For teachers
Scheme of work
A phased route through the collection and into the comparison, drawn from the classroom sequence for these stories. It moves from the fairy-tale tradition and Carter, through the ten stories and the criticism, to choosing a post-2000 novel and planning the comparative essay. Reading and outcomes are indicative; adjust the pace and depth to your cohort.
The early phases teach the collection in Carter’s order and build the habits the NEA rewards: annotation, method pushed to effect, and short quotations tagged for later use. The later phases turn that study into an approved pairing, a detailed plan and a draft. Context (AO3) and interpretation (AO5) are threaded from the start rather than saved for the end.
| Phase | Focus | Reading | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Into the fairy tale and Carter | Fairy-tale conventions and the oral tradition; how Grimm and Andersen softened and moralised the tales; Carter’s life, second-wave feminism, the Gothic and the grotesque; her idea of taking the ‘latent content’ of the tales and its violence, and her demythologising project. | The contents page; source tales (Perrault, Grimm); short critical framing (Helen Simpson on new stories rather than retellings). | Context notes on Carter, feminism and the Gothic; a shared vocabulary and annotation habit for reading a Carter story. |
| 2. The title story | Bluebeard reworked; the opening and the making of danger; the power imbalance and the male gaze; sadism, marriage as ritual, the mirror; the maternal rescue and the inverted ending; narration and voice (‘to narrate is to exercise power’). | The Bloody Chamber; Perrault’s Bluebeard for comparison. | An annotated story; a first argued statement and a paragraph applying AO1, AO2, AO3 and AO5. |
| 3. The Beast pair | Beauty and the Beast reworked from the inside (Villeneuve, Beaumont, Cocteau); obligation and autonomy in The Courtship of Mr Lyon; the inversion and shared transformation in The Tiger’s Bride; the gaze, the object and the body. | The Courtship of Mr Lyon and The Tiger’s Bride. | A first comparison within the collection: two treatments of one source held side by side. |
| 4. Puss, the Erl-King and the Snow Child | The bawdy comic interlude of Puss-in-Boots and its change of register; entrapment, the forest and the seductive predator in The Erl-King; desire, the father and the fatal object in the fragmentary Snow Child. | Puss-in-Boots, The Erl-King, The Snow Child. | Tracked motifs across stories (the gaze, the cage, the object, the trap) and a feel for Carter’s range of tone and form. |
| 5. The wolf trilogy and the vampire | Little Red Riding Hood reworked across The Werewolf and The Company of Wolves; the beast within and consent; the mirror and becoming in Wolf-Alice; Sleeping Beauty as vampire and the undoing of the predator in The Lady of the House of Love. | The Werewolf, The Company of Wolves, Wolf-Alice, The Lady of the House of Love. | A tracked set of methods and motifs across several stories, ready for thematic re-reading. |
| 6. Contexts and critical readings | Second-wave feminism and The Sadeian Woman; the Gothic and fairy-tale traditions; critical lenses (feminist, Marxist, psychoanalytic) and how to apply rather than name them; reading the critics for AO5. | Re-reading across the collection by theme; short critical extracts (for example Simpson, Makinen, Duncker, Arikan, Baldwin), each named. | Context notes for AO3 and interpretation notes for AO5, with short quotations recorded and sourced. |
| 7. Choosing the post-2000 text | The three partner novels and the comparative ground each offers; framing a specific comparative focus; selecting and nominating the pairing to WJEC for approval. | The chosen post-2000 novel (Exit West, Brick Lane or The Kite Runner). | An approved pairing and a working two-part title with a clear focus. |
| 8. Comparative planning and drafting | The plan grid (a comparative point, evidence from both texts, references and short quotations); integrating AO3 and AO5 into every point; the summer plan, September feedback and drafting cycle; introduction, stepping-stone paragraphs and a synthesising conclusion. | Targeted re-reading of both texts against the plan. | A detailed comparative plan handed in for feedback, then a first full draft. |
The habit that carries the unit
The highest-leverage routine is the running quotation bank, kept open from Phase 2: short quotations from across the stories, each tagged with a method and a contextual or critical angle that can actually be developed. Students who reach Phase 8 with a full bank plan quickly; those without it spend the planning weeks re-reading. Naming a device is labelling, not analysis: push every method to its effect.
Keep context and comparison inside every point
Because AO3 is a fifth of the marks and AO4 is where a comparison lives or dies, neither can be a paragraph of its own. From Phase 6 onwards, insist that planning is comparative from the first line of each point, and that context changes how a passage is read rather than sitting beside it.
Adjust to your cohort and confirm the specification
This is a framework, not a fixed timetable: compress or extend phases to suit your group, timetable and the novels chosen. Confirm timing and any specification detail against the current published specification before you build your calendar.