19 pages • 38 minutes read
Neutral Tones
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Themes
Passion Turned to Boredom
“Neutral Tones” can be read as poem about the sad conclusion of a love affair that has run its course. Love and/or passion has been replaced with neutrality and boredom. This is clearly expressed in the exchange of dialogue between the couple and the expression on the lover’s face.
The lover’s resigned attitude to the relationship is shown to the speaker through the couple’s exchange of dialogue. Words of love and harmony have been replaced by “some words” (Line 7) that lack any specialness or specificity. They are merely “played between [the lovers] to and fro” (Line 7), a description that suggests rote repetition. There is nothing volatile here. The exchange is neutral, inspiring neither love nor hate. The relationship seems to have devolved into a boring game.
The lover’s facial expression also conveys the truth of the matter. The lover looks at the speaker as if they are tiresome; their eyes seem “as eyes that rove / over tedious riddles of years ago” (Lines 5-6). They are shown as too tired to attempt any strong feeling since they cannot figure out what the speaker wants. This is then heightened by the lover’s smile being “the deadest thing / Alive enough to have strength to die” (Lines 9-10). This image implies a death throe that conveys the falsity of politely going through the motions. This is a couple who has lost their connection. There is no scene of passionate remorse, just a strained “grin of bitterness” (Line 11) and a flapping away in retreat like a “bird” (Line 12).
The lover’s very passivity seals the speaker’s knowledge that the affair was over even before they knew the lover’s passion was placed elsewhere.
The Hindsight of Betrayal
At the end of “Neutral Tones,” the speaker reveals that they have learned “keen lessons that love deceives, / and wrings with wrong” (Lines 13-14). The knowledge has come “since” (Line 13) their last encounter with the lover, which occurred on some previous “winter day” (Line 1). Now, they are remembering that day with the new knowledge about their former lover, and it has changed their perspective. They feel like they should have known that their lover was being false.
The speaker admits that the new information “shape[s] to [them] / [their lover’s] face” (Lines 14-15) as well as the world they once knew. The previous winter day is now shot through with the titular neutral tones, created by dismay. In reality, the lovers met by a pond when the sun was in the winter sky. There was a tree that had lost its leaves. The two talked, and the lover “smile[d]” (Line 9). However, as the speaker now looks back at the event, their remembrance becomes colored with what they see as signs of the lover’s dying interest in them.
Since the speaker now knows that their lover was unfaithful, the day in their memory has become grayed out. The sun’s brightness transforms to a whiteness that is read as “curst” (Line 15) as if “chidden of God” (Line 2). In the speaker’s mind, the divine saw the truth even when the speaker did not. As with the spiritual world, the natural world tried to convey to the speaker the dying state of the relationship. The “sod” (Line 3) showed its thirst for replenishment in its “starving” (Line 3) state. The leaves “had fallen from an ash [tree], and were gray” (Line 4). The speaker now sees the lover has having a grin “like an ominous bird” (Line 12).
All of this shows that the betrayal has deeply affected the speaker’s perception. The once treasured relationship is permanently washed of its color and aligned with death.
Eliza Bright Nicholls as the Speaker
“Neutral Tones” is often read as a biographical poem, and most critics assume that the unidentified point of view is male. The grief and loss belong to the shunned speaker, assumed to be Hardy himself since he broke off an engagement to Eliza Bright Nicholls after a flirtation with her sister, Jane, shortly before the poem’s composition. However, within the same period of 1866 to 1867, Hardy also wrote a series of sonnets called “She to Him,” which biographers like Millgate and Paula Byrnes—as well as other scholars—believe channel Eliza’s perspective as the narrating “She.” By writing so, Hardy was perhaps trying, in Byrne’s words, to understand how Eliza might have felt about the breaking off of their engagement (See: Further Reading & Resources). The existence of the sonnet sequence and its timing may validate the speculations that the speaker of “Neutral Tones” is Eliza.
Hardy’s desire to end the relationship fits in with him not being the speaker of “Neutral Tones”—but rather the wayward lover. This theory aligns with the family story that Eliza kept the engagement ring that Hardy gave her and even visited Hardy after Emma died in 1912, allegedly hoping to rekindle the relationship. In 1866 and 1867, Eliza’s initial anger at the news of Hardy’s wandering attention is seen particularly in “She to Him IV” when Hardy imagines a woman saying, “I can but maledict her, pray her dead, / For giving love and getting love of thee– / Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed” (Hardy, Thomas. “She, to Him IV.” The Thomas Hardy Society, Lines 2-4).
This version of Eliza could very well be the speaker in “Neutral Tones” who notes, “Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, / And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me / Your face” (Lines 13-14). These two references show that the reason for the breakup in “Neutral Tones” is another person and is perhaps another allusion to Hardy’s actions toward Jane.
Another element that would indicate that the poem is from Eliza’s point of view is the religious reference that “the sun was white, as though chidden of God” (Line 2). There seems to have been a growing disconnect in 1866 and 1867 with Eliza’s more devout beliefs and Hardy’s growing agnosticism and interest in sexual openness. The hellish and “curst” (Line 15) landscape could occur in Eliza’s mind if she felt that Hardy had, like the ash leaves, “fallen” (Line 4) in morality.
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