Time, Nature, and Neutral Tones

With the symbolic images of nature, specifically a pond, a white sun, and grayish leaves that had fallen from an ash, weaved through Thomas Hardy’s “Neutral Tones,” it is no wonder that a reader retrieves a pessimistic message from this poem. And yet, going beyond the pessimistic message within the words themselves, did Hardy mean to incorporate a neutral tone rather than a pessimistic one in this poem? Or did he use neutral-colored tones as a way of presenting a pessimistic message?

Does every loving relationship end because of time? When the leaves turn gray and begin to fall on the ground, near a pond; when one finally gives up on “tedious riddles of years ago”; when that smile once on your face quietly dies into a frown, it is time that takes the toll on the once-loving relationship in “Neutral Tones.” With the recurring, picturesque yet somber images of nature, the speaker shows that every single thing in life changes based on time, just as nature does. Nature’s leaves begin to turn gray and fall during the winter season, just as the relationship has in this poem. Why is the poem entitled “Neutral Tones,” seeing as the message isn’t a neutral one? Perhaps time takes a toll on everything, so there is an inevitability that something, or everything, will end one day. If something is merely “[a]live enough to have strength to die,” the speaker fails to present the happiness that comes with something being alive; the speaker merely shows that everything alive ends with a death. The speaker seems to deliver his or her thoughts in a completely neutral tone of voice, with no anger, no hurt, no resentment, no emotion, even though the words that form the speaker’s thoughts have pessimistic undertones. The speaker seems to have expected the relationship to end, merely because everything has an end to it. Although the first three stanzas arguably describe one specific incident that leads to the demise of the relationship, the stanzas barely seem specific enough for only one incident; rather, it seems to describe an array of reoccurrences that became too predictable. Therefore, the relationship’s taking a downward turn was long foreseen by the speaker.

Is an inevitability of time the only reason the speaker uses nature as a backdrop to compare to a relationship ending? The speaker seems to be trying to lose himself or herself into nature to make the downfall of the relationship appear less pessimistic, perhaps, more neutral, hence the neutral-colored tones of the poem. But at the same time, he or she cannot avoid the reality of the situation, the downfall of the relationship, so he or she continually sees the darkness within nature, shown through the images surrounding a winter day: a pond, a white sun, and a few gray leaves on the “starving sod.” A pond is something that is able to reflect back an image, like a mirror, so one can see oneself and others. And yet, a pond would not produce a clear image. To me, the first three stanzas describe an incident that was a bit fuzzy and didn’t happen in a heartbeat but instead has been occurring for a long time, just as nature doesn’t suddenly change; it gradually transforms. Is the speaker neutral because he or she doesn’t know what to make of the image in the pond that he or she cannot clearly picture? The next symbol in nature was the white sun. It’s almost as if the relationship was something once brightly colored and then turned into the neutral tone of white, “as though chidden of God,” adding to a somber atmosphere.

All in all, Hardy seems to use nature as a way of representing both the fact that time changes everything and the fact that nature can be used as a way of making something seem lighter than it actually is. The image of nature that the speaker pictured during the downfall of the relationship is an image that will stick in his or her mind. As in the last stanza, when the speaker says “Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, / And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me / Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree, / And a pond edged with grayish leaves,” the speaker seems to say that every time he or she goes through a similar situation, the images of the first three stanzas nonchalantly come to mind. (743)