19th century novels for GCSE English....

I think Jekyll and Hyde, War of the Worlds and Christmas Carol are pretty simple by the standards of adult novels. I'd say they are an appropriate level to set for the lower bar of an Eng Lit GCSE - whilst upper set teachers can have a crack at Great Expectations and Austen to warm the potential A Level students up.

I was surprised to find Heart of Darkness on niminy's list - but of course it does just squeaks under the bar of C19th. I think it would be a great read for mid teens. Dracula is a cracking read for teens, because although full of dodgy sexual content.

I can't see many boys getting enthused by Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. Great Expectations is fine though and one of the more accessible of Dickens' works.

I wasn't being totally serious.

(I'd learn to spell fistbump first, of course.)

Fistbumb with MI.

I don't like Dickens much.

If I were choosing I'd definitely do Sense and Sensibility if I had to do Austen. And it would have absolutely nothing to do with Alan Rickman in the film, ohno.

And Aurora Floyd. Any novel where the heroine's first question is about whether her bet on a horse-race has succeeded gets my vote.

I would die of boredom having to read A Christmas Carol, personally.

I like Niminy's list. But then I think everyone should be tied down and forced to read 19th century novels till their eyes drop out, which is possibly a little illiberal of me. I might make exceptions for Dickens, whom I've never quite seen the point of.

This is making me want to do GCSE English again.

Jeanne -absolutely. I use extracts from Dracula with Y8 as part of a Gothic fiction scheme and, as you say, it goes down well. There is plenty to explore on all sorts of levels.
I would also love to do The Woman in White as a GCSE text.

That's a much more fun list.

And I don't know, cos I'm not a teacher, but I could see Stoker working really well on lots of levels. It can be quite simple, but there's enough there that even if you are struggling, I'd think you'd not be restricted to making really simple comments by your slow/poor reading. I think you would be with Great Expectations, maybe?

Oh yes Mill on the Floss.

And Lady Audley's Secret.

Niminy - yes indeed. The exam boards have played it safe with a set of boring choices. I would also have included Hardy, Stoker, Robert Louis Stevenson and Wilkie Collins on the list. Also Elizabeth Gaskell - Mary Barton could work as might The Mill on the Floss (rather than Silas Marner). There are so many more interesting 19th century novels out there than the ones the exam boards went for.

steamingnit yes, I agree with you about the need for a radical overhaul, and with MissMillament about the awful, imagination and curiosity-destroying Gradgrindyness of the curriculum as it's now conceived.

Just to amuse myself, I thought of a list of C19th novels I would set -- because I think the list is pretty dull actually:

Wuthering Heights (there's a book for teenagers if ever there was one)
Tess of the Durbervilles
Kidnapped and/or Treasure Island
The Nether World (grim, grim, grim tale of poverty in the East End)
Hard Times
Dracula
The Turn of the Screw
Mary Barton
The Woman in White
Heart of Darkness
The Island of Dr Moreau/The Time Machine

IMO a far better list than the unimaginative, unforgiving list dreamed up by the exam boards.

A Christmas Carol is not particularly difficult, my 10 year old has read it. Plus a lot of the children would know the story already thanks to the muppets!
I would certainly prefer a Christmas Carol to the Lord of the Flies that I had to read many years ago.

That said, I do think the English syllabus at GCSE and A level could do with a radical overhaul - I think the teachers do great work, have no problem with them, but it is all more limited and neither as exciting nor as exacting as I think it could/should be.

niminy I am also an academic (or should I say I teach in a university, as per the other thread ), and yes, it would be great to think that some of the exciting stuff we do is available earlier and sooner. In a lot of situations, though, and especially the context the OP describes, and given the horror on some faces when we start getting queer with the old binaries, I would have to be cautious with recommending it!

Teaching queer theory would be fun. The problem is that due to the Gradgrindian nature of the new GCSE syllabus we do not have time to go off-piste in any way. We now have to teach two novels (or a novel and a play), a Shakespeare play and a collection of poetry for two closed-book exams which will require a very specific and limited set of responses. In addition, we have to prepare pupils for two language exams which will require a different, but equally specific and limited set of skills. We will do this with our managers breathing down our necks to ensure that all pupils reach their 'excellent progress target grades' which are plucked out of thin air by some inexplicable process and then set in stone and used to measure our performance.
In no circumstances will allowances be made for the children being, you know, human. Or that fact that despite the 5B they got in Y6,which resulted in them having an excellent progress grade of A at GCSE, their true level on entering secondary school was actully more like a 4B and the C that they are working very hard for actually represents a good outcome for them and we should be celebrating it and not making them feel like shit because there is no hope in the wide world that they will ever make an A.
As English teachers we do our absolute best to open our pupils' minds to the enjoyment of English literature, but the new syllabus allows us very little freedom to do it.

Yep, I'm with theoriginal.

I get that it could be really fun, but I don't envy teachers trying to teach that. I think it could be pretty hard.

I'm not suggesting 14 year olds should tackle Eve Sedgewick! But you can introduce the ideas, can't you?

I don't know, I'm an academic not a secondary school teacher. But I find it a bit depressing to think that the exciting stuff that goes on in literary studies at degree level doesn't make it in some form into what goes on in schools.

Maybe... but 18 year olds struggle enough with queer theory that I wouldn't want to be the one to explain it to 14 year olds!