In the poem “The Farmer’s Bride” by Charlotte Mew, the poet spills out details of a farmer’s relationship with his wife through the former’s perspective. The frustration and angst he experiences at the hands of his wife’s estrangement lead to his amplified lust for her which is now on the verge of breaking its barriers.
Charlotte Mew was a renowned author in the Victorian era who lived a fairly mentally disturbed and alienated life. The 19th century paved a radical way for women writers to delineate and incorporate the then untouched and unexplored realms of a woman’s psyche, particularly the social stigma of lunacy into their works. The inner recesses of a human mind attracted Mew who often wrote about the lives and feelings of women through a male perspective.
The Farmer’s Bride | Structure
The composition lacks a definite stanzaic division with six stanzas of varying numbers of lines. The use of archaic language and the differing line alignments in every stanza represent the farmer’s humble yet uneducated background. There are multiple patterns of end rhyme and various lines in the iambic tetrameter to render it a singsong quality. The entire poem is narration through the lens of the farmer as a dramatic monologue and every line begins with a word and its first letter as capitalised.
The Farmer’s Bride | Summary and Analysis
Mew adopts a male point of view to delve into the institution and confines of marriage where the speaker, a farmer who is also a possessive husband contemplates his married life which still hasn’t been consummated due to his wife’s unwelcoming attitude towards his advances. Throughout the poem, the unnamed wife is compared to various animals to establish her life and destiny on a parallel plain with them. As an object of possession, the farmer considers his wife someone who can be chained or caught up like an animal. The simple and rustic language along with the animal imagery and similes refer to the farmer’s natural environment in his constant engagement with them on his farm. His pent-up desires burn him inside as he voyeurs his sleeping wife and awaits a passionate release.
The Farmer’s Bride | Analysis, Lines 1-9
Three summers since I chose a maid,
Too young maybe—but more’s to do
At harvest-time than bide and woo.
When us was wed she turned afraid
Of love and me and all things human;
Like the shut of a winter’s day
Her smile went out, and ’twadn’t a woman—
More like a little frightened fay.
One night, in the Fall, she runned away.
The farmer begins by recalling the duration of time for which his wife has been a part of his life. His choosing a bride sheds light on the lack of autonomy and agency for a woman in deciding about a crucial aspect of her life. The word “maid” refers to the virginal status of young girls who are usually married off early in the rural setups. It also connotes the purpose of bringing a woman to a man’s house- serving him se*ually and doing the household chores. He ponders over the possibility of her young age and his lack of attention to her as a cause for her distant behaviour towards him but immediately defends himself by stating his engagement in more important tasks i.e. the harvesting of his crops. He then takes the readers to his wife who is afraid of him when newly married.
From a woman’s perspective, it is natural for her to be anxious about sleeping with a man whom she has never known before. The dilemmas and apprehensions surfacing inside her are incomprehensible to a less empathetic man like the farmer who ascribes them to her fright against him. The days following the marriage witness her smile fading away in the simile “like the shut of winter’s day” to imply declining warmth in her demeanour. The metaphorical winters juxtapose the literal summers in the poem to highlight the gradual diminishing of hopes of a se*ual union.
The caesura in line 7 gives the farmer a moment to collect his thoughts and compare his wife to a “fay” which is a fairy figure to convey her otherworldliness (simile). Further, her panic compels her to take strong measures for herself and she runs away.
The rhyme scheme for this stanza is abbacdccc.
The Farmer’s Bride | Analysis, Lines 10-19
“Out ’mong the sheep, her be,” they said,
’Should properly have been abed;
But sure enough she wadn’t there
Lying awake with her wide brown stare.
So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down
We chased her, flying like a hare
Before out lanterns. To Church-Town
All in a shiver and a scare
We caught her, fetched her home at last
And turned the key upon her, fast.
The fellow farmers alarm the speaker about his wife hiding among the sheep integrating the dialogic form into the verse format. Sheep are a symbol of innocence and the wife’s shelter among them allows her a similar state of innocence and purity. The farmers need to check up on her signals to their separate sleeping arrangements contrasting to their marital status. His assurance of her presence in the room hints at his habitual checking upon her and the expected stare he receives as a reaction from her.
Her absence baffles him and he searches for her along with other men. The verbs “chase,” “caught” and “fetch” again suggest her potential of an animal-like stature- timid and requiring to be set up in a cage. They run fast like a hare (simile) to indicate their speed and urgency of the situation to at last find her and lock her in the domestic space. This adds up to the claustrophobia she already experiences due to the confines of the marriage.
The rhyme scheme for this stanza is aabbcbccdd.
The Farmer’s Bride | Analysis, Lines 20-29
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 and such as they,
So long as men-folk keep away.
“Not near, not near!” her eyes beseech
When one of us comes within reach.
The women say that beasts in stall
Look round like children at her call.
I’ve hardly heard her speak at all.
The house offers her only the opportunities pertaining to quotidian chores. She is efficient yet ironically works with the pace of a mouse, drawing another comparison to a faint-hearted animal. The farmer observes her happiness around the animals as she befriends them, an allusion to fairy tales such as Cinderella where a poor maid finds her only solace in the company of animals in the otherwise imprisoned house.
The synaesthesia “her eyes beseech” gives the wife the only space in the entire poem where her desire comes to light and receives a metaphorical voice. Her terror in the presence of men around her calls to attention her fear concerning possible exploitation. Moreover, the farmer also reveals how women consider animals in cage-like their own children who become attentive as they shout. But he is never able to listen to his wife. The voiceless wife is emblematic of the entire gender who could not have a voice of their own in different aspects of society for a long period of time.
The rhyme scheme for this stanza is aabbbccddd
The Farmer’s Bride | Analysis, Lines 30-33
Shy as a leveret, swift as he,
Straight and slight as a young larch tree,
Sweet as the first wild violets, she,
To her wild self. But what to me?
This short stanza employs sibilance to portray different characteristics of the farmer’s wife. She is “shy as a leveret” which is a young hare but equally speedy (simile). Her posture is straight like a “young larch tree” which is again a simile. The farmer’s heightened se*ual attraction towards her is exhibited in his comparison of his wife’s sweetness to the “wild violets.” The farmer expresses his distress over his wife’s lack of acknowledgement of his presence in her life.
The rhyme scheme for this stanza is aaaa.
The Farmer’s Bride | Analysis, Lines 34-41
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
On the black earth spread white with rime,
The berries redden up to Christmas-time
What’s Christmas-time without there be
Some other in the house than we!
Time lapses into winter symbolising gloom and bleakness. The dullness in the imagery through the use of colours such as “brown,” “grey,” “black” and “white” along with the “smoke,” and a falling leaf in the “still air” communicate the farmer’s loss of hope for a se*ual relationship with his wife as each day passes. The sight of a magpie’s feathers strengthens his beliefs as the society the farmer inhabits considers the bird a bad omen. There is also a contrast in the imagery of the rime i.e. the frost layering on the “black earth” which is the most fertile soil. The issue of fertility carries itself forward in the last lines when the farmer laments the absence of any children in the house during the festive period of Christmas. He yearns to have children but it is not possible until he consummates his marriage. The redness of berries- a fruit symbolising lust and se*uality adds to the se*ual tension building inside him.
The rhyme scheme for this stanza is ababccdd.
The Farmer’s Bride | Analysis, Lines 42-46
She sleeps up in the attic there
Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair
Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down,
The soft young down of her, the brown,
The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!
The concluding stanza discloses the wife’s room which is upstairs like an “attic” alluding to
Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre where the popular character Bertha Mason lives in the attic. The rhyme scheme of this stanza is aabbc. The farmer as a measure of reassurance reminds himself that only a flight of stairs separates him from her. The sudden exclamations as an outcome of the realisation fuel his desires. The wife’s body becomes an object of lust and admiration for the farmer who is unable to resist her.
The “down” in popular English refers to a layer of feathers that is in great proximity to a duck or goose’s chest and belly. Therefore, the farmer eyes his wife as a se*ual object whom he wants to ravish now, closing the poem on an uncertain note but greatly hinting at the wife’s vulnerability in her se*ual exploitation and the farmer’s power over her se*ual gratification.
