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Poets Present Difficult Relationships in The Farmer’s Bride by Charlotte Mew and The Manhunt by Simon Armitage

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Charlotte Mew explores the theme of lack of intimacy during the course of her poem, The Farmers Bride. Various techniques are used to represent the stilted relationship the speaker and his ‘maid’ succumb to. Likewise, The Manhunt, written by Simon Armitage uses various metaphors and semantic fields of war and anguish to illustrate the speaker’s yearning to ‘feel the hurt’ her partner is experiencing and take the pain away. Although, the ambiguous ending doesn’t satisfy this.

The six stanzas in The Farmer’s Bride are of various lengths, with the meter per line varying. Mew uses this as a representation of the in-balance in the relationship of the farmer and his bride. During the last stanza the farmer is presented to feel sympathetic for his bride and possibly regretful for the animalistic manner he treated her throughout as ‘she sleeps up in the attic there alone, poor maid ‘Tis but a stair betwixt us.’ This is structured in a stair-way format, possibly implying the farmer’s now determination to work on his currently failed relationship. Relating this to the ‘stairs’ which distances them, is highlighting that they are on different levels from each other, but, despite this he is willing to try. The two being on different levels is also reflective of their lack of intimacy with each other, yet, the farmer longs for ‘some other in the house than we.’ In comparison, Armitage structures his poem in various stanza consisting of two lines each. This gives a sense of
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