Example answer and examiner commentary

Below you will find an exemplar student response to a Section B question in the specimen assessment materials, followed by an examiner commentary on the response.

Sample question

'Women characters are presented primarily as those who suffer and endure.'

By comparing two prose texts, explore the extent to which you agree with this statement.

Band 3 response

In both The Great Gatsby and The Rotters' Club, although men are shown as suffering for love, women are presented as the ones who suffer and endure the most. The novels were written at different times and so the women in The Great Gatsby are unhappy in their marriages but can't escape whereas the women who are unhappy in The Rotters' Club are the single women who are looking for love at a time when women were more blatant about it.

In The Great Gatsby Myrtle is presented as a woman who is unhappy in her marriage and she tries to escape by having an affair with Tom, who is richer and more exciting than her husband George but Tom will not leave Daisy. Similarly, in The Rotters' Club, Miriam is presented as a single woman who suffers because the man she wants will not leave his wife.

Fitzgerald shows the woman that Myrtle wants to be through her appearance: at home she is described as a 'thickish figure of a woman' but when she was with Tom in his flat 'she was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream coloured chiffon'.  Myrtle tells Nick that she knew she had made a mistake marrying George because 'I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe.' When she meets Tom, she sees a way to escape but she continues to suffer as Tom doesn't treat her well. When she's with him, she feels like a rich person, 'she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy, and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.' Myrtle is jealous of Tom's wife, however, and goes too far by talking about Daisy when he tells her not to so that 'Making a short deft movement, Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.' Myrtle suffers because she doesn't love her husband, has dreams of a better life with Tom but he won't leave his wife and treats Myrtle badly.

Coe also portrays Miriam as jealous of Bill's wife and she schemes to win Bill: 'But Bill – darling – (the word was calculated, or had it come naturally? She would surely know the effect it would have on him) – its Valentine's Day,' and Coe shows how this scheming becomes more desperate through Miriam's dialogue. When she persuades Bill to go away to a hotel, she suggests: 'Wouldn't it be lovely if we could spend every evening like this?' She then demands: 'It's Irene. I want you to leave her. I want you to move in with me.' When Bill does not agree to leave Irene, Miriam becomes more desperate and makes up a rival boyfriend: 'You're not jealous are you? You have got Irene, after all.' Eventually, she becomes hysterical 'screaming through her sobs that her life meant nothing when she was away from him, that she was going to turn up at his house and confront Irene, that she would kill herself if he didn't leave his wife and come to live with her.'

Neither woman wins her man and they both suffer in different ways at the end. Like Tom, Bill will not leave his wife and so Miriam decides to run away. Bill is relieved: 'To have come so close to the brink…a long shudder rippled through him whenever he thought of it' which shows how he did not care for Miriam. George finds out that Myrtle has been having an affair and locks her up but she does escape from him only to run out into the road where she is ironically run over by her rival Daisy. Fitzgerald's description of her dead body shows how sad it is that she could not be the person she wanted to be in her marriage: 'she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.'

In conclusion, I would agree with the statement that women characters are the ones who suffer the most in these two novels. Apart from Myrtle, Daisy also suffers in The Great Gatsby because Tom has affairs and Lois also suffers in The Rotters' Club because at the start she desperately wants to have a boyfriend but just as she has found happiness with Malcolm and he is going to propose to her he gets blown up by an IRA bomb. Some readers may think that Myrtle and Miriam only have themselves to blame because they are in relationships with married men but both writers have shown that they pay the price for their behaviour and that we should feel sorry for them.

Examiner commentary

AO1

The response focuses on the task throughout and is structured clearly with sensibly ordered ideas. The writing is clearly expressed and mainly accurate.

AO2

There is straightforward understanding of how the writers present women characters as suffering, with relevant supporting textual evidence, although there is a reliance on description/narrative rather than a focus on the authors at work.

AO3

There is a straightforward understanding of how the relationships discussed reflect the time in which the texts are written.

AO4

There is straightforward comparison of the prose texts on a number of points. Relevant comments are made about how the writers present women as suffering similarly or differently in light of the given view in the question.

AO5

The candidate is clear in offering a straightforward judgement that women characters are presented primarily as those who suffer. Different reader responses to the characters are tentatively suggested but not fully explored.

Overall: Straightforward and relevant. This response seems consistent with the Band 3 descriptors.

This resource is part of the Love through the ages resource package.