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I, Being Born a Woman – Edna St. Vincent Millay Candidates may include the following in their answers: the poem recounts an incident in which the speaker reflects on a fleeting sexual attraction to a man, but it could also be about the speaker’s assertion of independence, self-possession, and control over her own desires the title foregrounds the speaker’s gender and identity, highlighting the societal expectations of women and the tension between desire and autonomy the use of lexical choice and imagery of attraction and restraint (‘I love you…yet I shall not’) indicates the speaker’s awareness of passion and her conscious refusal to surrender to it the use of the first-person narrative voice creates immediacy and intimacy, allowing insight into the speaker’s reasoning and emotions repetition and parallelism highlight the tension between desire and self-control, e.g. ‘I love you…yet I shall not’ enjambment and caesura emphasise the reflective and measured tone of th...

Hamlet EITHER 5 ‘In Hamlet, words often fail to express the truth, and silence becomes more revealing.’ In the light of this statement, explore the ways in which Shakespeare presents silence and unspoken meaning in the play. In your answer, you must consider relevant contextual factors. (Total for Question 5 = 25 marks) Hamlet Candidates may refer to the following in their answers: • the significance of silence and unspoken meaning in shaping character relationships and dramatic tension, and the role of performance and staging in making silence expressive, in response to the terms of the task • specific scenes or moments such as Hamlet’s soliloquies; the Ghost’s initial silent appearance; Gertrude’s silence in response to Hamlet’s accusations in the closet scene; Ophelia’s silence and withdrawal before her madness; Claudius’ silent prayer; and the final scene where action replaces speech • ways in which silence is developed through technical means, e.g. pauses, interruptions, broke...