Maude Clare Flashcards
balladic narrative consisting entirely of dialogue except for the first and fourth stanza
his bride was like a village maid/ Maude Clare was like a queen
Why might a reader feel little sympathy towards Maude Clare?
Her bad timing, the arrogance of her ironies, and her queenly mien, which suffers in comparison with the implied humility and ingenuousness of the bride “like a village maid.” Tom’s inability in the next stanza to “match her scorn with scorn,” his faltering speech, and his poignant sense of shame (he “hid his face”) make Maude Clare look all the worse. So does her immediate verbal assault on Nell:
“Take my share of a fickle heart,
Mine of a paltry love:
Take it or leave it as you will,
I wash my hands thereof.” (46)
In the poem’s last two stanzas, Nell could be seen as showing what?
Courage and tenacity along with her previously implied humility
