‘We Caught Her, Fetched Her Home at Last/and Turned the Key Upon Her, Fast’ (Charlotte Mew, ‘the Farmer’s Bride’). Explore Some of the Ways in Which Early-Twentieth Century Poetry Reflects Upon and Questions Love and/or the Family Unit.

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‘We caught her, fetched her home at last/And turned the key upon her, fast’ (Charlotte Mew, ‘The Farmer’s Bride’). Explore some of the ways in which early-twentieth century poetry reflects upon and questions love and/or the family unit. In this essay I will use ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ and ‘The Quiet House’ by Charlotte Mew taken from the collection ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ (1921) to respond to the essay question. In ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ I will discuss the form, structure and language of the poem demonstrating that Mew plays with form and structure to create tensions and to emphasise the characters emotions. I am going to argue that Mew uses imagery to show both the farmer’s attitude toward his wife and as a social commentary on the subordination of married women during the period Mew is writing. However I will contrast this argument to argue that Mew is able to simultaneously convey to the reader sympathy for both the farmer and the farmer’s wife through effective use of descriptive language and imagery. In my analysis of ‘The Quiet House’ I will identify similarities between both poems noting again Mew’s characteristic style of playing with form, structure and language. I will interrogate the poetic devices Mew uses to reveal the psychological state of mind of the speaker. I will discuss the textual absences in the poem showing their importance and supporting my evidence using analysis from Jane Dowson and Alice Entwistle. I will argue that Mew uses simplistic language to disguise traumatic events, using instead obscure colour symbols and ellipsis to reveal how disturbed the speaker is. ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ is written in the form of the dramatic monologue with a farmer expressing grief and disappointment in his loveless marriage. The rhyming scheme is unpredictable with different length stanzas throughout. Yet there is a strong use of rhyming within the poem and a

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