Poetry Analysis: Thomas Hardy’s “Plena Timoris”

In Thomas Hardy’s “Plena Timoris,” the title is a phrase from Latin that signifies “a woman full of panic and dread”. The poem mirrors the diffidence of a woman who has hitherto lived in a roseate world characterized only by positive vibes. Premchand in his novel Godan gives a description on the changes that love undergoes over time and space: “Early married life throbs with love and desire; like the dawn the span of life is suffused with a roseate glow. The afternoon of life dissolves illusion into its stinging rays, but brings face to face with reality.” An incident in the woman’s life changes her outlook towards life and her beloved. Thomas Hardy’s novels are characterized by a pervading sense of pessimism. Thomas Hardy once wrote:” “There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn’t there.”This becomes the lady’s predicament towards the end of the poem. However, Thomas Hardy also mentions that “Fear is the mother of foresight.”

The lovers looked over the parapet-stone:
The moon in its southing directly blent
Its silver with their environment.
Her ear-rings twinkled; her teeth, too, shone
As, his arm around her, they laughed and leant.

The beginning of the poem portrays the lovers as comfortable in each other’s company as they explore the world with their joint insight. They look over the parapet stone, in an act that is unified. The ‘moon’, a pervading symbol of love, foregrounds the scene .The poet utilizes the word ‘blent’ with reference to the moon. The word ‘blent’ comes across as a portmanteau word, a cross between ‘bent’ and ‘blend’. That is, the idea of being bent signifies that life seems flexible now. The moon functions according to its role of what it stands for and blends with the atmosphere of love. It has a silver lining to it –as life is full of hope for the future. The woman’s external appearance is a reflection of her inner well-being and positivism, as her earrings twinkled and her eyes and teeth shone. She feels secure in the warmth of his hands. They laughed and leant in an act of unanimity. The alliteration in the verbs sound their accord and agreement:
A man came up to them; then one more.
‘There’s a woman in the canal below,’
They said; climbed over; slid down; let go,
And a splashing was heard, till an arm upbore,
And a dripping body began to show.

The incident comes as an uninvited guest to their happy home, as a man comes up to them and exclaims: “There’s a woman in the canal below.” When they say: climbed over; slid down; let go”, they connote more than they denote. They indicate the graph of her life that was on a high, then slid down to crash down to her current predicament. The lady is drowned by the harsh experiences of life. The pace at which the tragedy unfolds points to how unpredictable life is at the wink of the eye.The appearance of her arm very blatantly told the story of her tragedy. The visual imagery is effective and brings out the poignancy of the scene. The onomatopoeic sounds add to the effect of the scene. The lady used to wait incessantly for her beloved who had deceived her. Her anguish is described as “hopeless despair”, for it is hope that enables a person to move on in life in spite of all odds. As the sphere of life was ‘mortal’ so were relationships that were not everlasting and were fleeting as life is. More than the death of the woman, it was the death of the relationship that distressed the woman.

‘Drowned herself for love of a man,

Who at one time used to meet her here,
Until he grew tired. But she’d wait him near,
And hope, till hopeless despair began,
So much for love in this mortal sphere!’

She killed herself for the love of man
The girl’s heart shuddered; it seemed as to freeze her
That here, at their tryst for so many a day,
Another woman’s tragedy lay.
Dim dreads of the future grew slowly to seize her,
And her arm dropt from his as they wandered away.

The girl shudders at the very possibility that history may repeat, and that men were generally fickle. The woman who was hitherto enjoying life with her loved one, felt perturbed that below their superficial happiness, such a deep tragedy lay. Juxtaposed against the blossoming of their relationship was the death of another relationship. It causes the lady to contemplate on how the birth of a relationship culminates in the death of the same.

‘Plena Timoris’ is Latin for “a woman full of fear and dread”. This is significant because the whole poem is about a woman who is insecure and anxious about the future that is to come. Therefore, the future seems to be coloured with apprehension and anxiety ,as the unknown lies in store. The lady towards the end of the poem is wary of the future .She removes her hand from him as she feels distanced from her beloved:

And her arm dropt from his as they wandered away.

And perhaps Hardy advocates her outlook as he states: “Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child’s play.”

Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion