Neutral Tones - Thomas Hardy

Neutral Tones - Thomas Hardy

1. Context

   • Thomas Hardy was famous for his pessimistic writing style in his poems and novels.
   • Hardy was very unsuccessful in his relationships, which reflected in his writing. Could refer to a specific relationship or just his view on women in general.
   • Written in 1867, however not published until 20 years later. This could suggest Hardy had an emotional attachment to the poem and his pain was too great to publish it for a long time.

2. Feelings & Attitudes

   • unpleasant memory where It’s clear that their relationship was failing and about to come to an end
   • He seems to believe that she found him boring and had fallen out of love with him.
   • Whenever he’s been hurt by love since, he remembers that day by the pond.
   • The narrator feels bitter about the breakdown of his relationship
   • He resents the lack of real emotion behind his lover’s smile and the way she seemed bored of him
   • The bleak mood and colourless setting show that there’s a lack of hope everywhere, even in nature

3. Key Themes

   • Death
     • Nature
       • Memory
         • Pessimism
           • Bitterness

4. Form

   • Indented final line of each stanza
     • Slows the pace down Creates a pause
       • Hints at his sadness that the relationship has failed

5. Structure

   • The poem ends where it began with the image of a pond
     • Cyclical structure
     • Represents how he’s been repeatedly hurt by love since that day by the pond
       • The way that these experiences always remind him of that day The memory of this day still affects him
         • ‘We stood by a pond’
         • ‘And a pond’

6. Language about Suffering

   • He uses language associated with pain, death and punishment Shows he’s hurt by what happened
   • ‘Like and ominous bird a-wind...’
     • Simile
       • Imagery of a bird flying away
         • Suggests the end of a relationship
   • ‘wrings with wrong’
     • Alliteration
       • Emphasises his pain and anguish
   • ‘God-curst’
     • ‘t’ in ‘curst’ is harsher than in ‘chidden’ in the first stanza
       • This hints that the narrator has become more bitter over time
   • ‘as though chidden of God’
     • Imagines that God has scolded the Sun
       • Adds to the bleak mood Hints that the narrator sees everything in a negative way
   • Religious Imagery

7. Language about Lifelessness

   • Title
     • The ‘neutral’ tone shows the lack of love between the narrator and his lover and the pessimistic way the narrator now feels about love in general now.
   • ‘your eyes on me were as eyes that rove’
     • In love poems, eyes are traditionally shown to be a positive feature but they are shown negatively here
       • He sees the negative in everything
   • ‘lessons that love deceives’
     • Makes a pessimistic generalisation
       • All love is deceptive
   • Game imagery
     • ‘riddles’
       • ‘played’
         • ‘lost’
     • Love should be fun and playful Instead, theirs became ‘tedious’ and they ‘lost’

8. Natural Language

   • It’s bleak, decaying and cold
     • Pathetic fallacy
       • They are emotionally cold towards each other
   • ‘the sun was white’
     • The sun is drained of warmth and colour
       • Reflects how the love has drained from their relationship
   • ‘they had fallen from an ash, and were grey’
     • The leaves are from an ash tree Also links to ash from a fire
       • Their relationship has burnt out and is dead
         • The leaves are grey because they are rotting
           • Reflects how their love has decayed
   • ‘the smile on your mouth was the deadest thing’
     • Oxymoron
     • A smile shouldn’t be dead
     • Emphasises her complete lack of feelings towards him