On the other hand, in Charlotte Mew’s poem ‘The Fathers Bride’, obsession is shown in a different contrasting way. For starters, when it says ‘I choose’, it seems as though the maid did not have a choice in the marriage, like she was forced to marry farmer. This furthermore suggests that the maid is being treated like an object. This may perhaps reflect on the times when women didn’t have many rights or many choices. Marriages were not necessarily arranged in the strictest sense as they were often organised according to the valuable family matches and convenience, rather than love like today. This could be the reason why the maid is married to the farmer. At the end of the poem, the farmer seems to have become irrational over his wife. When it says ‘the brown, the brown of her – her eyes, her hair, her hair!’ This phrase could imply the fall and movement into madness from the farmer. It gives the reader an indication that he will lose all control over his wife and will soon have nothing but memories. Additionally, each verse ends in a rhyming couplet except the last one. Perhaps the pattern breaks to reflect the breakdown of the farmer and the marriage.
Charlotte Mew uses seemingly simplistic and colloquial language to create the personality of the farmer in its rural environment. When it says, ‘when us was wed…she runned away’. There is a hinted lack of formal education from the farmer here. The farmer admits that he did not take time to find a bride, ‘there’s more to do a harvest time than bide and woo’. This is certainly the story of a couple living in a working community where the demands of farming life come above all other contemplations. The farmer’s wife is frequently compared to a wild, native animal. When it says, ‘Flying like a hare… like a mouse… Shy as a leveret, swift as he’. This is confirming the rural setting of the poem and the attitude of the famer to his wife, as if she needs taming like a wild animal. When she runs away, she is described as ‘flying like a hare… all in a shiver and a scare’. It sounds as if the farmer and other people from the town are hunting her, making her fearful and anxious. The short fourth stanza stands out as a sensual, admiring description of the wife. Mew makes substantial use of sibilance to construct a sense of the farmer’s whispered appreciation. Comparisons to beauty in wildlife reinforce the sense of the farmer’s positive opinion of his wife. In line 34, the writer makes use of the caesura to underline the problem. Although the farmer admires his wife, she doesn’t want to offer him the fondness he desires. She is described as ‘Sweet…to her wild self. But what to me?’ The rhetorical question ends the stanza in a very suggestive way of unhappiness. Punctuation is used to create emphasis at several points in the poem. The end of the first stanza has two commas in the line, which is slowing the pace down and ceasing the rhyme to reflect the disruption caused by the wife’s escape. Afterwards, the farther ‘turned the key upon her, fast’. She is securely restrained, like the word ‘fast’, alone between a coma and a full stop. In the final stanza, the recurrent interrupting of the rhythm by various uses of punctuation suggests the farmer is troubled, struggling to deal with his wife’s anxiety, but also longing to have her. The Farmers Bride is rich in images of the instinctive world, partly because of the rural setting, but also to represent a farmer’s view of the world. Some of the imagery is symbolic. For example ‘the berries redden up to Christmas-time’. The berries could symbolise the girl at her prime during Christmas time, just like the berries would be at Christmas.
Scannell uses martial imagery and language to dominate this poem, which may emerge as strange at first given the domestic subject matter. By bringing the two ideas together, Scannell is offering his opinion of each. The nettles are personified as an opposing force. They are a ‘regiment of spite’ and are described using the metaphor ‘spears’. Within the first three lines, the nettles are presented as a violent and uncompromising group of soldier’s to reflect the fathers need to protect his child. When the father is taking revenge on the nettles, Scannell again personifies them, describing them as a ‘fierce parade’, as if they were soldiers standing to attention, cut down by his almighty death scythe. They are given a ‘funeral pyre’ and within ‘two weeks’, ’tall recruits’ have been ‘called up’ to replace the nettles, a reference to soldiers being enlisted, but also communicating the idea of an enemy force that cannot be defeated. The child is presented using emotive language, reflective of the compassion and sympathy the father feels for his injured son. ‘White blisters beaded on his tender skin. The alliteration using the ‘b’ sound advocates the child’s skin as ‘tender’, a strong contrast to the language used to describe the nettles. The ‘watery grin’ is another emotive description implying the child is being helped to get over his painful experience by a devoted father. The father’s reaction to the nettles is as violent as the nettles’ stings. He explains the process of dealing with the nettles in a very careful, calculating manner. ‘I took my hook and honed the blade’. First he selected his weapon, scythe, and then sharpened it, before he ‘slashed in fury’ until ‘not a nettle… Stood upright anymore.’ The father takes revenge in his strong desire to protect his son and punish those who injured him.
To conclude, both poems use obsession as a main theme running throughout. In The Farmers Bride, obsession is shown through a unique and differing way
