A Wife in London

1
A Wife in London
2
Historical context

• The Boer War 1899-1902
• It began as a struggle between the British and
  Dutch Boer settlers in South Africa for control
  of diamonds and gold. The British eventually won
  after they adopted a scorched earth policy,
  whereby farms were burned and women and children
  were rounded up in concentration camps.

3
Story of the poem

• A wife in London waits nervously for news of her
  husband fighting in the Boer War. On a foggy day
  she receives a telegram that he is dead. On the
  next even foggier day, she receives a letter from
  her husband detailing his hopes of returning home
  and a happy future together. He writes that they
  will find even greater love when he gets back.
  Sadly, this can never happen.

4
Pathetic fallacy

• She sits in the tawny vapour
• That the Thames-side lanes have uprolled
• Behind whose webby fold on fold
• Like a waning taper
• The street-lam glimmers cold.
• Tis the morrow the fog hangs thicker

• Pathetic fallacy is where the weather and
  landscape reflects the mood and thoughts of the
  character. Hardy used it a lot in his poetry. How
  effectively does he use it here?

5
Sounds and feelings

• A messengers knock cracks smartly,
• Flashed news is in her hand
• Of meaning it dazes to understand
• Though shaped so shortly
• He has fallen in the far South Land

• Hardy chooses his words and their order carefully
  to create sounds that evoke the feelings of the
  character. How has his done this here?

6
Cruel irony

• Tis the morrow the fog hands thicker,
• The postman nears and goes
• A letter is brought whose lines disclose
• By the firelight flicker
• His hand, whom the worm now knows
• Fresh firm penned in the highest feather
• Page full of his hoped return,
• And of home-planned jaunts by the brake and burn
• In the summer weather,
• And of new love that they would learn.

• There is a terrible twist of fate in this poem
  when the dead mans letter arrives. How does
  Hardy show this here?

7
Anti-war.

• Fresh firm penned in the highest feather
• Page full of his hoped return,
• And of home-planned jaunts by the brake and burn
• In the summer weather,
• And of new love that they would learn.

Why is this an effective anti-war poem?