Why are Love and Relationships important? Learning objectives: • To explore why love and relationships are important. Learning outcomes: • All pupils will be able to analyse and discuss ‘The Farmer’s bride’. Love and Relationships 4 minutes In your books, write down what you think the two words mean? Love Relationships Love and Relationships: Charlotte Mew. Charlotte Mew was born in London in 1869 to an upper middle class family but due to her father’s financial mismanagement, she lived most of her life in poverty. Three of Mew’s siblings died in early childhood and another two suffered from mental illness and were committed to mental asylums, at an early age. The fear of passing on insanity to their children resulted in Charlotte and Anne making a pact never to marry and have children. The Farmer’s Bride was published in 1916 and Mew’s work was admired by prominent literary figures of the time such as Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf and Siegfried Sassoon. Mew’s writing was deeply influenced by the tragedies that happened in her life and insanity, death and depression that appeared time and time again in her work. TASK: write down a sentence explaining what you think her poetry might reflect? The Farmer’s bride-in your anthology. Look at the punctuation of the title. What is the purpose of the apostrophe? What does the apostrophe usually indicate? The Title The Farmer’s Bride THINK PAIR SHARE Why are Love and Relationships important? Learning objectives: • To explore why love and relationships are important. Learning outcomes: • All pupils will be able to analyse and discuss ‘The Farmer’s bride’. The Farmer’s bride-in your anthology. Before we dig into the poem, answer the following questions in your book. 1. Summarise what the poem is about in 2 bullet points. 2. What are the feelings and attitudes of the husband? 3. What are feelings and attitudes of the wife? 4. What does the lack of form and rhyme scheme in the poem represent? 5. What themes are in the poem? 6. Why might the reader feel sympathy or pathos for the husband? Explain your answer. Poem dictionary: Bide= wait Woo= trying to win someone’s love or impress them. Fay= a fairy. Leveret= a young hare Rime= frost TASK: Discuss the statement below your ideas with your table. Be prepared to share your answers! 5 minutes ’Should marriages be equal in terms of household work, income, repsonsbilities?’ The Farmer’s Bride stanza 1 What does this sentence represent? Think about patriarchy and authority. Who is the maid he is referring to? Three summers since I chose a maid, Too young maybe—but more’s to do Why At harvest-time than bide and woo. has she become afraid of him after marriage? When us was wed she turned afraid Of love and me and all things human; What language device is shown here? What does it suggest? Why has Mew said ‘runned away’ and not ran away? Think Like the shut of a winter’s day about the way people speak, Her smile went out, and ’twadn’t a woman— dialect, accents etc. More like a little frightened fay. One night, in the Fall, she runned away. The Farmer’s Bride stanza 2 What is the effect of the dialect used by the farmer husband? What imagery do we “Out ’mong the sheep, her be,” they said, see throughout the stanza? ’Should properly have been abed; But sure enough she wadn’t there Lying awake with her wide brown stare. What does the rhyming couplet ‘scare’ and So over seven-acre field and up-along across the down ‘hare’ represent? We chased her, flying like a hare What is the use of the repeated 3rd person pronoun ‘her’? Before out lanterns. To Church-Town All in a shiver and a scare What does the rhyming We caught her, fetched her home at last couplet at the end of the And turned the key upon her, fast. stanza emphasise? The Farmer’s Bride stanza 3 There is a shift to present tense in this sentence. What does this emphasise? She does the work about the house What does the animal imagery show? Who does it link to? As well as most, but like a mouse: Happy enough to chat and play With birds and rabbits and such as they, Why is she only happy around animals and not people? So long as men-folk keep away. “Not near, not near!” her eyes beseech When one of us comes within reach. What The women say that beasts in stall What language device is shown here? do the rhyming triplets emphasise? Look round like children at her call. I’ve hardly heard her speak at all. The Farmer’s Bride stanza 4 Repeated use of sibilance sounds to emphasis her link with nature. The innocent, shy and sweet persona of the wife. What does the irregularity of the short stanza reflect? What imagery does ‘leveret’ suggest? Shy as a leveret, swift as he, Straight and slight as a young larch tree,What Sweet as the first wild violets, she, language device is shown here? To her wild self. But what to me? What language device is shown here? What connotations does the word ‘wild’ have? The Farmer’s Bride stanza 5 The effect of the ’s’ sibilance here suggests…..? 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, Sibilance is a figure of speech in which a hissing sound is created within a group of words through the repetition of "s" sounds. 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! Christmas is a time for children and the couple have no children- what might this signify? Why has the writer used an exclamation mark at the end of the stanza? The Farmer’s Bride stanza 6 What does this sentence suggest? ALONE AND POOR. She sleeps up in the attic there Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair What do you think this sentence means? Think about distance. Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down, What does rhyme ‘down’ and ‘brown’ represent? The soft young down of her, the brown, The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair! For his wife is yet a frightened child, the farmer is unable to look past his own emotions in order to be concerned with hers. This causes a great divide that will not be able to be bridged until the wife seeks to overcome her fears, or until the husband seeks to understand and comfort his wife, thereby helping her to gain an understanding of him as a living feeling human being, rather than just the creature that has brought her much pain. The Farmer’s Bride Carefully at this image. Discuss the image, focusing on the following areas: • the face of the farmer • the attitudes of the men • the faces of the farm • workers • the face of the woman, the wife Woman the position of the woman • the items in the farmers’ hands TASK: Investigate the role of women between 1800 and 1930. CREATE A POSTER TO SHOW YOUR FINDINGS Use the Internet to research information about the role of women during this period. Find as much information on your area as you can. The five areas are: 1. Women, their life and times and legal status from 1800 - 1830. 2. Women, their life and times and legal status from 1830- 1860. 3. Women, their life and times and legal status from 1860 - 1890. 4. Women, their life and times and legal status from 1890 - 1910. 5. Women, their life and times and legal status from 1910 - 1930. Working as a team, create an A3 poster to present your information. Your poster must be informative, carry plenty of detail, interesting information and be VISUALLY APPEALING. It must be interesting, informative and exciting.
