2013 FRQ #2

         It was enough for the men, that the earth heaved 

     and opened its furrow to them, that the wind blew to 

     dry the wet wheat, and set the young ears of corn 

     wheeling freshly round about; it was enough that they 

5   helped the cow in labour, or ferreted the rats from 

     under the barn, or broke the back of a rabbit with a 

     sharp knock of the hand. So much warmth and 

     generating and pain and death did they know in their 

     blood, earth and sky and beast and green plants, so 

10 much exchange and interchange they had with these, 

     that they lived full and surcharged, their senses full 

     fed, their faces always turned to the heat of the blood, 

     staring into the sun, dazed with looking towards the 

     source of generation, unable to turn around. 

15     But the woman wanted another form of life than 

     this, something that was not blood-intimacy. Her 

     house faced out from the farm-buildings and fields, 

     looked out to the road and the village with church and 

     Hall and the world beyond. She stood to see the far-

20 off world of cities and governments and the active 

     scope of man, the magic land to her, where secrets 

     were made known and desires fulfilled. She faced 

     outwards to where men moved dominant and creative, 

     having turned their back on the pulsing heat of 

25 creation, and with this behind them, were set out to 

     discover what was beyond, to enlarge their own scope 

     and range and freedom; whereas the Brangwen men 

     faced inwards to the teeming life of creation, which 

     poured unresolved into their veins. 

30     Looking out, as she must, from the front of her 

     house towards the activity of man in the world at 

     large, whilst her husband looked out to the back at sky 

     and harvest and beast and land, she strained her eyes 

     to see what man had done in fighting outwards to

35 knowledge, she strained to hear how he uttered 

     himself in his conquest, her deepest desire hung on 

     the battle that she heard, far off, being waged on the 

     edge of the unknown. She also wanted to know, and 

     to be of the fighting host. 

40     At home, even so near as Cossethay, was the vicar, 

     who spoke the other, magic language, and had the 

     other, finer bearing, both of which she could perceive, 

     but could never attain to. The vicar moved in worlds 

     beyond where her own menfolk existed. Did she not 

45 know her own menfolk; fresh, slow, full-built men, 

     masterful enough, but easy, native to the earth, 

     lacking outwardness and range of motion. Whereas 

     the vicar, dark and dry and small beside her husband, 

     had yet a quickness and a range of being that made 

50 Brangwen, in his large geniality, seem dull and local. 

     She knew her husband. But in the vicar’s nature was 

     that which passed beyond her knowledge. As 

     Brangwen had power over the cattle so the vicar had 

     power over her husband. What was it in the vicar, that 

55 raised him above the common men as man is raised 

     above the beast? She craved to know. She craved to 

     achieve this higher being, if not in herself, then in her 

     children. That which makes a man strong even if he 

     be little and frail in body, just as any man is little and 

60 frail beside a bull, and yet stronger than the bull, what 

     was it? It was not money nor power nor position. 

     What power had the vicar over Tom Brangwen—

     none. Yet strip them and set them on a desert island, 

     and the vicar was the master. His soul was master of 

65 the other man’s. And why—why? She decided it was 

     a question of knowledge.