How does Hardy portray his grief and loss in The Voice?

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How does Hardy portray his grief and loss in “The Voice”?

The other poem that we have been studying is called “The Voice” and it is about the death of Thomas Hardy’s wife, Emma. The marriage had come to an end and Emma had left Hardy. Later after the split Emma had become ill and she had died tragically. Thomas Hardy had felt remorse and sadness when she had died, as he missed her and wished that they hadn’t parted. He wished their relationship could have been better so that he could have been there at her death. He thinks that she is contacting him as he keeps hearing her and wishes to see her.

In this poem Thomas Hardy seems like he is personally speaking to Emma, who is dead. He keeps calling to her and thinks that she is around him but doesn’t know for sure but he wants to see her “Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,” This shows that he believes she is present around him and is talking back to her as if she were in the same room as him. He also thinks that she is calling to him as he can hear her voice, he thinks that this might just be the wind though. “Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward, And the woman calling.” This shows that the wind is blowing and that it could be making a sound that is like Emma’s voice.

The title summarizes the poem by telling us what it might be about. It makes us wonder about what “The Voice” is and how it could relate to the poem. The Victorian’s used to believe a lot about ghosts and afterlife. Thomas hardy is a prime example as he believes that his late wife had come down from heaven to talk to him. It shows how the Victorians have come to believe in ghosts otherwise he would never have believed that he was talking to his late wife.

Thomas Hardy uses short sentences to build tension and he repeats the line call to me “how you call to me, call to me,” this makes the words call to me stick into your head and makes you wonder who this person is who is calling to him. The “woman much missed” tells everyone in just the first three words who the poem is about and what it is about. It tells everyone that this is a sad poem about death of a woman. It also leaves the reader in suspense as not sure about the details of this woman.

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The poet, Thomas Hardy questions his wife as he would do if she were alive, he does this as he wants her to live again. He referrers to how his wife was when she was alive, that she was all to him “the one who was all to me” this shows he still misses her and that she used to be everything to him at one point. The poet keep tracking back to the time before they had split up, he only refers to the good times and none of the bad time which they’d had. He does this as ...

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