Comparative - Sive

Question 1

Mena tries to convince Sive of the match with Sean Dota

Answer 1

• Take heed of a man with a piece of property
• You have no name. You will have no name till you take a husband
• you are a bye-child, a common bye-child, a bastard
• We would beg, borrow or steal, to make a home with a man, any man that would show four walls to us

Question 2

When Sive goes for a walk with Sean Dota, Mike expresses his concern over the match and Thomasheen says this to abate him

Answer 2

What do the likes of us know about love?

Question 3

Mena does not approve of educating a girl from Sive’s background beyond primary school

Answer 3

• School is a place for schoolmasters and children
• Out working with a farmer you should be, my girl, instead of getting your head filled with high notions
• Your uncle and I work ourselves to the marrow of the bone to give you schooling

Question 4

When Pats Bocock and Carthalawn come by the house to inquire about the match Thomasheen displays his disgust towards them

Answer 4

Go on away to yeer smelly caravan and not be disgustin’ respectable people

Question 5

Sean Dota makes a pass at Sive and she rushes home to tell Nanna

Answer 5

You will find that men are that way

Question 6

Thomasheen persuades Mike to open Liam’s letter by arguing that women’s minds are so changeable that Sive could not be trusted to read the letter

Answer 6

A woman never knows from one moment to the next what way her mind is going to act… you must make up the mind for them

Question 7

The scene in which Mena tries to convince Mike to allow the match between Sean Dota and Sive

Answer 7

• The child is born in want of wedlock. That much is well known from one end of the parish to the other
• It is against the grain of my bones woman
• There is the gift of £200 for us… Long enough we were scraping
• She is different. She has book-learning. She will turn a deaf ear to match-making
  It would be like tossing the white flower of the canavaun on to the manure heap
• Who will take her with the slur and the doubt hanging over her
• There is the gift of £200 for us… Long enough we were scraping
• man of straw

Question 8

Mike intends to shave if he has to go and visit the priest to arrange the marriage

Answer 8

I’ll shave if I’m to see the priest

Question 9

When Liam Scuab finds out about the match he comes by and pleads with Mike, saying he will stay away until Sive is a woman

Answer 9

• Do not give her to that rotting old man with his gloating eyes and trembling hands
• Wasn’t it one of your breed that blackened her mother’s name, wasn’t it?
• You’ll live to remember this night
• It is the talk at every crossroads that Sive is matchmaking with Sean Dota

Question 10

Setting of Sive

Answer 10

remote, mountainy part of southern Ireland

Question 11

Liam visits Sive and she tells him about the match before Mike walks in

Answer 11

• I would marry nobody but you, Sive, I love you. How would I marry anybody but you!
• It’s horrible, Liam
• keep away from Sive
• all the one breed
• I am after Sive and nothing more than that. I love her.

Question 12

Nanna finds out about the plan to marry Sive off to Sean Dota

Answer 12

• There is a hatchery of sin in this house

Question 13

Nanne confronts Mike about the match with Sean Dota

Answer 13

• Is there no heart in you at all?
• Your dead sister and my dead daughter will curse it from her grave
• ‘Tis for the best, I tell you.
• There is a sweet thing in their love
• Women must pay for all happiness. That is their sorry shape
• for sale like an animal

Question 14

Sive commits suicide

Answer 14

• She took her own life…the poor tormented child.
• She must have the priest… Holy ground… She must be buried in holy ground
• You killed her

Question 15

Thomasheen comes to the house to convince Mena of the match

Answer 15

• He have the grass of twenty cows. He have fat cattle besides and he have the holding of money
• What is she but a schoolgirl and illegitimate, to crown all!
• Look at the match I made - four cows on the top of a mountain and a few acres of bog

Question 16

Thomasheen comes by the house with Sean Dota to advertise him to Sive and the family

Answer 16

• as deep as a well
• as wise as a book
• as sharp as scythe