Comparative - Sive Flashcards
(29 cards)
Mike and Mena refer to how they save money
- We will mind whatever penny we make
- Tea is scarce enough without wasting it this hour of the night
- There is the gift of £200 for us… Long enough we were scraping
Mena advises Sive to look for financial security in a marriage partner
Take heed of a man with a piece of property
Thomasheen does not think romantic love applies to poor people
What do the likes of us know about love?
Mena does not approve of educating a girl from Sive’s background beyond primary school
*School is a place for schoolmasters and children
* Out working with a farmer you should be, my girl, instead of getting your head filled with high notions
Thomasheen and Mena look down on the travellers as the lowest on the socio-economic ladder
Go on away to yeer smelly caravn and not be disgustin’ respectable people
Pats Bocock feels that change is on its way for the small farmer
The small man with the one cow and the pig and the bit of bog is coming into his own
Everybody knows about the match made with Sean Dota
It is the talk at every crossroads that Sive is matchmaking with Sean Dota
Mena explains to Sive why she needs to marry Sean to gain any kind of status given her background
You have no name. You will have no name till you take a husband
Mena confronts Sive with her parentage in a brutal way to force her to submit to the marriage
you are a bye-child, a common bye-child, a bastard
Mena cannot at first believe there is a match for Sive because she is ‘illegitimate’
Who will take her with the slur and the doubt hanging over her
When Sean makes an unwanted advance on Sive, Nanna explains this is just the way men are
You will find that men are that way
Thomasheen persuades Mike to open Liam’s letter by arguing that women’s minds are so changeable that Sive could not be trusted to read the letter
A woman never knows from one moment to the next what way her mind is going to act… you must make up the mind for them
Thomasheen refers to his impoverished childhood
There was a frightful curam of us in my father’s house with nothing but a sciath of spuds on the floor to fill us
Mena refers to her impoverished childhood
We would beg, borrow or steal, to make a home with a man, any man that would show four walls to us
Mena resents the money she has to pay for Sive’s schooling
Your uncle and I work ourselves to the marrow of the bone to give you schooling
Thomasheen explains what it is like to live without a wife
I know what a man have to do who have no woman to lie with him. He have to drink hard, or he have to walk under a black sky when every eye is closed in sleep
Sive’s parentage is well known
The child is born in want of wedlock. That much is well known from one end of the parish to the other
Religious figures are respected
I’ll shave if I’m to see the priest
Mike insists on burying Sive on holy ground
She must have the priest… Holy ground… She must be buried in holy ground
Nanna gives a bleak assessment of how women must pay for mens actions
Women must pay for all happiness. That is their sorry shape
Mena is unhappy with her marriage
Look at the match I made - four cows on the top of a mountain and a few acres of bog
Sean Dota is sexually frustrated
There is the longing he have been storing away these past years past
Mena’s initial shock at the match
What is she but a schoolgirl and illegitimate, to crown all!
Mike’s initial reaction of horror to the match
It is against the grain of my bones woman
