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10 questions available at this level
by Charlotte Mew
Charlotte Mew (1869–1928) was a modernist poet who experienced personal tragedy, including the institutionalisation of two siblings and years of financial hardship. The poem first appeared in the magazine The Nation in 1912 and gave its title to her first collection, The Farmer's Bride (Poetry Bookshop, 1916).
The poem is a dramatic monologue spoken by a farmer whose young bride is terrified of him and of physical intimacy. It explores themes of trapped marriage, female oppression, and male desire in a rural setting where women had very little agency.
The bride is presented as a creature of nature, compared to animals and to a fairy, while the farmer's language reveals a troubling mix of tenderness and possessiveness. The poem can be read as a critique of Victorian and Edwardian marriage, where women were essentially property and had no legal right to refuse their husbands.
Mew's own experience as a queer woman in a repressive society likely informed her sympathy for the trapped bride and her understanding of desire that cannot be fulfilled.
“Three Summers since I chose a maid”
The opening puts the farmer in charge: "I chose". "Maid" means both a young, unmarried woman and a servant, and the next line admits she was "Too young maybe". From the first line, the marriage is something done to her.
“When us was wed she turned afraid / Of love and me and all things human”
Her fear widens through the repeated "and" from love, to her husband, to everything human. The farmer names himself in the list but never asks whether he is the cause, and "When us was wed" sets his rural dialect.
“Like the shut of a winter's day / Her smile went out”
A sudden, cold image: her smile goes out as a short winter day closes. "Shut" is abrupt and final, and winter suggests coldness and barrenness.
“'twasn't a woman – / More like a little frightened fay”
He decides she is hardly a woman ("'twasn't": it was not) but a "fay", a fairy. The image idealises her and makes her less than human at once: if she is not a woman, her fear need not be understood.
“We chased her, flying like a hare / Before our lanterns”
The language of the hunt: she flees "like a hare" and the farmer and his neighbours chase her by lantern light. The community helps to bring her back, and no one asks why she ran.
“And turned the key upon her, fast”
He locks her in. "Fast" means both quickly and securely: the marriage is now a prison, and the farmer tells it as a matter of course.
“She does the work about the house / As well as most, but like a mouse”
She has become a worker in the house and nothing more. The mouse simile makes her small and frightened, and the grudging "As well as most" shows how he values her.
“What's Christmas-time without there be / Some other in the house than we!”
He longs for "Some other in the house", a child. Christmas, a festival of family, sharpens his sense of the empty marriage, and the exclamation shows his frustration rising.
“'Tis but a stair / Betwixt us”
She sleeps alone in the attic, and only a stair separates them. The line measures how close she is, and the ending leaves it uncertain whether he will cross it.
“The brown of her – her eyes, her hair, her hair!”
His gaze breaks her into parts, her eyes and her hair, and the repetition shows obsession. The poem ends on this exclamation, his desire overwhelming the control of the earlier stanzas.
[the whole poem: the farmer is the only speaker]
The farmer is the only speaker, so we have only his account. The bride is given no words of her own: even "Not near, not near!" is what her eyes say, put into words by him. The form enacts the power imbalance the poem explores.
“flying like a hare … like a mouse … Shy as a leveret”
The bride is compared to a hare, a mouse and a leveret: small, wild, hunted creatures. The comparisons are tender, but they make her prey, something to be caught and kept rather than a person.
“When us was wed”
"When us was wed", "her be", "runned", "'twasn't", "without there be": the rural dialect gives the farmer an ordinary, credible voice, which makes the cruelty he takes for granted harder to dismiss.
“We caught her, fetched her home at last”
"Chose", "caught", "fetched", "turned the key": the verbs of the marriage are all his. She is acted upon and never acts, except to run.
“her eyes, her hair, her hair!”
The repeated "her hair" fixes his gaze on her body. The poem ends on his exclamation: the desire he has held back is the last thing we hear.
“Like the shut of a winter's day”
Her smile goes out as suddenly as a winter afternoon ends. "Shut" is abrupt and final, and winter brings cold and darkness.
“The short days shorten and the oaks are brown”
The coming winter, the "low grey sky" and the single falling leaf mirror the farmer's loneliness and frustration as time passes without change.
“Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down”
Full stops and exclamations break the line into pieces as his composure breaks. The storytelling voice of the opening is gone.
Maura Dooley
Both explore rural settings, but while Dooley's poem finds beauty in distance and communication, Mew's poem shows entrapment and the failure of connection within close proximity.
Cecil Day-Lewis
Both involve one person watching another. Day-Lewis watches with love as his son leaves; the farmer watches with obsessive desire as his bride is trapped.
Seamus Heaney
Both use rural farming settings and dialect to establish voice. Heaney's speaker admires his father's skill; Mew's farmer reveals troubling possessiveness through his dialect.