Analysis of Thomas Hardy's "The Voice"
Thomas Hardy's poem "The Voice" presents the melancholy laments of a man who has suffered a lost love. However, there does appear to be a conflict between the speaker’s feelings towards this lost love in the past, present and his future, which develops through each stanza. Initially, his thoughts alternate between fond memories, slight bitterness and regret, possibly indicating that the woman in the poem had ended their relationship. However, the shift in tone in stanzas three and four introduces a slightly unsettling feel to the poem, which in turn invites us to question just who is this mystery woman who will not appear but on the breeze. The disembodied "Voice" of the title suggests that this may not be a straightforward lament of a relationship breakdown.
The Voice of a Desperate Heathcliff?
The opening line imparts the importance of this person to the speaker; the first word is direct address of "Woman" followed by "much missed." The caesura after these three words separates them, and in doing so, 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, reminiscent of Heathcliff’s desperate cries out to Cathy in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, an association that adds a supernatural feel to the words. However, his emotion evolves into a subtle accusatory and resentful tone towards her as she had "changed from the one who was all to me", symbolising a tension of emotions within this relationship.
The Voice of a Supernatural Woman?
The tone in the second stanza suddenly returns to fond and joyful memories. In the line that describes her "air-blue gown!" the exclamatory, repetition of "then" as well as a mixture of enjambment and caesuras succeed in portraying his childlike excitement in recalling her. This allows the reader to ponder on the complexities of their relationship, both past and present, based on this emotive but mixed display. However, an additional perspective can be drawn from the woman’s presence in the poem; her "air-blue gown" suggests an angelic image of floating, lightness and beauty, as if she, in her dress, is intrinsically a part of nature – as air exists around us but we cannot physically see it, so, she too exists for the speaker as a painful and wrenching reality that he can feel but not touch. For the first time we could assume that the woman in the poem is not of this world.
"Heard no more again far or near?"
The third stanza continues and elaborates upon the increasing supernatural leanings of the poem's content. The breeze "travelling" eerily across the meadow seems a strange and unearthly personification. However, as her voice fades and, "dissolv[es]" and the speaker returns back from his internal musings to present reality, he realises he is alone and that nature has replaced her voice that he imagined it to carry, transporting him uncomfortably to the present. In this stanza the use of pathetic fallacy reflects the effects of the sudden swings of emotion he has experienced; he now feels drained like the breeze’s "listlessness" bereft of energy, having acknowledged the fact that she is gone and her voice will be "[h]eard no more again far or near?" Nevertheless, the presence of a question mark indicates his difficulty in letting go of her memory. At the end of this stanza the possibility arises that the woman is deceased and that the speaker is grieving for her, which would explain his conflicting, dramatic and pendulous emotions.
His "Woman Calling"
The regularity of the first three stanzas in metre and rhyme seem to be surprisingly unreflective of his state of mind, possibly portraying his feeling of security in her memory. However, when he finally realises the fact that she is never to return, this forces him into an unbearable reality. The future looks uncertain for him without her and he appears unstable and vulnerable, reflected in the irregular metre of the final stanza. The active verbs in the first word of the second line in each stanza appear to reflect on his inner journey. "Saying," how he misses her, "Standing," a memory of her physical presence, "Travelling," as she has done from him as a result of her death, and finally "Leaves," a pun that displays she now has become part of the natural world, but also that he must leave her memory in order to discover peace for himself. Unfortunately, he seems destined to forever "falter forward" listening for the "wind oozing" her voice with a "thorn" of grief stuck deeply in his heart, and listening to his "woman calling."
Source: Thomas Hardy, "The Voice", in The Norton Anthology of Poetry 5th edn.
Jenny John - I am currently studying English Literature at Cardiff University, and have just finished my first year. I am of course interested in ...
