Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Subject matter
What Has Happened to Lulu? is a poem told in a childs voice about his older sister
running away.
A child is asking his mother what has happened to his sister, Lulu. There is nothing in
her room, and her money-box has gone, with only an open window and an old rag-doll
left behind. His mother is crying and burning a note. He thinks he heard voices and a car
in the middle of the night, but his mother tells him he was only dreaming.
It is a first person dramatic monologue that is addressed to the mother of the narrator.
It is almost entirely written in questions, both reflecting the age of the speaker and his
puzzlement at what has happened to his sister. The form suggests the childs innocence,
while allowing the reader to read between the lines and understand what has happened.
Sound
The doubling of the sound in Lulu, together with the high level of repetition of both the
name and its shortening in the poem, create a strong echo of the sound which is also
the rhymed sound in the first and last stanza. This is quite a childish sound, and helps to
create the plaintive note in the childs questioning.
What Has Happened to Lulu? deals with themes of grief and love. The mother is grieving
over her lost child. The fact that the child has run away does not make the grief less
significant. The confusion of the narrator about his or her parents reaction also tells us
something about the nature of grief.
The poem also considers how we deal with children, in dismissing what they have heard
or seen. The child narrator has some valid knowledge of what has happened, but his
mother tells him he dreamed it. The poem raises the question of how the child can react,
when he has been told nothing is the matter, when clearly it is. Ironically the mother
does not know what to do, as the final stanza makes clear.
Context
Charles Causley (1917-2003) was a Cornish Poet and writer. His father died when
Causley was only fifteen years old. He went to grammar school, where getting 10 out of
10 for a sonnet was one of the early signs of his poetical talent. When he was 16 his
mother announced she had got him a job in a builders office, something that filled him
with despair. Later Causley became a teacher.
His work is characterised by its simplicity; his poems for adults are very similar in style
to those written for children. His poetry often has deeper meanings hidden behind the
simplicity. Causley often includes spiritual references, and takes inspiration from the
folklore of his native Cornwall. He often wrote in ballad form, as in this poem.