Jamie's+Analysis

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 Charlotte Mew’s shows objection to married life in her poem, // The Farmer’s Bride //, through symbolism and her unique narrative voice. Mew uses the poem, The Farmer’s Bride to depict her views and reasons for living single. The story told by the poem is one of a free spirited young girl who is forced to marry before she is ready to settle down into a serious, long term relationship. In this poem, marriage restricts the young girl’s freedom and takes away her sense of power. She is forced to find her own source of freedom and slowly retreats from humanity into the safety of her mind. =====

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//The Farmer’s Bride//, a story of a spoiled marriage, is told through the restrictive view of the husband’s eyes. The poem’s opinion is impacted by the views and thoughts of the husband and we, as readers, see none of the wife’s thoughts or feelings. The poem reflects the author’s opinion about marriage, and provides justifications of why she herself would never marry. Many women see too late that marital vows can impose cruel restrictions on their lives and rob them of their liberty. This is shown in the first stanza of the poem. The woman is in love with the man at a young age, and they rush into the marriage. The husband even says, “To young maybe – but more’s to do/ At harvest time than bide and woo (lines 2-3).” After young love wears off and three years pass, the wife sees that she has made a mistake. She has given up her independence as a single woman and is now restricted by her husband. There is no escaping this horrible mistake she has made and the lights go out in her world as illustrated in, “ Like the shut of a winter's day./ Her smile went out, and 'twasn't a woman--/More like a little, frightened fay (lines 6-8).” Charlotte has the woman act out against her husband’s wants and control by running away as conveyed in, =====

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Mew uses the color brown as a symbol repeatedly throughout the poem. In The Farmer’s Bride, brown represents the young bride’s descent from the vivid vibrancies of youth and innocence into the humiliating spiraling loss of her humanity. She descends into a brown shadow of herself, as her primal instincts of fight or flight kick in to protect her from the oppression of her loveless marriage. “Lying awake with her wide brown stare, (line 13)” is the first instance we see the use of brown as symbolism in this poem. Mew is presenting this image to show us that the wife has begun to drift away from human reality and has withdrawn into herself. =====

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In “More like a little frightened fay/ One night, in the Fall, she runned away, (lines 8-9)” Mew shows the wife reaching out to the safety of the wilderness, running away to escape the wretchedness of her forced bondage to her husband. Mew even compares her running to that of a hare in a metaphor, “We chased her, flying like a hare (line 15)” providing more evidence that she is slowly turning wild. When her husband finds her, “We caught her, fetched her home at last/ and turned the key upon her fast. (lines 18-19)” Mew implies he must lock her up to keep her from running away again. She has become wild and longs to return to the safety beyond her caged imprisonment. =====

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The author compares the captive bride to a skittish mouse, and other small animals. “She does the work about the house/ as well as most, but like a mouse:/ Happy enough to chat and play with birds and rabbits such as they,/ So long as men-folk stay away. (lines 20-24)” The young woman becomes increasingly withdrawn, speaking only to animals. Her eyes again are referenced, “So long as men-folk keep away./ ‘Not near, not near!’ her eyes beseech, (lines 24-25)”. The husband observes these changes, “The women say that beasts in stall/ Look round like children at her call, (lines 27-28)” when he notes that she communicates with animals, and ponders that she never speaks to him when he states, “I’ve hardly heard her speak at all. (line 29)” He notices she is becoming more reserved and remote. He refers to her as, “Shy as a leveret, swift as he,/ Straight and slight as a young larch tree,/ Sweet as the first wild violets, she. (lines 30-32)” She is no longer the girl he once loved and she no longer wants to be by his side. He finds himself asking, “But what to me? (line 33)” Is she really worth it anymore if she is no longer who I once thought she was? =====

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 Time passes, Christmas arrives, and the wife has continued to grow more inaccessible. The husband, in the fifth stanza, even ceased to give details about his wife and begins instead to describe the scenery outside. “The short days shorten and the oaks are brown,/ The blue smoke rises to the low grey sky,/ One leaf in the still air falls slowly down,/ A magpie’s spotted feathers lie (lines 34-37)” It seems as if the wife has become gradually more brown until the husband does not recognize her. She has become as brown as the oak tree and blends into her surroundings. His great loneliness can be felt when he ponders, “What’s Christmas-time without there be/ Some other in the house than we! (lines 40-41)” =====

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The wife withdraws even further, “She sleeps up in the attic there/ Alone, poor maid. 'Tis but a stair/ Betwixt us, (lines 42-44)” and begins to sleep in the attic away from her husband. Mew uses "stare" and "stair" to compare the small differences between husband and wife at the beginning of the poem to the vast disparities at the end. At first just the wife’s blank "stare" separates them, but as she drifts further away from reality the husband and wife are divided by a set of "stairs." Now even the husband grows more distant when he refers to her as an, “Alone, poor maid, (line 43)” but he knows there is nothing else he can do for her. To him, she has become inaccessible and aloof. There is dismay in his words, “Oh, my God! - the down, The soft young down of her; the brown, The brown of her - her eyes, her hair, her hair!” This is yet another example of Mew playing on words with "hare" and "hair." In the beginning the husband compares the wife metaphorically to a hare, because of the swiftness of her movements, but by the end all he can notice about her is her brown hair. He no longer recognizes the vibrant maid he married as he describes the inward looking, brown, muted girl who locks herself away from him even though they live in the same house. =====

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Charlotte Mew creates the image of a couple that rushes into marriage, not knowing the commitment they are each making. Through the use of symbolism, metaphors, and repetition of key words, Mew depicts the struggles of a floundering marriage. The young woman loses her freedom and eventually is robbed of her sanity as she withdraws from human society. When her husband turns the key to lock her into their house, he seals the fate of their doomed bond and creates an insurmountable chasm that neither will ever be able to bridge. =====