a wife in london

Question 1

author

Answer 1

thomas hardy

Question 2

context

Answer 2

• bleak anti-war poem
• composed two months after the start of the Boer War, a brutal conflict between the British Empire, the South African Republic, and the Orange Free State
• one prominent newspaper denounced Hardy as a pacifist.

Question 3

structure

Answer 3

• poem is visually split into 2 parts, like her life before and after the news of his death
• clear rhyme scheme, can be expected, just as how the tragedy of his death was inevitable

Question 4

paragraph 1

Answer 4

• inevitability of death and grief - ominous language
• ‘tawny vapour’ - dull, foggy, obscurity, mystery, physically shrouded in mystery
• ‘webby fold on fold’ - spider like imagery, sense of foreboding and entrapment
• ‘waning taper’ - light is disappearing, hope is diminishing

Question 5

paragraph 2

Answer 5

• tragedy after his death, any initial hope has been lost with him
• ‘he - has fallen - in the far south land’ - he is universal, anyone in the war, disjointed sentenced, use of dashes could represent her struggle to comprehend the news
• ‘fog hangs thicker’ - repeated from the first stanza, comparative shows the effect post his death, worsening impact of grief, even more claustrophobic
• utilises irony at the end
• ‘firelight flickers’ gentle fricative sound
• ‘in highest feather’ - his enthusiasm juxtaposes her grief
• ‘new love that they would learn’ - true tragedy of his death, unable to do so, can never rekindle their relationship