Pearson Edexcel · A-Level · English Literature
Course version: 9ET0 · Version from Sept 2015
Poetry – Section B: Specified Poetry Pre- or Post-1900 – Post-1900 – The…
Full specification wording
Component 3: Poetry – Section B: Specified Poetry Pre- or Post-1900 – Post-1900 – The Movement – The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, editor Philip Larkin with foreword by Andrew Motion (OUP, 1973): Man and Woman
Robert Conquest's 'Man and Woman' begins with a man who drinks to forget an absent woman, only to weep, drink further and wake in the small hours still confronting absence.
Checked against the Pearson Edexcel 9ET0 specification (opens in a new tab) on .
- Point 4 of 18
- 4 key terms
Study notes
From the checked teaching notes for this specification point.
The idea
Robert Conquest's 'Man and Woman' begins with a man who drinks to forget an absent woman, only to weep, drink further and wake in the small hours still confronting absence. Six tercets and enjambed syntax move from this private scene into an argument about whether invisible emotional grief is less 'real' than disease, torture, catastrophe or financial pressure. Repetition makes the attempt to drink away memory self-defeating, while images of a quagmire, bedrock and springs present grief as something that consumes experience and reaches its deepest sources. The closing rhetorical questions refuse an easy scale of suffering and ask why absence, despite lacking a visible wound, releases profound tears.
What earns the marks
- Trace the opening chain from sober recollection through drinking, weeping and waking to absence, explaining how repetition makes escape fail.
- Analyse how the blank wind, failed communication and silence externalise the man's loneliness without simply personifying nature as sympathetic.
- Evaluate why the poem compares grief with disease, secret-police torture, catastrophe and material pressures when asking what counts as real pain.
- Examine how rhetorical questions and the metaphors of bedrock and springs leave the reader to judge the depth of emotional suffering.
Common mistakes and how to put them right
Treating the poem as a detached survey of gender roles.
Put it right: Centre the man's unresolved grief for an absent woman and the philosophical inquiry into pain that grows from it.
Claiming drink provides relief.
Put it right: Follow the repeated sequence in which intoxication intensifies weeping and sleep ends with renewed awareness of absence.
Listing physical and political images as unrelated references.
Put it right: Explain how each supplies a visible or measurable comparison against which invisible grief is tested.
Exam tips
- Use the repeated verb 'drank' to show how form enacts the failed cycle of escape.
- Move from the specific small-hours scene to the poem's wider question about how suffering can be known and ranked.
- When discussing the closing questions, preserve their uncertainty: the poem makes a challenge rather than offering a clinical formula for pain.
Try the lesson
The start of the Component 3: Poetry – Section B: Specified Poetry Pre- or Post-1900 – Post-1900 – The Movement – The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, editor Philip Larkin with foreword by Andrew Motion (OUP, 1973): Man and Woman lesson, made from checked teaching notes for this specification point.
Have a go first
At the opening of Robert Conquest's 'Man and Woman', what happens when the man drinks in order to stop thinking about the absent woman?
Listen
Robert Conquest's 'Man and Woman' begins with a man who drinks to forget an absent woman, only to weep, drink further and wake in the small hours still confronting absence. Six tercets and enjambed syntax move from this private scene into an argument about whether invisible emotional grief is less 'real' than disease, torture, catastrophe or financial pressure. Repetition makes the attempt to drink away memory self-defeating, while images of a quagmire, bedrock and springs present grief as something that consumes experience and reaches its deepest sources. The closing rhetorical questions refuse an easy scale of suffering and ask why absence, despite lacking a visible wound, releases profound tears. A strong answer earns marks for these points. Trace the opening chain from sober recollection through drinking, weeping and waking to absence, explaining how repetition makes escape fail. Analyse how the blank wind, failed communication and silence externalise the man's loneliness without simply personifying nature as sympathetic. Evaluate why the poem compares grief with disease, secret-police torture, catastrophe and material pressures when asking what counts as real pain. Examine how rhetorical questions and the metaphors of bedrock and springs leave the reader to judge the depth of emotional suffering. A common slip: Treating the poem as a detached survey of gender roles. Instead, Centre the man's unresolved grief for an absent woman and the philosophical inquiry into pain that grows from it. Exam tip: Use the repeated verb 'drank' to show how form enacts the failed cycle of escape.
Key words
Say what each word means before you turn the card.
Love, absence and grief
Try answering aloud or in your head before turning the card.
Visible and invisible pain
Try answering aloud or in your head before turning the card.
Failed communication
Try answering aloud or in your head before turning the card.
Emotional depth
Try answering aloud or in your head before turning the card.
See every definition
- Love, absence and grief
- The man's unresolved grief for an absent woman, from which the poem's philosophical inquiry into pain grows.
- Visible and invisible pain
- The testing of invisible emotional grief against disease, torture, catastrophe and financial pressure, which supply a visible or measurable comparison.
- Failed communication
- The blank wind and silence that externalise the man's loneliness without simply personifying nature as sympathetic.
- Emotional depth
- The depth of emotional suffering suggested by the metaphors of bedrock and springs, which the closing rhetorical questions leave the reader to judge.
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