Neutral Tones Flashcards
Context
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was born in Dorset. ‘Neutral Tones’ was written in 1867 and published in 1898 as part of his Wessex Poems and Other in. Dorselection: Much of his work is regarded as pessimistic and bleak.
Summary
1) The narrator remembers a day when he and his lover stood by a pond. It’s an unpleasant memory - it’s clear that their relationship was failing and about to come to an end.
2) He describes his lover’s behaviour - he seems to believe that she found him boring and had fallen out of love with him.
3) Whenever he’s been hurt by love since, he remembers that day by the pond.
Form
FORM - The poem is written from the point of view of a man addressing a past lover. The first and last lines of each stanza rhyme - this reflects how the memory of a past experience returns to affect the narrator in the present. The indented final line of each stanza slows the pace of the poem by creating a pause - this hints at his sadness that the relationship failed.
structure
STRUCTURE - The first three stanzas centre around a specific memory, then there’s a time jump to the final stanza where the narrator reflects on love in general. The poem ends where it began, with the image of a pond - this cyclical structure represents how he’s been repeatedly hurt by love since that day by the pond, and the way that these experiences always remind him of that day.
Language about suffering
LANGUAGE ABOUT SUFFERING - Although the ‘neutral’ tone of the poem is never broken, Its clear that the narrator feels strong emotions about that day by the pond - he uses language associated with pain, death and punishment, which shows that he’s hurt by what happened.
language about lifelessness
LANGUAGE ABOUT LIFELESSNESS -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. The death of their relationship and his lack of hope are reflected in the landscape - it’s bleak, decaying and cold.
quote about romantic love + death?
“the smile on your mouth was the deadest thing”
-the ‘deadest thing’ - implying deception
-> emphasises poets inner turmoil
-brutally dehumanising his lost love interest, reducing ‘smile’ to a mere ‘thing’ drained of life
-filled w a sense of lifelessness, where paradoxical images of death and romantic love merge - illustrates how vibrancy of speaker’s relationship has been tainted by its demise, symbolically dying in his perception.
quote about Longing / Loss + Nature?
“They had fallen from an ash, and were grey”
-The idea of falling leaves = linked to autumn implies that relationship is entering winter & all warmth is leaving it.
-the lost love is made to fade into the coming & going of nature’s processes.
-uses monochromatic colours to suggest one sided & dreary relationship.
-The end & subsequent loss of their relationship have drained the vitality from life - speaker’s disillusionment w love has made world & nature colourless around him.
