You are the artist in Sale. Your visitors have gone and you have to explain to your wife what has happened. Write your thoughts.

Mark scheme

Marking points from the official mark scheme (May/June 2010). The mark or mark type is shown in brackets.

1. You will be at your wits' end. You have had a fruitless time.
2. You have been talking to people who have not had the slightest understanding of your artistic aims and have been finally completely unappreciative of your work.
3. You will no doubt be feeling full of self pity not least because you will now have to explain to your wife just how it was that you were so poor at selling your work and why the state of the family remains desperate.
4. Perhaps you will catch at the straw offered by the man at the end of the story but you know what a straw that is and so will your wife.
5. Something of the above content will ensure adequate reward but for higher reward the man's mixture of desperation and self pity, coupled with his contempt for the philistines who have just left, should come through.