The role of the second woman in the sonnet is that of young virginal spinster: “And one there who soft and smooth as snow/ Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show.” The musical quality of the sibilance in these lines conveys an image of sweetness and purity. Indeed, this woman’s innocence, beauty, delicacy and purity is expressed through the organic and natural image of the “hyacinth.” This suggests the woman is in a pure and natural state and “tinted” with a mere hint of femininity. Hyacinths come in a range of colours such as white, pink or blue pastel shades and serve to convey this woman’s innocence. This is in stark contrast with the colour red mentioned earlier, which represents the colour of the whore. In other words, the role of the woman, who “Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth”, is to be an image-to-be-looked at, an object of beauty to be admired. She is meant only for “show.” This image is the ideal to which unmarried Victorian women had to aspire.
Finally, the third role for women is to be married:
“And one was blue with famine after love,
Who like a harpstring snapped rang harsh and low
The burden of what those were singing of.”
Here we have a woman who had once been loved – she married – but now she is starved of love and affection. Like the virginal spinster, she has no passion in her life. Her life is “blue” with cold and emptiness. This woman does not sing of love, she complains bitterly about the “burden” of living a loveless existence. Therefore, these lines also convey the central notion in the sonnet: that all three of these women, who “All sing together,” are not singing of loved gained, rather, they are singing of a love lost, denied or never achieved.
The married woman, in her bitterness, becomes obese, dull and lazy because of her misery: she “Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife.” Whereas, the virginal spinster goes through life hungry for a love that she never attains: “One famished she died for love.” She dies endlessly searching for what she can never hope to achieve. Whilst the whore through her promiscuity has “shamed herself in love,” which suggests that she has become an outcast by a society which does not love her. Indeed, this is the essence of ‘The Triad’, for it is not a matter of these three women simply being unloved, rather, they feel unloved by a patriarchal society, who phallocentric ideology excludes women from the world regardless of what role she plays in that society.
It is unclear which of the two women “Took death for love, and won him after strife,” or which one of the women “droned on sweetness like a fattened bee.” It could be the spinster or the whore, with the spinster being killed into art, whilst the whore is buried by shame. Meanwhile, the third woman could be the wife, who it could be said, although she attempted to be all sweetness she complained monotonously.
The way the sonnet interweaves all three women together, suggests that they are united in their misery. They are all “on the threshold” of life and they should be facing a profusion of opportunities, however, no matter what role a woman chooses in 19th century Britain, she is “all short of life.” In other words, she faces an empty future with no love, no copy and only abject misery.
