Poetry essay on love themes in the farmers bride

This is a top-band exemplar essay analysing how marriage is presented in ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ by Charlotte Mew and ‘Singh Song!’ by Daljit Nagra. These poems are studied as part of AQA’s ‘Love & Relationships’ cluster at GCSE and this question and answer reflects the question style of the exam. Exam question paper is also included.

Since then she has started working all the household chores, but stayed too far away from the speaker, her husband. The speaker says that she loves to chat and play with the birds and rabbit, but laments that he could not get all the love and physical intimacy a husband should get from his wife.

In the first line, we become more aware that this is a persona narrator. As the poem continues, we realise that the Farmer himself is the narrator of the poem and that Charlotte Mew is writing in character. For this reason too, it compares easily with Porphyria’s Lover, where Browning chooses to do the same thing.

There is another turn in the fifth stanza, as the speaker wistfully notes the passing of fall into winter. Looking to Christmas, he laments that this is a family time and they have no children: “What’s Christmas-time without there be/ Some other in the house than we!”