The Farmer's Bride

The Farmer's Bride by Charlotte Mew is spoken by a farmer whose young wife became terrified of him, and of all men, after their wedding. She ran away; he and the villagers chased her and locked her in. Now she lives in his house but avoids him, and his desire for her is growing.

Mew published it in 1916. In rural England then, a wife had few rights, and marriage was often a practical arrangement.

It is a dramatic monologue in the farmer's own rural dialect (‘When us was wed’), so we hear his voice and see only his side.

The six stanzas are of different lengths, and the rhyme is mostly regular. The poem follows the seasons from his marriage ‘Three Summers since’ to a cold winter, as his frustration builds. The last stanza breaks down into broken phrases, dashes and exclamations.

Three Summers since I chose a maid,

Too young maybe—but more's to do

At harvest-time than bide and woo.

The farmer describes his wife through animals and nature: ‘More like a little frightened fay’ (a fairy), and, when she ran away, ‘flying like a hare’. Later she is ‘Shy as a leveret’, a young hare. To him she is wild, not quite human.

They ‘turned the key upon her, fast’: she is treated like an animal that has escaped.

The ending reveals his desire, in broken repetition: ‘The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!’ It is unclear whether he will keep control of himself.

Themes: desire and control; the power of men over women in marriage; nature; loneliness on both sides.

Compares well with:

• Porphyria's Lover: another man's monologue about a woman he wants to possess.
• Love's Philosophy: a man who wants a woman who keeps away.
• Singh Song!: a marriage seen through the husband's voice, but a happy one.