'La Belle Dame sans Merci': The Faery

Question 1

“I met a lady in the meads.”

IV

Answer 1

Femme Fatale of the poem.

Question 2

“Her hair was long,”

IV

Answer 2

• Loose hair: Sensual and promiscuous connotations. Faery is a sexual and tempting being.

Question 3

“her foot was light.”

IV

Answer 3

• Graceful but unpredictable and deceptive.

Question 4

“and her eyes were wild.”

IV

Answer 4

• Assonance (repetition of the vowel sound across words within the lines of the poem creating internal rhymes) of ‘e’ which suggests enchantment.
• Faery is the physical embodiement of chaos. Eyes are windows to the soul.
• ‘wild’ foreboding of later disorder and disaster.
• Wildness implies chaos. It is foreshadowing that the faery is animalistic and other-worldly and therefore cannot be contained or controlled.
• First allusion to an element of danger within the poem.

Question 5

“Full beautiful - a faery’s child.”

IV

Answer 5

• ‘Faery’ –> Mythical/inhuman.
• Ethereal figure that it is dream-like.
• Celtic association
• Faery’s were typically deceptive.

Question 6

“‘La Belle Dame sans Merci has thee in thrall!’”

X

Answer 6

• Clear warning.
• The Faery is not what she seems
• AOT: Manipulation, Tragic Villian.

Question 7

“She took me to her elfin grot. There she wept and sighed full sore.”

VIII

Answer 7

• ‘She took me’ –> Faery is in control.
• ‘Elfin grot’ –> Typical ethereal setting. Entrenches suggestions of enchantment.
• ‘Wept and sighed full sore.” –> Manipulation. The faery is luring the knight into sympathising with her to render him vunerable.

Question 8

“For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.”

Answer 8

• ‘Sidelong’ She is not being truthful. The knight is literally only percieving one side of her.
• ‘Faery’s song,’ Siren song connotations