The poem "Neutral Tones" (by Thomas Hardy) is written from a man point of view where as the poem "Absence" (by Elizabeth Jennings) is written from a woman's point of view.

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University Degree Linguistics, Classics and related subjects

Comparative Analysis of “Neutral Tones” and “Absence”

        The poem “Neutral Tones” (by Thomas Hardy) is written from a man point of view where as the poem “Absence” (by Elizabeth Jennings) is written from a woman’s point of view. The two contrasting points of view give us a good knowledge as to what the end of a relationship feels like for a man and a woman but one of the poems may be more effective in getting the message that the writer intended to across. Thomas Hardy writes about the reasons why his relationship broke up and he reflects on the impact this had upon him. Elizabeth Jennings also looks at her emotional loss but is more concerned with the extent to which she has recovered from it.

        The first verse in Neutral Tones is the scene setting:

                “We stood by a pond that winter day,  

                And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,

                And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,

                         -They had fallen from an ash, and were grey.”

In this verse the Thomas Hardy tells us that it was a winter day, which are normally cold and dark, and that the sun was white as though chidden of God. The words chidden of mean scolded or rebuked by. The writer conveys a sense of coldness in this verse. The starving sod and the fallen leaves from and ash tree had died and begun to rot. These lines give us the sense of death and darkness.

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The beginning of the poem “Absence” is somewhat different:

        “I visited the place where we last met.

        Nothing was changed the gardens were well tended.

        The fountains sprayed their usual steady jet;

        There was no sign that anything had ended

        And nothing to instruct me to forget.”

  This verse is the description of the place where Elizabeth and her lover had last met. She sees that nothing has changed about it the place “the gardens were well tended” and “their usual steady jet” these two things were just the same the last time she had been ...

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The poem "Neutral Tones" (by Thomas Hardy) is written from a man point of view where as the poem "Absence" (by Elizabeth Jennings) is written from a woman's point of view.
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    Linguistics, Classics and related subjects
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