The Farmer's Bride — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
The Farmer's Bride
The poems
What you need to know
The Farmer's Bride by Charlotte Mew: what it is about, its context, and how Mew uses language, form and structure.
Key quotations and how to analyse them, and the poems in the cluster it compares well with, with similarities and differences.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Three Summers since I chose a maid', 'Too young maybe', 'When us was wed she turned afraid', 'More like a little frightened fay', 'We caught her, fetched her home at last', 'And turned the key upon her, fast', 'Shy as a leveret, swift as he', ''Not near, not near!' her eyes beseech', 'The brown of her'.
Form: a dramatic monologue in the farmer's dialect, irregular stanzas, and the rhythm that breaks down in the last lines.
Context: rural marriage and a wife's lack of choice in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Comparisons with Porphyria's Lover, Neutral Tones and Singh Song!
