appreciated the range of relevant texts that it covered: it includes a fascinating array of highly pertinent texts that each in their own right are worthy of study. It would be an excellent launchpad into any or all of these texts for either the teacher or an ambitious, high-achieving pupil. I liked the wider reading suggestions and the introduction given to various theories... The educational value of this resource lies in its content and the focus on wider contextual knowledge of Women in Literature (AO3) covered through the sheer volume of relevant and apposite texts selected and discussed. It enhances learning through an introduction to various relevant schools of criticism (AO5). At each stage, these wider texts and critical approaches were related to the core texts selected as part of the OCR specification... The various critical approaches gave a useful starting point on how to apply them to literature and the texts introduced. I thought resources such as the timeline and other activities and suggestions throughout the text were very well structured and apposite, clearly aimed towards the required Assessment Outcomes... I really enjoyed reading through this resource.

J Hathaway, Head of English & Peer Reviewer