OCR A-level English Literature

How Dracula is examined. The Gothic topic is Question 4. 4(a) is the Dracula question: a critical statement about Gothic writing, then “Consider how far you agree… by comparing Dracula with at least one other text prescribed for this topic” [30 marks]. 4(b) is the Bloody Chamber question, in which Dracula may be the comparison text. 4(c) is open but must include Dracula and/or Carter. Closed book. On 4(a), AO3 (context) carries 50% of the marks, AO4 (connections) 25%, AO1 and AO5 (interpretations) 12.5% each.

Question papers: Physics & Maths Tutor, e.g. June 2023 QP (other years follow the same pattern; November 2020 and 2021 use “November” in place of “June”). Reports from 2021 onwards: OCR assessment page. Source details. Source details.

Browse the OCR H472 question records. Exact question excerpts, shortened prompts and report-based summaries are labelled separately. Open the original paper for the complete instruction, extract and rubric.

Read each year’s questions before its feedback. The wording labels distinguish recorded excerpts from summaries that still need checking against the paper. General-paper and unseen-passage comments are identified separately; a report may not discuss every question listed.

Report: report (PMT extract), Q4(b) p. 10 (PDF p. 2); general p. 9. Source details.

Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.

What the examiners reported

• The “female victims” question (4(b)) was the most popular comparative essay; Dracula, Frankenstein and Dorian Gray were the usual comparators. For answers using Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, OCR expected discussion of at least three individual stories from the collection. Most candidates met that expectation.

• Some answers became general feminist essays, “inclined to lose sight of the Gothic context” (p. 10).

• Many answers were too long. Select material and develop an argument rather than piling material up. Weaker scripts used context as a substitute for engaging with the literature.

Report: report, pp. 4, 8–9. Source details.

Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.

What the examiners reported

• The obvious was missed: examiners were surprised by essays on the “fascination with death” that never mentioned that the Count is undead (p. 8).

• Outsider question (4(c), p. 9): many read the Count as an outside threat to Empire (“reverse colonisation”), a remote medieval aristocrat menacing a complacent or fearful West. Weak answers simply asserted that certain characters (usually women) are outsiders and then unloaded prepared material about them.

• The best answers put literary matters first. Some excellent ones showed that the novel’s method of letters and journals “tends to marginalise everyone, and make nearly every character vulnerable” (p. 9).

• Frankenstein’s Creature was a useful comparison; McCarthy’s Outer Dark helped candidates focus on the Gothic imagination.

• For Question 3, the unseen Carmilla passage, the report praises accurate use of Radcliffe’s distinction between anticipatory terror and overwhelming horror. Stronger answers applied the distinction to the passage; weaker ones merely named it. Read the explanation and Dracula examples, then return to the passage’s wording and sequence (report p. 8). The report also values attention to the Gothic’s entertainment effects.

• General (p. 4): shape the argument to the question rather than wrenching the question to fit prepared material. Stop when the argument is complete. Concentrate on two central texts, using others only briefly.

Report: report (xtrapapers mirror). Source details.

Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.

What the examiners reported

• Context for Dracula “threatened at times to overwhelm answers”, and was sometimes of little value.

Report: report, p. 5. Source details.

Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.

What the examiners reported

• Very few chose 4(a) on religion. Weaker answers showed limited knowledge of religious context; the best had an excellent grasp of Victorian Christianity, including the importance of the Oxford Movement.

• On 4(c) (extreme feelings), weaker work packed in material without care for relevance or structure; better answers were usually shorter and more controlled. Dracula and The Bloody Chamber remained the favourite combination.

Report: report, p. 10. Source details.

Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.

What the examiners reported

• Sex and gender dominated, with Lucy read as a transgressive woman punished for her sins – often reduced to Stoker punishing Lucy for trying to break free.

• Examiners felt “Dracula was often reduced to three scenes”: Harker and the vampire women, the women themselves, and Lucy’s staking. Only stronger answers ranged more widely.

• Writers’ biographies, especially their relationships, were used as context in weaker answers, sometimes reductively.

• Unseen extract: set-text assumptions got in the way – some decided that three pale figures in the passage must be vampires.

Report: report, pp. 4, 8–9. Source details.

Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.

What the examiners reported

• Ancient myth (4(a), pp. 8–9): few chose it. The best answers asked what the vampire myth means once it is transplanted into late-Victorian England – the effect of moving the myth, not just the myth. Strong comparisons: Beloved (African folk myth meeting the history of slavery) and Frankenstein (Prometheus).

• Main weakness: some candidates were “substituting ‘ancient myth’ with traditional attitudes relating to gender roles” (p. 8), a sign of over-reliance on prepared gender material.

• Gender roles (4(b), p. 9): candidates usually set Carter’s rewarded transgression against Dracula’s punished transgression. Biographical material on Stoker and Carter was sometimes poorly informed and led to reductive judgements.

• Overview (p. 4): stronger candidates were prepared but flexible; weaker ones misread passages or questions so as to use a prepared theme. Candidates were well prepared on social issues but less so on religion, the supernatural and the Gothic imagination; the very best answers focused on the genre’s power to unsettle.

Report: report, pp. 9–10. Source details.

Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.

What the examiners reported

• 4(a), risk (p. 9): the least popular option. Answers concentrated on Harker’s early experiences as the Count’s guest, his fearful exploration of the castle and his helplessness with the three vampire women.

• Films (p. 9): film versions are useful for showing that entertainment has always been central to the genre, but candidates must distinguish the novels from the films; the novels are the primary texts.

• Context (p. 9): apt links to other texts (Jekyll and Hyde, Dorian Gray) worked better than general material about successive waves of the Gothic or wrong period labels.

• 4(b), trapped (p. 10): Dracula was the most popular comparator; Harker was a favourite “trapped” figure, often read as feminised. Essays on women trapped in traditional roles engaged less imaginatively with the Gothic.

• 4(c), violence (p. 10): few acknowledged that violence in the Gothic is partly there to entertain. Lucy’s staking was the favourite scene; examiners were pleased when candidates used overlooked characters such as Renfield. The topic is one where candidates often end up “hyper-focused on contexts at the expense of the literary qualities of texts”.

Report: report, pp. 7, 10–11. Source details.

Questions in this series. The recorded wording below is labelled as an excerpt or a summary; use the original paper for the complete instruction and any supplied passage.

What the examiners reported

• Biography (p. 7): the most intrusive context is often speculative biography; the example given is speculation about Stoker’s sexuality. Such material is “better avoided or at the least very carefully disciplined”.

• 4(a), impending disaster (p. 10): for many, the disaster lay outside the text – fear of the foreigner, reverse colonisation, the New Woman – rather than within the narrative, which limited the literary interest.

• 4(b), fantasy and truth (p. 11): many ignored “fantasy” and went straight to “human nature” as social context, then to familiar gender material (often the vampire women and the vampiric Lucy).

• 4(c), entertainment (p. 11): most argued that the Gothic carries serious social messages; some simply rejected the premise. Dracula was a useful sensational contrast to Beloved.

• June 2017, Q4(b) – mark scheme, p. 20 (PDF p. 18). Expects most candidates to agree in part and test exceptions; examples are all from Carter and other texts. Nothing specific on Dracula. Source details.

• June 2018, Q4(c) – mark scheme, p. 19. The Count as outsider (foreign pedigree, mysterious credentials, a threat to the “hearty English” heroes); Harker’s first meeting, where charm fails to hide sinister purpose; the Count as ambivalent anti-hero. Source details.

• June 2019, Q4(a) – mark scheme. Answers may challenge the statement (for example, arguing that heroes or women are more fascinating than villains) provided they still give the villains enough attention: disagreeing is allowed, avoiding the question is not. Source details.

• June 2023, Q4(a) – mark scheme, p. 19 (PDF p. 21). Indicative content: Transylvania as the ancient myth and late-Victorian England as the recent setting; only a working definition of “myth” is needed; Stoker’s years of research into European folklore and the name of Vlad the Impaler; the opening chapters as a step back into an older world; the myth threatening a modern, scientific England; faith and even magic needed against it; the thriller appeal of ordinary life threatened by something ancient. Source details.

• Level 6 (26–30 marks), p. 11 of the 2023 scheme: consistently developed understanding of the contexts of writing and reception; excellent comparative analysis; a well-structured, coherent argument consistently developed; quotations analysed and blended into the discussion; judgement informed by different interpretations.

Open the candidate-answer catalogue for links, reported marks, page references and what to learn from each response.

• 2023 report, Exemplar 1, p. 9: one handwritten paragraph from a 4(a) answer. No mark given. OCR prints it because it pins down the key term straight away – “ancient myth” is Vlad for the Count, Prometheus for Victor – and sets up a comparison by parallel. Caveat: the paragraph calls the Count a descendant of Vlad, which is the candidate’s claim and is debatable. Use it for its method, not its facts.

• No further Dracula candidate response has been located in the sources reviewed for this guide. This does not establish that none is available. Check the board’s current public and teacher-only resources.

Context matters more on OCR 4(a) than anywhere else – half the marks – yet OCR’s examiners complain about it more than any other board. Their consistent message is that literary context comes first: other Gothic texts, the genre’s conventions, the terror/horror distinction, folklore and the vampire tradition. Social history (empire, the New Woman, reverse colonisation) earns credit when it explains something in the text, and loses it when the “disaster” or the “outsider” is located in the 1890s rather than in the novel. They are especially wary of speculative biography, loose period labels and generic material about waves of the Gothic. Context of reception counts too, including film, provided the novel stays the primary text.

Open the board’s assessment-materials library. The source register records individual reports, mark schemes and access notes. Sources for studying and teaching Dracula. Source details.

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