At an Inn Flashcards
Summary
Generally thought to be based on Hardy’s own life, the poem describes a visit to an inn, during which the speaker and his female friend are mistaken for lovers—and not just any lovers, but “Love’s own pair!” Looking back on the visit many years later, the speaker laments how he and this woman seemed in love back then but weren’t, and how now they are in love but can’t be together due to distance and the pesky fact that one (or both) of them is already married. The poem casts doubt on the idealized idea of love, suggesting that actual love is more like an anarchic prankster having fun at humanity’s expense.
Autobiographical elements
- Some suggestion that the poem is autobiographical, based on the relationship between Hardy and Florence Henniker. She was the wife of an Army officer and at the time of their visit to the George Hotel, in Winchester in 1893, Hardy was married to his first Wife, Emma Gifford.
- It is often suggested that Hardy fell in love with Florence, who he corresponded with for 30 yrs until her death in1923.
- When the speaker screams in frustration against the “laws of men” in line 38, he’s probably thinking about how society prevents him from being with the woman whom the inn staff mistook for his partner. Indeed, both Hardy and Henniker were married to others.
Historical Context
- In Victorian society, it was inappropriate for a man to go for a drink with a woman if they were not together.
- Hardy if often considered a Victorian realist, examining the social constraints on the lives of those living in Victorian Britain.
- Hardy was an agnostic and it is significant that his speaker questions the influence of much greater forces as a means of explaining the intensity of emotion and highlights his desperation to understand the situation.
‘When we as strangers sought’
Hardy begins in the first person plural ‘we’, indicating that they are a unit of two people, probably the poet and Florence. Their relationship was fraught, despite the initial implication that they were in harmony. The description “strangers” suggests they were strangers to the inn-keepers, but ironically they were also strangers to each other in terms of their failing relationship.
‘catering care’
Hardy uses alliteration to give the opening stanza rhythm. But it also implies hunger; a link to sexual desire as well as food.
‘veiled smiles’
Veiled’ suggests that the keepers of the inn were being tactfully discrete, assuming that Hardy and Florence were lovers. The veil has deeper significance, though, as it is associated with marriage and a bridal veil. Florence, as one might expect of the conventions of the time, wouldn’t accept a sexual relationship because Hardy was married.
‘They warmed as they opined / Us more than friends - / That we had all resigned / For love’s dear ends.’
Hardy hints at the relationship they didn’t have, but which he longed for and which it was assumed by others that they were enjoying. The caesura after “more than friends” shows how he is lingering on this thought.
Note that ‘warmed’ is positive, contrasting with the negative ‘chilled’ in stanza three.
‘And that swift sympathy / With living love’
The sibilant, alliterative ‘swift sympathy’ and ‘living love’ help to create the gentle, rather melancholy rhythm.
Dream-like
‘The spheres above / Made them our ministers’
Hardy wonders whether supernatural powers are willing the two to be together. Though Hardy was strongly agnostic so here he tries desperately to understand how they have me brought together.
“Ah, God, that bliss like theirs / Would flush our day!”
Ironic that the speaker quotes ppl in the pub in the last lines of stanza 2 because they admire the couple and wish to be as happy as they look. They seek what the speaker and his companion seem to have. Dramatic Irony because they are not together.
‘And we were left alone / As Love’s own pair; Yet never the love-light shone / Between us there!’
Personification of Love. The couple were respectfully left alone, in what the observers saw as their blissful state. The softness and warmth is implied by the alliterative ‘l’s in ‘left alone’ and ‘love-light’. The concise, compound noun ‘love-light’ is ironically neat, considering the unhappiness that lies beneath the surface. The exclamation mark reinforces the irony.
‘And palsied unto death / The pane-fly’s tune’
Homophone - pane and pain. Implies the relationship is futile; as pointless as a fly flying into the window pane.
The next four lines are, by contrast, cold and harsh, with hard, plosive ‘b’, and ‘p’ in ‘’breath’ and ‘palsied’. The imagery is of coldness, weakness and constriction, as in ‘palsied’.. The latter means paralysed, a reflection of the couple’s failing relationship.
‘The kiss their zeal foretold, / And now deemed come, Came not within his hold / Love lingered numb. ‘
The inn-keepers assume they have kissed. Hardy structures this sentence carefully, introducing the idea of the energetic kiss, with the strong word ‘zeal’, but then in the third line is the anti-climax ‘Came not’.
The line ‘love lingered numb’ personifies love, and is slow and stretched, with long vowels and hesitant alliterative ‘l’s to suggest depression and unhappiness. The two words ‘zeal’ and ‘numb’ make effective contrasts. It is also misleading, as it suggests not that love remained a long time, but that love ‘lingered’ elsewhere, and did not belong to the couple.
Note also the shift in the narrative voice shift from the pronoun ‘we’ to ‘their’; an indication that the speaker is observing and reflecting.
‘Why shaped us for his sport / In after-hours?’
Reference to King Lear where the King divides his kingdom and makes a mistake of judgement “as flies wanton void are we to the Gods, they kill us for their sport.”
Suggestion that the speaker feels that he is the play thing of God.
‘O serving sea and land, / O laws of men,’
This could refer to the separations in society, like social class, and the attitudes and conventions surrounding divorce. The cosmic imagery in stanza two is picked up again here.
Hardy is angered by the restricting man-made laws that suppress human joy, the particularly restrictive conventions of late Victorian and Edwardian England.
Note the two lines begin with an exclamatory ‘O’, an emotional appeal to the elements and to man. The device of repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of lines of poetry is known as anaphora.
