The Speaker
In “Neutral Tones,” the speaker puts on a facade of impartiality that doesn’t quite manage to cover his bitter disillusionment in the face of heartbreak. The memory of breaking up with an ex-partner is clearly marked through the use of bland or neutral details: a white winter sun, a few gray ash leaves scattered over starving soil, and a pond. This shows how the speaker has intertwined the symbolism of winter (a time of hardship, sorrow, and endings) with the death of his relationship. He feels forsaken and out of place in life as a result of the break-up. This is evidenced by his fixation on his ex-partner’s “[dead]” smile and by the “God-curst sun” shining in his memory.
One should not equate the speaker with Thomas Hardy himself. All that can be demonstrated in the poem is that the speaker is a jilted lover recalling the day his relationship ended for good.
The Ex-Partner
Despite the fact that there are not many details provided about the speaker’s ex-partner, it is clear that she left a devastating impression on the speaker. This lack of details is meant to highlight the speaker’s apparent neutrality, which ultimately turns out to be a mirage. The speaker recalls the day the relationship ended, meaning that the reader’s understanding of the ex-partner is through the lens of a break-up and all the feelings the end of a relationship can bring: resentment, anger, heartbreak, and passivity.
The speaker remembers his ex’s eyes roving over him in a bored and unfocused manner on the day they broke up. The ex also smiles in an eerie way: “alive enough to have strength to die.” This bitter grin serves as a bad omen for the speaker, and indeed the whole experience of the relationship and its end convinced the speaker that love is deceitful and immoral.
