Patricia Beer and The Lost Woman

Patricia Beer was an English poet, as well as a critic. Along with this, she was known as a 'new romantic' poet, and established her style with key subjects and themes of good and evil, love and the passing of time; one subject that is constantly present in many of her works is the subject of death, specifically how the dead haunt the living. This is presented in her poem, The Lost Woman, using simple yet effective language, along with imagery (such as metaphors and constant comparisons to nature), to describe a mother who, long gone, still lives on within the shadows of her daughter's thoughts.

With the monotony of six stanzas with six lines each, Patricia exhibits a hint of chaos and disturbance, with her half rhyming words making an appearance in alternate stanzas presenting an ababcc scheme. To add to the almost sinister set up, the mother is introduced in the first stanza with a departure, "My mother went with... bad pain". The usage of the simple word "went" instead of the more obvious option - "died" - hints the reader to the presence of a slight detachment between the mother and the daughter (or the poet herself). Despite this, there is still an element of surprise, or disturbance, due to the departure, as seen through the description, "a shocking white ambulance" - the use of "shocking" shows that it was out of place, and didn't belong.

The second stanza develops the complicated new found relationship between the mother and daughter. Through nature, the mother is personified, depicted as ivy, or a climbing evergreen, transforming into a tree; contrary to the fact that she, as a tree, is rooted to the ground, she "still hops away like a rainbow... I approach". The mention of a "rainbow" here alludes to the fact that no matter how close you get to one, you could never catch it - likewise, no matter how close the daughter got, she would never be able to catch her mother. Her desperation to do so is described through the simple sentence: "my tendrils are the one that clutch." It was her mother that was ivy, a climbing plant, with tendrils that would reach for support, but it is the daughter that is holding on too tightly, as seen through the word, "clutch." As a method of coping, the daughter fabricates a life for her mother, as seen in the third stanza. In this life, her mother is transformed, no longer bound by the clutches of her old life, "frustrated no more"; the daughter imagines her ‘mother’ to be much better than she really was, as a result of their weak and distant relationship, as seen in the first stanza and the apparent out-of-reach set up.

The fourth and fifth paragraph is where the mother's haunting becomes painfully clear. The mention of the "acquired lost woman" appeals to the reader, for while it mentions that only poets and heroes have them, the readers are invited to imagine the feeling of losing a woman, such as a sister, or a mother, or a girlfriend, while simultaneously making them realize that they don’t just haunt the home, but the life as well. The anaphoric use of “who will not alter, who will not grow” gives rise to a dramatic feel, and refers to the evergreen description of her mother, as well as the daunting fact that after death everything is at a standstill. The fifth paragraph presents the mother, the lost woman, and makes the readers realize that the mother did not just haunt the daughter, but the wider populace as well, as seen in the alliterative sentence, “hear how they hate… as they did”, although this could still be part of the daughters illusions. Active during the hazy time of twilight, “rabbit Light”, her mother is shown as a gentle, harmless creature, and so, when she comes out during “rabbit light” she is seen as exactly that; a rabbit.

The sixth and final paragraph completely shatters and contradicts all ideas created by the reader; instead, the truth is revealed. The previously recognized benign creature attacks the reader with a malign tone, as seen in the word, “snaps” – it could have been an allusion to the sentence “nearly always benign”, in which this was the rare times she wasn’t, or the word could have been used to place the idea of something breaking into the readers’ minds. The truth is further uncovered as the ‘lost woman’ attacks the daughter with her words. The sentence “I sacrificed… you took it” shows the displacement of their relationship. The mother sacrifices, and when given the chance, the daughter rises above her, leaving her mom behind. “You are the ghost with the bat-voice” – this statement takes a dark turn, because it is the mother, deceased, accusing her daughter of being the ghost, a dead creature manifested as a living creature, and with a firm four words, “I am not lost” the readers’ are forced to readjust their perspectives, realizing that all along it wasn’t the mother, but the daughter herself.