NEUTRAL TONES

CONTEXT

By Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Thomas Hardy was a Victorian novelist and poet. Much of his poetry is autobiographical, about his relationships and failure of his relationships. He famously wrote a great of his poetry about his first wife, Emma, who he became estranged from, and mourned her death for the rest of his life. Neutral Tones, however, was written about a previous relationship that did not last. Hardy was influence by Romantic poets.

THEMES:
Pain, loss, death
Bitterness, Anger
Nature

COMPARE WITH:
Winter Swans
When We Two Parted
Farmer's Bride

The title 'neutral' suggests something without warmth, cold and emotionless. It is the opposite of colourful.

STANZA 1:
The poem begins by setting the scene with a pathetic fallacy. The combination of the pond, winter and white sun create a cold and bleak landscape. In addition, there is a sense of everything dying- the falling leaves, the 'starving sod' - natural elements, once fertile and alive and struggling to survive- symbolic of the couple's relationship.

STANZA 2:
She doesn't look at him directly and hold his gaze, but instead her eyes 'rove'- moving constantly, wandering without fixing on him. He imagines that,
as she focusses on everything but him, she is thinking over 'tedious riddles of years ago'. This oxymoron create rich imagery about the frustrations that are part of their relationship. Tedious suggests dull, repetitive and riddles is something that is a challenging puzzle- both fun and infuriating. These riddles, unresolved arguments have continued to plague them for years. There is no solution.

STANZA 3:
This stanza starts with another strong contrast, this time the juxtaposition of her smile being 'the deadest thing' This image is further extended with her grin of bitterness. What seems to be most painful for Hardy is that she once did smile with warmth and love at him, as it was once 'alive enough to have the strength to die.' This smile, that turned to a grin of bitterness, should have been his ominous warning that the relationship was doomed.

STANZA 4:
This stanza shows a change in his emotion. In recalling some of the details of the day, the language has become increasingly powerful and bitter. Hardy acknowledges that he felt 'deceived' by love, in particular, this relationship. The sun has changed from 'white' to 'God-curst' indicating that his feelings are no longer neutral but angry and inflamed.

Wrings with wrong alliteration emphasises his anguish.

The irregular rhythm of the final stanza created by the mix of enjambment and caesura shows that Hardy begins to be overwhelmed with feelings of anger. However, as soon as this appears, it quickly dissipates. The anger fades using repetition of 'and' - Hardy lists the bleak elements of the scene that day he associates with the futile and empty relationship. Hardy returns to his melancholic, sombre state, gazing at the pond, returning to the beginning. Like Byron he too is caught in a emotional cycle that he cannot move out of.

ORGANISED NOTES:
Neutral Tones is a poem about a painful memory, close to the end of a relationship. It is told from the viewpoint of the poet and has a bitter and resentful tone.

The poem is structured in 4 regular quatrains. This suggests highly reflective controlled thought, as if he has been replaying the memory many times over. The poem has a circular structure, ending where it began, beside the pond. This reveals Hardy's inability to move forward from this memory as the pain is still too raw.

Colour is a central motif in the poem. This is indicated clearly in the title, but colour also features throughout the poem. The colour begins as white and grey, and changes to a God-Curst (suggesting an angry, red inflamed in.) The poem ends with the repletion of the colour grey, showing that he is left again with unresolved emotion.

The poem uses a semantic field of death and lifelessness. Imagery suggesting death appears throughout the poem- the ground is starving, the leaves are grey and have fallen from the trees, the smile is dead etc.

The poem uses a series of opposites to present the relationship. The poem is full of juxtaposition and oxymoron. where there should be love, there is coldness, where there should be intimacy between them, there is 'wandering', where there should be warmth and genuine emotion, there is a forced grin, deception and frustration.

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