Love is presented in various different ways in Thomas Hardy’s – Neutral Tones . one of the main ways Thomas Hardy presents love is as fake in neutral tones

Thomas Hardy uses similes to present love as fake, this is demonstrated where he says ‘your eyes on me like tedious riddles. In this case a simile is used to compare the loom of deceit or confusion in the persons eyes. Thomas Hardy is using a similarly to compare the other persons eyes to create a feeling that the person is not telling the truth or is hinting at something that might happen. The full statement “your eyes on me were as eyes that rove Over tedious riddles of years ago” give the effect to the reader that their relationship in not going well so the other person is hinting at a possible end of the relationship. This presents the relationship as fake by showing that people who are together and can’t talk about their feelings have to hide what they want to say. The relationship seems to have been in trouble for a long time and the mistrust or fake has happened years ago and not something new.

Thomas Hardy uses a metaphor to present love as fake when he say your smile is dead , a metaphor is a way to describe something but it is not literal. So by saying “the smile on your mouth was the deadest thing” it is not literally saying the simile is dead ( not alive ) , but is implying that the feeling behind the smile is not real and is fake. This presents relationships as fake by showing that the other person’s smile had no feeling and is fake and is just a front.

in Thomas Hardy’s – Neutral Tones he uses the settings to give a sense of foreboding. For example when he says a pond on a “winter day” this is foreboding because it show that something bad will or has happened. Ponds are seen as romantic place / setting where people meet and winter is a time of year where its dark and cold and not very nice. by putting pond and winter together it gives a bad effect to something that is normal seen as romantic and love related because he has done this it gives the effect to the reader that there relationship (the pond) will end or something bad will happen in it (winter).

in Thomas Hardy’s – Neutral Tones he uses even more settings to give a sense of foreboding . This is shown like when he writes the leaves “were grey”. foreboding means a feeling that something bad will happen; fearful apprehension ( wiki ) . this is foreboding because leave are a natural beautiful things that is seen as peaceful and on the other hand the colour grey , just like winter , is dark , dying and is somewhat haunting. so by putting these together makes their relationship (‘the leaves’) natural , beautiful , peaceful and in harmony then by putting  the word grey in the poem gives a sense that the relationship is dying off.  Thomas Hardy put this at the start to show that there relationship died off like grey leaves

in Thomas Hardy’s – Neutral tones he uses he uses time to represent how he feels. he starts of the poem with  saying “We stood by that winter day” the word “stood” is in the past tense, this gives the effect to the reader that the poem is in the past and Thomas Hardy is reflecting back on their moments together. He later goes on to say ” since then” this phrase tells the reader that it is after the thing thats happened and then what he is going to say next will be how his feels now in present tense. in the past tense he talks about leave which “were grey” as ive talked about before , putting a nice beautiful natural thing , the leaves, with something that as dark and could be somewhat haunting the colour grey.  the leaves could represent a number of different things before i talked about it being there relationship but it could also be Thomas Hardy’s happiness / feelings . so in the past when he was in the relationship the leave “were grey” this could mean in the relationship in the past it made him feel bad and unhappy. later in the present tense he talks about “grayish leaves”. where as in the past the leaves “were grey” they have over time changed to “grayish” this could mean that the relationship before where he was unhappy , now that he is out of it he has been getting happier than before. over all the colour of the leaves represent his feelings as they go from him feeling bad , completely grey to now where he is happier greyish

In conclusion Thomas hardy  – neutral tones puts a bad light on all relationships by generalising his bad experience which he describes fake and brutal.