The Going

This is yet to be handed in for marking and will probable be torn appart by my tutor. I would be interested to hear any comments from other Lit Lovers.

Written shortly after the death of his wife, Emma, “The Going” is a poem of regret and self pity containing many rhetorical questions that can only be answered by his, now dead wife.

The first stanza has Hardy asking Emma why she has left him so suddenly almost without any care ‘as if indifferent quite’. It is almost as if she was glad to leave him and didn’t want to make a fuss, dying ‘calmly’.

In the second stanza Hardy tries to express to Emma how much her passing has affected him. That Emma has left Hardy without giving him the chance to tell her how much he cares ‘Never to bid good-bye’ shows how much he regrets not having expressed his feelings before her death. In the final two lines of this stanza Hardy emphasizes the impact ‘great going….altered all’ has had on him. His life will never be the same again.

The theme of self pity is integrated into the third stanza where Hardy, angry and accusing asks Emma why she made him ‘leave the house’, for a moment, thinking he had seen her in a familiar place. Although this was just a fleeting moment, the thought that he may have the chance to see her once again combined with the realization that this could not be the case, left Hardy sickened.

The next two stanzas are full of remembrance and regret. Hardy thinks back to the days when their love was joyful and life was at its “very best”. Realizing this, Hardy wishes they had made the most of the years gone by. They could have rekindled their long lost courtship together visiting places they had been to whilst in their youth.

Moving from the use of the personal ‘I’ in the fifth stanza that is so often used when grieving i.e. “I wish I had told her that I loved her”, Hardy, in his use of the personal pronoun ‘we’, almost seems to apportion blame on Emma herself for both their failing relationship and indeed for her very death

In the final stanza Hardy acknowledges that he can do nothing to change the past, his missed opportunity to revive their marriage or the death of Emma with “I seem but a dead man…To sink down soon”. He feels his life will not go on without her yet he finishes the final stanza, blaming her for the pain that he feels; he would do to no other what she has done to him “not even I would undo me so”

The poem invokes the reader’s empathy and is easy to read. He expresses his regret and sorrow at Emma’s death as if he were asking her for forgiveness for not doing things differently whist he had had the chance. However one cannot help but question whether Hardy is full of self pity or grief. In conclusion the reader is left to question whether Hardy is nostalgic for what was, and could have been, or is he full of self pity for what is now, wholly irrevocable.

Just some further notes from my revision. Hope it helps!
Stanza 1 - Line 1 – ‘Why’ – blame and urgency, gentle accusation but also blaming himself as he regrets letting her go. Line 4-5 – ‘You would dose...could not follow’ – sentimental.
Stanza 2 - She didn’t say goodbye, he could have prepared himself, and he didn’t notice she had gone immediately. Should he be focusing on the dead marriage? Guilt because he could have done something. Still slight blaming, he becomes selfish in grieving
Stanza 3 - • An element of torment as he sees her during his walk (mixing his memories)
• Line 18 – ‘dusk you used to be’ – the use of ‘you’ suggests she was alone
• Line 19-20 – ‘Till in the darkening dankness The yawning blankness’ - everything is cold, empty and damp once he realises she was never there. No punctuation suggests he feels empty. The loss is having a physical effect.
Stanza 4 - Positive memories – this was the best of their lives. Line 28 – ‘While Life unrolled us its very best’ – the use of ‘us’ suggests the joining of Hardy and Emma. The capital ‘L’ in life shows how great it was at the time. This is the climax to the poem, it is very fast paced.
Stanza 5 - Wonders why, in the latter part of their relationship, did they not speak. Line 30 – ‘dead’ – first time he uses it and he is not describing her as dead, rather the days they spent together as dead.
Stanza 6 - The rhythm has broken down which represents how he has broken down. A disjointed end, it is as if he is choking with emotion.

There is a strong rhyme scheme (trochaic). The rhythm contrasts with the poem, it is jolly while the words are morbid, there is too much urgency and blame.

It should also be noticed that within the poem his memories of Emma are particularly vague and lack any form of distinction.

"swan necked one" is probably the only real physical description that Hardy creates of her, and even this is extremely vague. It indicates that perhaps his memories of her are unclear or somewhat jumbled together.

There is the insinuation that perhaps he is idealising the past, because of the dream-like quality of his memories. Perhaps because the descriptions of her are so vague, it is as if she is already dead to him, a ghost. This re-iterates his sense of loss.

It should be taken into account that this idea of a vague memory of happiness is strongly juxtaposed with the physical landscape, which brings the idea that Nature is unending and will always be there: "red veined rocks far West". Nature is definite, whereas life and love are not.