GCSE English Literature

19th-century novels
revision.

A Christmas Carol characters, ghosts and exam questions, then Jekyll and Hyde character pages and the other nineteenth-century novels.

19th-century novels guides

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Each box is a full revision page. The smaller line is the search students type — not the name of the guide.

05

Frankenstein revision

Revise ambition, responsibility, isolation and what it means to be human in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

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06

Great Expectations revision

Revise class, guilt, self-deception and what “gentleman” means in Dickens’s Great Expectations.

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07

Pride and Prejudice revision

Revise marriage, class, first impressions and irony in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

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08

The Sign of the Four revision

Revise Holmes, Watson, empire, treasure and deduction in Conan Doyle’s The Sign of the Four.

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09

Magwitch in Great Expectations

GCSE Magwitch revision: marshes convict, Pip’s secret guilt, benefactor truth, coarse gratitude, class punchline, death and Pip’s final loyalty.

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10

Joe Gargery in Great Expectations

GCSE Joe Gargery revision: forge warmth, “What larks”, Pip’s shame, unchanged loyalty, true gentleman without London polish, and moral centre of the novel.

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11

Estella in Great Expectations

GCSE Estella revision: Miss Havisham’s weapon, “coarse hands”, cold beauty, “I am what you designed me to be”, and thawed feeling at the end.

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12

Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four

GCSE Holmes revision: deduction as theatre, eliminate the impossible, cocaine boredom, cold brilliance, Watson as witness, and method over magic.

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13

Irene Adler and women in Sign of the Four

GCSE note: Irene Adler is in “A Scandal in Bohemia”, not Sign of the Four — Mary Morstan, Mrs Forrester, and gender in the novella.

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14

Themes in The Sign of the Four

GCSE Sign of the Four themes: deduction and empire, treasure and guilt, friendship, London geography, addiction and restlessness, and colonial past in the Thames plot.

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15

Walton in Frankenstein

GCSE Walton revision: Arctic frame, ambitious explorer, parallel to Victor, letters as structure, loneliness, and warning that may not be heeded.

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16

The De Lacey family in Frankenstein

GCSE De Lacey cottage revision: Creature’s education, language and fire, domestic humanity, Paradise Lost, rejection, and hope burned away.

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17

Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice

GCSE Darcy revision: first impression pride, Pemberley thaw, letter revelation, saved Lydia, second proposal, and class armour schooled by action.

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18

Marriage in Pride and Prejudice

GCSE Pride and Prejudice marriage revision: opening irony, entailment, Charlotte’s realism, Lydia’s disaster, Elizabeth-Darcy union, and economics beside love.

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19

Scrooge character analysis

GCSE A Christmas Carol character analysis of Scrooge: oyster and flint caricature, Belle and Fezziwig, and how Dickens turns a miser into a case study across the staves.

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20

Marley in A Christmas Carol

GCSE revision of Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol: the chain he forged, “mankind was my business”, and how he is the doppelganger of Scrooge’s possible future.

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21

Ghost of Christmas Past

GCSE guide to the Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol: memory as method, Fan, the school, Fezziwig and Belle, and how the past explains Scrooge without excusing him.

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22

Ghost of Christmas Present

GCSE analysis of the Ghost of Christmas Present: abundance, the Cratchits, Fred’s party, the holly torch, and Ignorance and Want as Dickens’s social warning.

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23

Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

GCSE revision of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: silence as method, the unnamed corpse, businessmen, the grave, and Tiny Tim’s death as a conditional warning.

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24

Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim

GCSE study of Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol: the Cratchit counter-economy, “surplus population” answered, and Tim as a social warning rather than only pathos.

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25

Fred in A Christmas Carol

GCSE character analysis of Fred in A Christmas Carol: invulnerable good humour, the open door, foil to Scrooge, and why “his wealth is of no use to him” damns unused money.

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26

A Christmas Carol exam questions

GCSE AQA-style A Christmas Carol exam questions: extract plus whole text, typical stems, thesis first, methods, Poor Law context, timing, and what Band 5/6 looks like versus plot retell.

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27

Dr Jekyll character analysis

GCSE Jekyll and Hyde: Henry Jekyll as respectable scientist, repressed pleasure-seeker and author of his own split — not a simple “good side,” and how to write him in extract questions.

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28

Mr Hyde character analysis

GCSE Mr Hyde: violence, the “ape-like” body, secrecy, and why Hyde is Jekyll’s repressed appetite given flesh — not a separate villain who wandered in from a penny dreadful.

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29

Utterson in Jekyll and Hyde

GCSE Utterson: the lawyer as delayed detective, “Cain’s heresy,” reputation as a professional ethic, and why Stevenson makes us share a man who will not ask the dangerous question soon enough.

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30

Lanyon in Jekyll and Hyde

GCSE Dr Lanyon: the rational friend, “unscientific balderdash,” the witnessed transformation, and how Stevenson uses one doctor’s mind to show science, friendship and forbidden knowledge breaking.

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31

Jekyll and Hyde exam questions

AQA-style extract plus whole novella: how to open, typical stems (duality, reputation, science, secrecy, violence), letters as form, timing, and a model first paragraph you can adapt in the hall.

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32

Frankenstein: the Creature

GCSE Frankenstein Creature analysis: born benevolent, educated by misery, biblical Adam and fallen angel, and why Shelley makes the rejected creation argue.

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33

Frankenstein: Victor

GCSE Victor Frankenstein analysis: Promethean ambition, secrecy, failure of parenthood, and the frame with Walton’s parallel quest.

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34

Great Expectations: Pip

GCSE Pip character analysis: shame, snobbery, guilt on the marshes, and the narrator’s double vision of his younger self.

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35

Great Expectations: Miss Havisham

GCSE Miss Havisham analysis: stopped clocks, revenge through Estella, and Dickens’s warning about living in one wound.

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36

Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth

GCSE Elizabeth Bennet analysis: wit, prejudice, pride wounded, letter and Pemberley as education, and Austen’s free indirect style.

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37

Jekyll and Hyde: themes in depth

GCSE Jekyll and Hyde themes depth: duality, repression, science, respectability and London setting beyond the character pages.

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Keep going

More GCSE English Literature
in the same style.

GCSE English Literature revision for Shakespeare, A Christmas Carol and the nineteenth-century novel, modern drama and prose, and poetry anthologies—with quotations, methods and essay craft.

All English Literature revision