The Lost Woman by Patricia Beer

The Lost Woman by Patricia Beer

1. 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.

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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".