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A-level
ENGLISH LITERATURE B
Paper 2A Texts and genres: Elements of crime writing
Wednesday 5 June 2024 Morning Time allowed: 3 hours
Materials
For this paper you must have:
• an AQA 12-page answer book
• a copy of the set text(s) you have studied for Section B and Section C. These texts must not be
annotated and must not contain additional notes or materials.
Instructions
• Use black ink or black ball-point pen.
• Write the information required on the front of your answer book. The Paper Reference is 7717/2A.
• You must answer the question in Section A, one question from Section B and one question from
Section C. Over Section B and Section C you must write about three texts: one poetry text, one
post-2000 prose text and one further text.
• Do all rough work in your answer book. Cross through any work you do not want to be marked.
Information
• The marks for questions are shown in brackets.
• The maximum mark for this paper is 75.
• You will be marked on your ability to:
– use good English
– organise information clearly
– use specialist vocabulary where appropriate.
• In your response you need to:
– analyse carefully the writers’ methods
– explore the contexts of the texts you are writing about
– explore connections across the texts you have studied
– explore different interpretations of your texts.
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Section A
Answer the question in this section.
0 1 Explore the significance of elements of crime writing in this extract.
Remember to include in your answer relevant detailed analysis of the ways the author
has shaped meanings.
[25 marks]
This extract is from a short story, The Watercress Girl, by A.E. Coppard, published in
1925. It is near the beginning of the story. Mary McDowall is on trial in court and, as the
case proceeds, she reflects back on the events that led to her crime. Frank Oppidan was
her lover.
While the brutal story was being recounted, the prisoner had stood with closed eyes,
leaning her hands upon the rail of the dock; stood and dreamed of what she had not
revealed:
Of her father Fergus McDowall; his child she was, although he had never married.
That much she knew, but who her mother had been he never told her, and it did not seem
to matter; she guessed rather than knew that at her birth she had died, or soon
afterwards, and the man had fostered her. He and she had always been together, alone,
ever since she could remember, always together, always happy, he was so kind; and so
splendid in the great boots that drew up to his thighs when he worked in the watercress
beds, cutting bunches deftly, or cleaning the weeds from the water. And there were her
beehives, her flock of hens, the young pigs, and a calf that knelt and rubbed its neck on
the rich mead with a lavishing movement just as the ducks did when the grass was dewy.
Save for a wildness of mood that sometimes flashed through her, Mary was content, and
loved the life that she could not know was lonely with her father beside the watercress
streams. He was uncommunicative, like Mary, but as he worked he hummed to himself
or whistled the soft tunes that at night he played on the clarinet. Tall and strong, a
handsome man. Sometimes he would put his arms around her and say, ‘Well, my dear.’
And she would kiss him. She had vowed to herself that she would never leave him, but
then – Frank had come. In this mortal conflict we seek not only that pleasure may not
divide us from duty, but that duty may not detach us from life. He was not the first man or
youth she could or would have loved, but he was the one who had wooed her; first-love’s
enlightening delight, in the long summer eves, in those enticing fields! How easily she
was won! All his offers of marriage she had put off with the answer: ‘No, it would never
do for me,’ or ‘I shall never marry’, but then, if he angrily swore or accused her of not
loving him enough, her fire and freedom would awe him almost as much as it enchanted.
And she might have married Frank if she could only have told him of her dubious origin,
but whether from some vagrant modesty, loyalty to her father, or some reason whatever,
she could not bring herself to do that. Often these steady refusals enraged her lover, and
after such occasions he would not seek her again for weeks, but in the end he always
returned, although his absences grew longer as their friendship lengthened. Ah, when
the way to your lover is long, there’s but a short cut to the end. Came a time when he did
not return at all and then, soon, Mary found she was going to have a child. ‘Oh, I
wondered where you were, Frank, and why you were there, wherever it was, instead of
where I could find you.’ But the fact was portentous enough to depose her grief at his
fickleness, and after a while she took no further care or thought for Oppidan, for she
feared that like her own mother she would die of her child. Soon these fears left her and
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she rejoiced. Certainly she need not scruple to tell him of her own origin now, he could
never reproach her now. Had he come once more, had he come then, she would have
married him. But although he might have been hers for the lifting of a finger, as they say,
her pride kept her from calling him into the trouble, and she did not call him and he never
sought her again. When her father realized her condition he merely said ‘Frank?’ and
she nodded.
The child was early born, and she was not prepared; it came and died. Her father took
it and buried it in the garden. It was a boy, dead. No one else knew, not even Frank, but
when she was recovered her pride wavered and she wrote a loving letter to him, still
keeping her secret. Not until she had written three times did she hear from him, and then
he only answered that he should not see her any more. He did not tell her why, but she
knew. He was going to marry Elizabeth Plantney, whose parents had died and left her
£500. To Mary’s mind that presented itself as a treachery to their child, the tiny body
buried under a beehive in the garden. That Frank was unaware made no difference to
the girl’s fierce mood; it was treachery. Maternal anger stormed in her breast, it could
only be allayed by an injury, a deep admonishing injury to that treacherous man. In her
sleepless nights, the little crumpled corpse seemed to plead for this much, and her own
heart clamoured, just as those bees murmured against him day by day.
So then she got some vitriol. Rushing past her old lover on the night of the crime she
turned upon him with the lifted jar, but the sudden confrontation dazed and tormented
her; in momentary hesitation she had dashed the acid, not into his faithless eyes, but at
the prim creature linked to his arm. Walking away, she heard the crying of the wounded
girl. After a while she had turned back to the town and given herself up to the police.
To her mind, as she stood leaning against the dock rail, it was all huddled and
contorted, but that was her story set in its order. The trial went droning on beside her
remembered grief like a dull stream neighbouring a clear one, two parallel streams that
would meet in the end, were meeting now, surely, as the judge began to speak. And at
the crisis, as if in exculpation, she suffered a whisper to escape her lips, though none
heard it.
‘ ’Twas him made me a parent, but he was never a man himself. He took advantage; it
was mean, I love Christianity.’ She heard the judge deliver her sentence: for six calendar
months she was to be locked in a gaol. ‘O Christ!’ she breathed, for it was the lovely
spring; lilac, laburnum, and father wading the brooks in those boots drawn up to his
thighs to rake the dark sprigs and comb out the green scum.
Turn over for Section B
Turn over ►
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Over Section B and Section C, you must write about three texts from the following list:
Selected Poems: Crabbe, Browning and Wilde (pre-1900 poetry)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (pre-1900 poetry)
Atonement (post-2000 prose)
When Will There Be Good News? (post-2000 prose)
Oliver Twist
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Brighton Rock
Hamlet
Section B
Answer one question in this section.
Either
0 2 Selected Poems – George Crabbe, Robert Browning and Oscar Wilde
‘In these poems love is the primary motive for murder.’
To what extent do you agree with this view?
Remember to include in your answer relevant detailed exploration of the poets’ authorial
methods.
You should refer to the work of at least two authors in your answer.
[25 marks]
or
0 3 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
‘The Mariner’s mental suffering as a result of his crime causes him more agony than his
physical suffering.’
To what extent do you agree with this view?
Remember to include in your answer relevant detailed exploration of Coleridge’s authorial
methods.
[25 marks]
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