‘The Voice’ by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

• Love and death

Hardy lived from 1840 to 1928. He was the son of a mason, from Dorset, in the south west of England. He studied to be an architect, and worked in this profession for many years.

Hardy eventually published many novels and include many which are established as masterpieces of English fiction: Far from the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge etc.

Hardy no longer needed to write prose fiction for a living - the royalties from his existing work gave him sufficient income. He had always preferred poetry - and believed that he was better as a writer in this form. He wrote verse throughout his life, but did not publish a volume until Wessex Poems and Other Verses 

Thomas Hardy was married twice - his first marriage, long, childless and mostly unhappy, was to Emma Gifford. They married in 1874. Emma died in 1912, and in 1914 Hardy married his secretary, Florence Dugdale, Hardy died in 1928, aged 87. He had asked to be laid beside Emma, but his body was buried in Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. Only his heart was placed in Emma's grave 

Emma Gifford

• Hardy wrote several poems where he explores the guilt he feels for his neglect of Emma, his first wife, over the latter years of their marriage. He uses his writing to absolve himself of this guilt and come to terms with it.

1st Stanza

• Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,Saying that now you are not as you wereWhen you had changed from the one who was all to me,But as at first, when our day was fair.

1st Stanza• Hardy is the speaker and he imagines Emma calling out to him.

• “Woman much missed how you call to me, call to me” The first word is direct address of "Woman" followed by "much missed." The caesura after these three words separates them and poignantly tinges them with sadness and regret. The repetition of "Call to me" relays a pitiful plea, a painful sense of longing and highlights the strength of his love.

• “Saying that now you are not as you were when you had changed from the one who was all to me”- long lines,regretful tone.

• “But as at first, when our day was fair”. She tells him that she is not the woman she had become after forty years of marriage, but has regained the beauty of her youth, of the time when her and Hardy's “day was fair”.

• Hardy’s relationship with Emma Gifford was not a happy one. They had become estranged to one another.

2nd Stanza

• Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,Standing as when I drew near to the townWhere you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,Even to the original air-blue gown!

2nd Stanza• “Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then”, -

hints of doubt• “Standing as when I drew near to the town

Where you would wait for me; yes, as I knew you then,Even to the original air-blue gown!”

Imagining he can indeed hear her, Hardy implores Emma to appear to him, in the place and wearing the same clothes that he associates with their early courtship.

Remembrance of when they first met rather than when she died.

Lively and optimistic tone.

3rd Stanza

• Or is it only the breeze in its listlessnessTravelling across the wet mead to me here,You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,Heard no more again far or near?

3rd Stanza• “Or is it only the breeze” – Doubts relating to the 1st Line of

the 2nd Stanza• ....in its listlessness/Travelling across the wet mead to me

here.... - mead= (old word for ‘meadow’• “You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, Heard no

more again for far and near?”• Hardy introduces, in the third stanza, the mocking fear that

all he hears is the wind and that Emma's death has marked the end of her existence - that she has been “dissolved” and will be “heard no more”.

• The whole stanza is one long question. The ‘Listlessness’ is embodied in the stanza itself

• The repetition of “no more again” in the stanza's final line emphasises his loneliness.

4th Stanza

• Thus I; faltering forward,Leaves around me falling,Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,And the woman calling.

4th Stanza• This stanza is deliberately more ‘clipped’ and

shorter than the others. The ‘thus I’ is also deliberately used to illustrate the poet’s loneliness.

• There is a less fluent rhythm, capturing the desolate mood of Hardy as he falters forward, while the leaves fall and the north wind blows, as Emma (if it is she) continues to call.

• The poem begins optimistically with a hope that Emma is really addressing Hardy. But by the end, a belief or fear that the “voice” is imaginary has replaced this hope.

Tone

• Haunting and melancholy.• Utilises the supernatural to portray the

tumultuous feelings of having loved and lost.

The Weather• What is the weather

like? • How does it reflect the

feelings of the poet?• Use of onomatopoeia?

How does sounding out the words ‘listlessness’ and ‘wistlessness’ show the effect of the weather on the poet’s state of mind?

• Any other language devices used?