Mew, Charlotte Mary (1869–1928), poet

Charlotte Mew: melancholy poet

“…The biographical details in this paper are drawn from two excellent biographies of Charlotte Mew: Charlotte Mew and her Friends by Penelope Fitzgerald (1984) and This Rare Spirit: A Life of Charlotte Mew by Julia Copus (2021). Julia Copus's work provided the details of the illnesses of Freda and Henry Mew.…”

“…The standard interpretation of this poem is that it is about gender, misogyny and power. 4 Charlotte Mew's two biographers, Penelope Fitzgerald 5 (p. 105) and Julia Copus 2 (pp. 104, 191) propose that the farmer's bride is recoiling from the prospect of sexual intimacy and that she is, or will become, a victim of domestic abuse.…”

Not a Natural Cri de Coeur: Charlotte Mew's Quotable, Extractable Poetics

“…And what she needed to give a voice to, as she also explained, was the cri de coeur. 13 Fitzgerald's interpretation of the cri de coeur is misleading for several reasons. First, she implies that the cri de coeur and "the quality of emotion" belong to a single statement that Mew made about her own poetics-perhaps one that addresses the necessity of "impersonation."…”

“…What were you showing in Saturday Market That set it grinning from end to end Girls and gaffers and boys of twenty-? Cover it close with your shawl, my friend-(lines [13][14][15][16] To read Mew's work as her own involuntary cri de coeur is to read it as a heart whose cry-or bloody stain-reveals itself despite her efforts to conceal or mask it. As Severin argues, "the desire for women briefly flickers" in the farmer's final cri de coeur, when the speaker is no longer plausible as Mew's "rough country-man" but is visible instead as "a woman poet impersonating a man."…”