Poetry - A Wife In London Flashcards
Who wrote A wife in London
Thomas Hardy
A wife in London context
Thomas hardy was born in Dorset (1840-1928). A Wife in London was written in 1899 during the time of the Boer War. Hardy was against war and often presents ware as pointless and destructive.
A wife in London form
The speaker in the poem is an observer. They use detached tone, which represents the Wife grief as an inevitable fact of war. The irregular rhyme and dashed create pauses which force the reader to focus on the tragedy. The asymmetrical rhyme scheme (ABBAB) is broken down only once. In the second stanza, the half-rhyme between ‘Smartly’ and ‘Shortly’ reflects the wife struggle to accept the news.
A wife in London structure
Poem is clearly divided into two parts. Each with its own title. The titles create anticipation and the factual descriptions add ti the speakers detached tone. The images of light (‘glimmers of cold’) and (‘Flashed news’) from the first half of the poem are echoes into the second half- this repetition emphasises how similar the two are however how they are fundamentally different.
Comparisons for A wife in London
Love, Pain and suffering, Death and loss and War (the effects of war). - The Manhunt
Titles ‘|- The Tragedy’ and ‘||- The Irony’
The titles make the two halves of the poem seem distinct acts in a play or chapters in a novel. This first title sets up the expectation of bad news theres a sense of inevitability. The second title creates an uneasy mood.
‘She sits in the tawny vapour’
The wife is presented alone against the backdrop of a bleak city. The fog is yellow and thick making it quite a eerie and gothic scene creating a sense of foreboding.
‘web fold on fold’
This imagery of a spiders web creates this idea that the women is trapped and her loss in inevitable.
‘glimmers cold’
This build up is suggesting there is nothing comfortable or settling about the environment exaggerating the foreboding sense.
‘Knock cracks smartly’
The use of onomatopoeia has a violent harsh effect which contrasts with the first silent scene in stanza 1.
‘Flashed’ and ‘Shortly’
These use of adverbs and verbs are effectively used to metaphorically describe the quick life changing moment of being told of the husbands death at war.
‘Shaped so shortly’
The use of sibilance gives a sense of pace to the line mirroring the urgency of the news.
‘He-has fallen-‘
This use of dashes mimic the style e of the telegram as well as representing the Wife lack of acceptance of the news due to the shock.
‘fog hangs thicker’
The pathetic fallacy is used to symbolise the wife grief
‘His hand, whom the worm now knows’
The uses play on words to describe both the husbands literal hand (which is decomposing due to death) and his handwriting. The vivid imagery is shocking as it highlights the death and physical decay.
