The scholar's table
An original fiction passage set in the nineteenth century.
Dr Wray occupied the bright centre of the table. Dictionaries rose at his elbows, and the lamp shone upon his hands; Elinor was allotted the narrow end, where she copied his finished pages. "Copy; do not improve," he told her whenever her pencil paused. She lowered her eyes and continued writing.
That evening, a damaged word in the traveller's journal defeated him. Dr Wray tried three meanings, crossing out each one more fiercely than the last. Elinor opened an earlier page. "The same phrase occurs here," she said. "The letters are clear in this passage." He began to call it a coincidence, but she placed the two sentences side by side. They faced one another like witnesses. Dr Wray's objection remained unfinished.
After reading both passages again, he moved the lamp to the middle of the table and pushed the largest dictionary towards Elinor. On the title page of his translation, he struck through the words 'assisted by Elinor Wray'. In their place, he wrote 'translated by Dr Wray and Elinor Wray'. "We had better reconsider the first chapter," he said.
Analyse how the writer uses language and structure to show Dr Wray and Elinor's changing relationship. Support your answer with references to the passage.
456 exam-style questions on Edexcel GCSE English Language 1.3 Content: prose fiction study requirements, covering 1.3.1 Read challenging prose fiction for the unseen 19th-century extract. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.