The grade ceiling
Is your teenager consistently achieving a grade 4 or a 5 in their English literature essays? Are they at a loss as to how to boost their grade? If so, it could be that they are taking a too narrow view of the text that they are writing about.
The fact is, that a student can know a text in detail, and be able to analyse language effectively, but still not get the top marks.
The reason for this is that, to be awarded a level 6 in literature essays, a candidate has to write ‘a fine-grained and insightful analysis of language and form and structure.’ (bolding my own). In order to achieve a level 5, candidates can choose to write ‘a detailed examination of the effects of language and/or structure and/or form.’ In other words, you have to aim to write about the trinity of language, form and structure if you want a level 6.
What is form anyway?
BBC Bitesize has the clearest, most student-friendly definitions of form I can find:
Put like this, form is pretty important: it impacts on the writer’s choice of language, tone and structure. To write about form, though, a candidate needs to know the conventions of the particular text they are studying.
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, for example, is written in the novel form (or the novella form, if you want to be picky). This form is elastic, in that it allows for a range of different conventions to be made use of. R.L. Stevenson chooses to make use of different first person perspectives in the novel.
- For the majority of the novella, the reader experiences the story from the perspective of Mr Utterson. We only know what he discovers about Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and we share in his (sometimes inaccurate) conjecture. This allows Stevenson to keep us in the dark as to the true identify of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde right up to the end of the novella.
- Towards the end of the novella, the first person perspective of Dr Lanyon is used to reveal the disturbing truth about Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The truth is revealed in a letter from Dr Lanyon to Utterson, which comes to light after the death of Lanyon. The use of different person perspectives and the letter allows Stevenson to deviate from the chronological structure of a story and to hold the reader in suspense right up to the final chapter.
This building of suspense and the delay in the revelation of the truth is very much in keeping with the murder mystery genre which had begun to enjoy popularity by the time Stevenson’s novel was published in 1889. Murder was very much on people’s minds in London at the time because the Jack the Ripper Murders were taking place in and around Whitechapel.
Of course, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is not just a novella, it is a Gothic novella, and it makes use of many of the motifs common in other Gothic novels at the time. For example:
The study of form allows the candidate to take a step back from the language of a text and adopt a critical distance. Once they understand why the writer has adopted a particular form and its conventions, its easier to view the characters as constructions.
For example, if a student is encouraged to view An Inspector Calls as a modern morality play, and to see each of Priestley’s characters as representative of the one of the 7 Deadly Sins, it is easier to justify Priestley’s choices when he is, for example, drawing Mr Birling as a thoroughly unlikeable character.
How do I teach about form?
First of all, it’s important that the student can define the term form in relation to the text they are studying. This might well involve studying the historical development of a particular genre and its features.
Then, I ensure that students understand key terms within the definition of form. To talk about the form of Jekyll and Hyde, for example, students need to know not only what the ‘Gothic’ genre means, but also the difference between narrative structure, voice and perspective.
After that, I set questions or tasks which enable my tutees to talk about form. Generally I anchor these questions to particular extracts or plot points so that the study of form is as concrete as possible, rather than being an abstract notion.
If you’d like me to teach your teenager about the form of the texts they are studying, just get in touch.
