Tempest Essay

How does Tennyson convey Loss of Love in the Poem?

‘Mariana’ written by Alfred Tennyson, is a poem contained with emotional disturbance and loneliness. Tennyson illustrates loss of love through despair throughout the poem. The build up of emotion in the poem makes the reader more aware of the loss love and exaggerates the heart loss in ‘Mariana’s’ life.
Tennyson uses a range of techniques to unfold the emotion in his writing; pathetic fallacy is unravelled through the poem, which helps the reader reflect on her despair. An example is ‘gnarled bark’ this gives the impression that the trees are crackled and broken; all the life has been taken away. Tennyson adds a sense of decay and imprisonment into the poem; he talks about the poplar tree;
‘The shadow of the poplar fell upon her bed, across her brow’
This means that the shadow of the branches were shadowing through the window making an outline of a bar across her body whilst in bed, and symbolising the image of entrapment. During the poem Tennyson uses tones in his writing to make the readers reflect to his poems. He uses words such as ‘lonely, gloomy, clinking and flitting’ to add disturbance to the poem. This is call pathetic fallacy and it unravels throughout the poem as the emotion is gradually building up. This adds to the loss of love by using depressing words to show her sorrow. As the poem progresses he’s setting the image of the evening, this conveys darkness and ghostliness. He adapts the image of ghostliness later on by saying ‘old faces, old footsteps, old voices’ this technique is called parallel phrasing which envelopes the image of a haunted house in Marianas mind. This shows the fear she has in the environment around her, which makes the reader think her senses are confounded to her fears.
The tone of the poem is moaning sound to it, but Tennyson contrasts the feeling with positive verbs like “sweet heaven” which is called a juxt position. This is the opposite of ‘blacken’d waters’. The contrast makes the poem more intense. This makes sense since Tennyson is a musical poet.
Tennyson uses visual imagery such as personification; “till cold winds woke,” this adds human qualities to the wind, which helps the reader relate to the phrase. The environment being described becomes more melancholic in her mind which conveys hers sadness such as the ‘poplar tree’ which is in an ambiguous position out of her window on its own. A tree on its own gives a cold and haunted feeling at night, the boldness of the tree plays with her mixed mind.
The reframe at the end of every stanza gradually changes in the last two verses. By the end she says ‘oh god, that I were dead!’ this portrays her hurt and is the final build up of the emotion. He reflects her feelings perfectly by adding in her own words in every verse.
Tennyson also sets the scene of the dark night by using dissonance such as; ‘when thickest dark did trance the sky’ this shows the distance Mariana has from reality and creates the image of a lost mind after loosing her love. The hurt has over powered her senses entirely and brings her into a world of horror and unhappiness. In relation he describes the ‘broken sheds’ and ‘clinking latch’, which gives a sense of decay around her. This also adds to her feelings by her noticing all the bad around her and not looking at the good, which could be easily altered.
In the style of his writing the language has a set rhythm and rhyme scheme, this adds to the sense of containment, the meter doesn’t change which allows the same tone to run through the poem this conveys imprisonment in her mind. In Tennyson’s verses he uses a monosyllabic rhyming which is more intense. Occasionally he uses polysyllabic rhyming which gives a softer feeling so you can sympathise to Mariana.
Tennyson uses 3rd person in his writing making it ‘she’, telling a story to the readers. He shows isolation in this way; ‘moated grange’ this means the house is cut off from the rest of the world, just like her mind. I can see that her love was fierce and she did not want to end on a note so hurtful.

Helena Hembrow