Within the next few lines a bad image of the girl is created and she is portrayed as being immature and gullible, Eileen McAuley says:
‘So she followed him there, all high white shoes,
All wide blue eyes, and bottles of vodka.
And sat in the dark, her head rolling forward
Towards the frightening scum on the water.’
Phrases such as ‘all high white shoes’ and ‘All wide blue eyes’ build a reflection of innocence about the girl. This poor image of the girl continues when it says, ‘And talked about school…. Green as a septic wound’. Here the Mersey River is also described as a ‘septic wound’, this is a judgement of Liverpool and links to the boys disturbing attitude.
Formal English is used when it says ‘Then, he swiftly contrived to kiss her’ this and the rest of the paragraph is showing the boy trying to be romantic and impress the girl. There is almost a slight tone of nostalgia within the paragraph.
The mood is abruptly changed in the next paragraph, it is 3 months in the future and the girl has just discovered that she is 3 months pregnant. This is a hammer blow to the girl as it says ‘She sobbed in the cool’ it is showing that she is trapped. ‘Bright’ is used to describe the magazines she rips up; this is now a contrast to the current mood. Also ‘like confetti’ is used and confetti could be seen as a symbol of marriage.
Furthermore, in the next paragraph, Eileen McAuley says, ‘She broke the heels of her high white shoes’. I think that here she is blaming the shoes for getting her into this horrible situation; also this could be seen as because she has broken the shoes that made her seem so innocent she has therefore broken her innocence. Rhetorical questions are used as the girl is questioning her life and how it hasn’t turned out how it was supposed to; an example of this is ‘For where, now, was the summer of her sixteenth year?’ This theme of living a ‘magazine life’ is continued over the following paragraphs to show how ‘empty’ the girl’s life is and how she will never have what she really wanted. She could be seen as bitter as she is reminiscing. Also an oxymoron is used to put a positive spin on the mainly negative point, this is ‘acne’d wonderland’.
Towards the end of the poem I believe the girl is ‘growing up’ and becoming more mature, this is shown when Eileen McAuley says, ‘But, then again, better to be smoking scented drugs…. Despicable feminine void’. Here I think that the girl is realising how bad the situation she is in really is. There is more contrast used with the words ‘starve’ and ‘huge and ripe’ in order to again, show how bad her situation is. The poem finishes with the phrase, ‘you always looked the type’, here I believe that Eileen McAuley is trying to stereotype the girl into the sort of person who is seen as a tart, this links to earlier in the poem when the boy calls her a ‘little slag’.
This poem is split into two main segments, the first is where the boy seduces the girl and is totally dominant over her and the second is where the mood of the poem is flipped from being semi-romantic to the feeling of regret and anger at what the girl had done. I believe that if a young girl read this poem today it would have a huge impact on her decisions that she will make in the future and also if a boy were to read this poem it would show him how not to behave if you wanted to stay out of trouble.
William King begins ‘The Beggar Woman’ by describing a man who is looking for a woman and is seeing it as some sort of game. He describes him as a ‘gentleman’, which could suggest that he is quite wealthy and well off. He eventually finds a female prostitute but she is described as having cheeks that were ‘fresh’ and ‘linen clean’ which would be unusual for a prostitute at that time. It suggests that she does well in her trade and therefore has to look after herself. Lines 7 and 8 are showing the man speaking to the prostitute in a cocky and confident way when William King says ‘’Mistress,’ quoth he, ‘and what if we two should retire a little way into the wood?’’ Here it is also showing that the man is confident about his sexuality and is feeling powerful over the woman. ‘He ambles on before, she trots behind’. This makes the woman seem almost like an animal that is being controlled by its leader, also the man letting the woman follow behind him is signalling trust between them like they knew each other from before. ‘Bobby’ is the name of the baby that is ‘bound’ to the woman, using the word ‘bound’ is showing that the woman is not affectionate towards the child and it isn’t wanted. Throughout the next few lines the man asks the woman to ‘expose’ but she denies him because she thinks they will get spotted. She then says:
‘I know an unfrequented place,
To the left hand, where we our time may pass,
And the meanwhile your horse may find some grass.’
Here it shoes the reader that the woman is resourceful and has thought about where to go so that they won’t get caught. As the poem continues phrases such as ‘I have the matter sure’ are used and they show the reader that the man is thinking that he has secured the prostitute to do what he wants with her. He believes he is control. Throughout lines 21 to 23 the woman is saying that she is not accustomed to sitting down and she says ‘Should you be rude, and then should throw me down, I might perhaps break more backs than my own.’ This hints that the baby bound to her back may get injured if she lies down and so the man says ‘Come, I’ll the knot untie, And, if you mean the child’s, we’ll lay it by.’ Here there is another example of him being a sexual predator (he is being nice to the woman in order to get what he wants).
The woman could be seen as a ‘femme fatale’ over the next lines as she disregards the baby for the man, an example of this is when she says to the man ‘but chiefly for your sake’, it seems she is choosing the man over the baby. She also refers to baby as ‘it’ numerous times and William King is generally making the baby seem like a burden to the woman, another example of this is when the woman says ‘Use is another nature…. custom to the back’. This could also be seen as symbolic because below the breast is the heart and because she is turning her back she is also not showing her heart to the man which could mean that she doesn’t love him.
There is a switch of power where it says ‘I should be loth to come so far…. The burthen throws’, as here the woman has bound the baby to the man and she feels relieved to finally get rid of the burden. This is continued over the following lines and when it says ‘upon her generous friend’ I think that it suggests that they knew each other previously and maybe the baby could even be the father of the baby. Also the oxymoron ‘gentle toss’ is used when describing how the woman puts the baby on the man and a lexical set is used throughout the poem using the word ‘knot’.
Now, the woman has got the man just where she wants him, she has all the power and her cunning plan has worked. She outsmarted the man from the beginning. Yet another hint of the man being the baby’s father is used when it says ‘I trust the child to you with all my heart’. Finally the poem ends with the woman saying to the man ‘But, ere you get…. you’ll keep this’. I think that here the woman is saying before you get anyone pregnant or try to lead them into the woods like you did with me, try to deal with this one. Here she finally reveals here true character to the man.
This poem shows that the woman turns out to be the more powerful gender and has completely outsmarted the man unlike in ‘The Seduction’ where the male is the gender with the power and the female is the one being controlled. Both of these poems represent gender roles in different ways but this may be due to the society in which they were written. There is a huge gap between the times in which the poems were written and I think this is the reason for the differences although in many respects the poems are quite similar as they both talk about deceit and both of the male characters could be seen as sexual predators.
