The Lost Woman

A simple PPT for Patricia Beer's 'The Lost Woman' to assist in analysis of the poem for IGCSE Literature.

1. The Lost Woman Patricia Beer

2. Patricia Beer Born in Exmouth , Devon Hey family belonged to the Plymouth Brethren (conservative religious community) Her dominant mother was proud of her clever, literary daughter and intended her to be a teacher. Moved away from her religious background as a young adult, focusing more on being an academic. Attended Exeter & Oxford Universities Lectured English in Italy, before returning to lecture English at Goldsmith’s College in London. 1924 - 1999

3. What’s the poem about? The speaker’s mother dies, and returns to haunt her as a voice The poem is autobiographical in nature – Patricia Beer lost her mother at the age of 14 Death and the haunting of the living by the dead were subjects Beer returned to repeatedly in her seven collections of poetry, and these themes can be seen clearly in ‘The Lost Woman’.

4. The Lost Woman My mother went with no more warning Than a bright voice and a bad pain. Home from school on a June morning And where the brook goes under the lane I saw the back of a shocking white Ambulance drawing away from the gate.

5. She never returned and I never saw Her buried. So a romance began. The ivy-woman turned into a tree That still hops away like a rainbow down The avenue as I approach. My tendrils are the ones that clutch.

6. I made a life for her over the years. Frustrated no more by a dull marriage She ran a canteen through several wars. The wit of a cliché-ridden village She met her match at an extra-mural Class and the OU summer school.

7. Many a hero in his time And every poet has acquired A lost woman to haunt the home, To be compensated and desired, Who will not alter, who will not grow, A corpse they need never get to know.

8. She is nearly always benign. Her habit Is not to stride at dead of night. Soft and crepuscular in rabbit- Light she comes out. Hear how they hate Themselves for losing her as they did. Her country is bland and she does not chide.

9. But my lost woman evermore snaps From somewhere else: ‘You did not love me. I sacrificed too much perhaps. I showed you the way to rise above me And you took it. You are the ghost With the bat-voice, my dear,  I  am not lost.’

10. Form & Structure 6 stanzas of 6 lines each Elegy - a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead. Each different stanza has a different implied meaning, (e.g. the first stanza represents her mother leaving .) Basic rhyme structure is ABABCC but the effect is softened through half-rhyme and enjambment. Loose rhyming pattern ('pain/lane , white/gate and years/wars‘)

11. Tone, Mood & Figurative Language Tone – confusion & grief, tension, feeling of abandonment “my mother went”, guilt and frustration at the end. Mood – Sad, a sense of being lost without a mother figure, as if she left too soon Descriptive adjectives & adverbs (shocking, bright, haunt) Personification & metaphor Juxtaposition : “ bright voice and a bad pain ”

12. Check out more resources here… https://prezi.com/ywexaqoxoiuh/the-lost-woman/ https://prezi.com/rfun-_t1z9b3/the-lost-woman/ https://www.powtoon.com/show/grkvQljY5gF/patricia-beer-the-lost-woman/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDpjKtRiX6k

13. Essay Questions: Patricia Beer lost her mother when she was fourteen years old. How does the poetess take her readers into a fairy-tale land? 2. How does Patricia Beer juxtapose the contrast between emotional detachment & fictitious fancy in her poem ‘ The Lost Woman ’? 3. How does Patricia Beer’s attitude towards death make her poem ‘The Lost Woman’ intense?