Poetry Anthology - A Wife in London Flashcards
(13 cards)
Key themes
War
Love
Loss
Suffering
Structure
2 stanzas with different focuses - the tragedy and the irony
Short lines - abruptness and shock of her news
Enjambment - constant feeling of grief and loss
Key quotes (9)
‘The tragedy’ and ‘the irony’
‘Tawny vapour’
‘Like a waning taper’
‘Street-lamp glimmers cold’
‘He - has fallen - in the far south land…’
‘The fog hangs thicker’
‘His hand, whom the worm now knows’
‘And of new love that they would learn’
Analyse ‘the tragedy’
Somber, devastation, fatal tone
Analyse ‘the irony’
Hope arrives too late
War destroys futures and dreams
Analyse ‘tawny vapour’
Setting foreshadows the tragic news
‘Vapour’ - suffocating, heavy, unclear like her emotional weight
Analyse ‘like a waning taper’
Compares to a dying candle
Time is running out
Fading of life/hope
Analyse ‘street-lamp glimmers cold’
Pathetic fallacy
Connotations of isolation or emptiness
Analyse ‘He - has fallen - in the far South Land…’
Broken syntax and ellipses
Mimics the struggle of her processing and reading the devastating news
Analyse ‘the fog hangs thicker’
Mirrors her deepening grief and confusion
Fog symbolises uncertainty and isolation
Enclosed in a hopeless world without her husband
Emotional impact of the war on everyone, not just soldiers
Analyse ‘his hand, whom the worm now knows’
Disturbing imagery of decay and burial
Harsh consequences of war
Finality of loss
Analyse ‘and of new love that they would learn’
Hopeful tone contrasts with the knowledge that he is already dead
Cling onto moments and memories
Context
Set during the Boer war - people read it during the war - universal experience
Hardy had a very anti-war stance
