Wife in London Flashcards
Poet of A Wife In London:
Thomas Hardy
Themes of the poem:
Relationships
Impact of war
Death
Context
“A Wife in London” is a bleak anti-war poem by the English poet Thomas Hardy. It was composed two months after the start of the Boer War (1899), a brutal conflict between the British Empire, the South African Republic, and the Orange Free State. Around this time, one prominent newspaper denounced Hardy as a pacifist.
Form
The poem consists of two distinct sections, each with its own heading: The Tragedy and The Irony.
In each of these two sections, there are two stanzas, all of which are quintains (five-line stanzas)
The form is fairly plain and simple, but the division between the two sections does help the poem frame both the “tragedy” and the “irony” of the story related
Each section contains one piece of communication—the first brings news of the husband’s death, and the second brings his hopeful letter
The form, then, mirrors the mismatched timing of these events by following them chronologically—from one day to the next
The form also contributes to the passivity and helplessness of the wife: the jump from one day to the next means that the reader gets no description of her grief, only the events that cause it
Historical Context
“A Wife in London” was written in response to the Boer War. This was a conflict that took place in what is now referred to as South Africa, and lasted from 1899-1902
It was euphemistically called “The Last of the Gentleman’s Wars,” but it was anything but—British forces fought with groups antagonistic to British rule, and total casualties amounted to 60,000 people
Hardy himself was suspicious of the Empire’s involvement in the area, believing it to be in large part due to the rich resources of the land (especially gold)
In fact, most of the more than 25,000 Afrikaners imprisoned in these camps died due to starvation and disease
Literary Context
This poem is dated December 1899 and is one of a number of anti-war poems Hardy wrote in response to the Boer War conflict
Other relevant anti-war poems of Hardy’s include “Drummer Hodge,” “The Souls of the Slain,” “A Christmas Ghost-story.”
War:
“A Wife in London” is an anti-war poem that seeks to illuminate the absurdity and tragedy that go arm-in-arm with violent conflict
It is a message of war’s hopelessness—how war cuts life short needlessly, affecting not just those immediately involved but those back home as well
The poem argues that war is not just tragic, but also unnecessary, and suggests that people are wrong to think of war as something noble or heroic.
Narrator
The speaker in “A Wife in London” is third-person and detached
It offers no explicit commentary on what happens in the poem, instead functioning as a narrative voice (a choice that is perhaps reflective of Hardy’s career as a novelist)
The distant sound of the speaker’s voice means that the poem lacks emotional engagement—the reader hears nothing from the wife about the sudden onset of grief, and the speaker offers no information about her experience
This lack conjures a sense of futility, and in a way reflects the fact that the husband is just another death among many others
The wife’s voice is completely replaced by the cold, almost bureaucratic tone of the speaker’s voice, which reinforces the idea that she is at the mercy of larger forces that she cannot control
Additionally, the seeming distance of the speaker reflects the way that the wife is isolated from her husband both by his initial geographical distance at war, and, later, by the impossible distance between life and death.
