Zusammenfassung der Ressource
The Lost Woman by Patricia Beer
- S
- The poetic voice loses her mother
suddenly without warning. She feels a
sense of regret that her mother sacrificed
so much for her and is haunted by the
feeling that she never actively
appreciated her mother while she lived.
- P
- Theme
- parental and
familial love.
- Like for
Grandmother
Knitting and Father
Returning Home
- Purpose
- autobiographical
- reappraisal of her
relationship with her
mother who died while
she was relatively young.
- make the reader reflect on their own
relationships and attitudes with loved ones
- I
- emotions in the
poem
- elegiac
- the poem is over all
elegiac as the daughter
mourns the mother she
lost prematurely. the
repetition of the word
"never" emphasizes the
emptiness created by her
loss.
- reader's
response
- compassionate
- the reader feels
compassionate as
everyone has
suffered the loss
of a relative
- T
- S
- regularity of
stanzas
organisation
- 6 lines, similar
lengths +
ABABCC rhyme
scheme
- a feeling of
awkwardness due to
the use of half rhymes
- This reflects the nature
of her relationship with
her mother
- L
- The title itself refers to 2
ideas of the poem
- the "lost woman"
could be the the
mother that died and
that is thus lost
- It could also
refer to the
fact that the
girl is lost
without her
mother
- The use of the
impersonal ‘woman’
reveals a frostiness
or difficulty within
their relationship.
- the word "went" is
a comment on
how suddenly
death can strike
and the
hopelessness of it.
- this is meant to provoke reflection from
the reader about their own relationships
and attitudes with loved ones as there will
often never be that chance to reconcile
your feelings and tell loved ones how you
feel about them.
- "Brooks" are very gentle
and shallow streams, while
"lanes" tend to be small
roads with very few houses
on them, creating an overall
image of rural calm.
- This also emphasize the
fact that death is
unpredictable
- I
- The ‘ivy-mother turned into a
tree’ suggests to me that she
has gone from being an
influence that she perceived to
be cloying and reaching out to
control her (ivy) to one that has
provided her with great roots
and stability.
- The mother is compared to a ghost "haunting
the home". This enhances the idea of a troubled
relationship as the mother seems to cling on to
her daughter, to expect something from her and
thus also emphasizes the fact that the daughter
is also lost.
- In the 3rd stanza, the author creates
an imagery of what her mother's life
would have been like if she had
lived. This portrays the troubled
relationship of mother and daughter
as they didn't knew each other very
well. This is further enhanced by the
sentence "I made a life for her"
which emphasizes the fact that it is
an idealistic version of what it really
would've been like.
- M
- the movement is quite fluid because of the
even number of verses in each sentence.
but the use of half rhymes and caesuras in
the first, fourth and sixth stanzas really
disrupt the flow and rhythm of the poem.
This enhances the feeling of awkwardness.
- S
- "hear how they
hate"
- mimics time passing by, and fluid
movement, maybe that of a ghost
- S
- The Main theme of the poem The Lost Woman by Patricia Beer is parental and
familial love. This poem stands as a reappraisal of her relationship which her
mother who died and she was young while making the reader reflect on their
relationships and attitudes with their relatives. The poetic voice of the poem loses
her mother suddenly without warning. She feels a sense of regret that her mother
sacrificed so much for her and is haunted by the feeling that she never actively
appreciated her mother while she lived. It is over all elegiac as the daughter
mourns the mother she lost prematurely. the repetition of the word "never"
emphasizes the emptiness created by her loss. The poem is made up of 6 stanzas,
each of them composed of 6 verses (ABABCC rhyme scheme). The troubled
relationship between the mother and daughter are effectively portrayed through
many imageries such as "the ivy-mother turned into a tree".