Andrew's Wiki
Maude Clare

Theme

• Like Cousin Kate, it’s a tale of jealously wherein a man leaves one woman to marry another
  • Maude Clare is the abandoned one: the “queen”
  • Nell is the married one: “the village maid”
  • Maude Clare confronts them on the steps of the church after getting married to return the love trinkets and faded flowers they picked together
• We also are supposed to think that he married the wrong one, that marriage doesn’t always coincide with love
  • And yet the marriage isn’t even worth it now
• An unhappy marriage at its start
  • His mom notes that both of them are “pale” and narrator says that they’re full of anxiety
  • Here’s the other side, though: we hear Nell
  • She doesn’t care that the other woman is prettier and smarter, or that the love is compromised: she’s just glad she has him at all and says she’ll make him love her…

Style

• It’s a dialogue with four people, incl. the boy’s mom! Very cool.
• Nell has the last word.

Quotes

• Maude Clare: “Here’s my half of the faded leaves / We plucked from the budding bough”
  • Like “An Apple Gathering,” plucking nature will always get you back: you must wait for things in their “natural” time (conservative though it blames men)
• Maude Clare to Nell: “Take my share of a fickle heart / Mine of a paltry love”
• The man: “He strove to match her scorn with scorn / He faltered in his place: / “Lady,” he said – “Maude Clare,” he said / “Maude Claire” and hid his head”
  • Look at how the interruption of the meter admirably shows mental anguish and yet proves his wrongness b/c he can’t speak in meter: he isn’t poetic