What Has Happened To Lulu

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.

Form and structure

The poem is a ballad, written in four line stanzas where the second and fourth lines
rhyme. This regular and simple form seems appropriate for the voice of the narrator,
which is of a young child.

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.

Language and Imagery

Imagery
The image of the abandoned bed is the main one, described by the child narrator. The
inclusion of childhood objects such as a rag-doll and a money-box emphasise the youth
and innocence of the run-away Lulu. They are contrasted with the roar of the car engine
heard in the night and the grown-up world that the narrator does not understand,
emphasised by the constant questions. The curtain can be seen as a metaphor for Lulus
new freedom, contrasted by the dust on the shelf that represents her previous life.

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.

Attitudes, themes and ideas

The poem takes an approach that makes the reader work to figure out what has
happened. We have to piece together the clues given in the poem. This is in contrast to
the apparent simplicity of the poem provided by the ballad format and the childs voice.
Doing this also puts the reader in the position of the child, who does not understand
what is going on. We, like the narrator, have more questions than answers. The tone is
one of puzzlement.

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.