George Meredith’s poem “Modern Love” reveals the pains of a loveless marriage. Using a combination of poignant diction, mood-evoking imagery, and metaphor, Meredith paints a pitiable scene of a husband and wife who have endured years of suffering together for the sake of convention. The scene only becomes more pitiable as the poem progresses, with the second half of the poem seeming even more hopeless than the first.
The poem begins with the husband’s awareness of his wife’s misery. The alliteration in “By this he knew she wept with waking eyes” (line one) dramatically opens the sixteen-line poem—-ironically, the line reads smoothly and almost calmly, as if this is a nightly occurrence for husband and wife. By using the vague pronouns “he” and “she”, Meredith makes the poem universal, so that it could apply to countless other marriages. In an effort to comfort his wife, the husband places “his hand’s light quiver by her head” (line two). Because his hand “quivers”, the diction in this line implies that the husband is sympathetic about his wife’s pain and is afraid of it. Perhaps the husband considered making a sexual advancement on his wife, explaining why she is crying now; his hand may quiver out of guilt for frightening his wife and she may cry because she cannot continue to sleep with a man she does not love. The imagery in the next line “the strange low sobs that shook their common bed” (line three) hyperbolic ally illustrates just how heavily the poor wife is weeping. Her marriage has wounded her to an intolerable degree and she just wants to escape it, but is slow to admit this to herself. The next line describes the sobs are arriving with a “sharp surprise” (line four). This diction suggests that she refuses to confront herself with the fact that she hates her marriage. Given the period in which Meredith composed this poem (1862, during the Victorian Age), convention probably forced both husband and wife into a union neither one wanted, but each saw as a duty because society expected it for them. The wife is so opposed to fully expressing her grief that Meredith describes her as “strangled mute, like gaping little snakes” (line five). The word “strangled” implies force, again alluding to the fact that someone—-most likely their parents or guardians—pushed this couple to the altar against their will. Strangling is usually a quick action, so husband and wife may have been quickly married, as well, so suddenly in fact that they hardly realized what was happening to them. The wife’s silence is “dreadfully venomous” (line six), diction that suggests how harmful the wife’s behavior is to the marriage; her crying only worsens an already horrible marriage arrangement. The fact that the wife lies “stone-still” (line seven) connotes a sense of death, as in this marriage has killed a part of her because it is so tragically loveless. Her “muffled sobs” (line eight) convey her suffocation—-no matter how hard she tries, convention will not allow her to escape this marriage or even to complain about it, so she is doomed to endure it for the rest of her years. Ironically, despite the title of this poem, this modern love is no great romance at all. Husband and wife are more in love with convention than they are with each other. They married because they had an incurable desire to conform to society’s expectations and did not bother to question this expectations. Meredith’s commentary then is that this is not how love and marriage should be.
The second half of the poem, starting in line eight, does not provide any hope for this stale marriage. Meredith describes how the wife’s heart is filled with “Memory” and “Tears” (line nine), as if she is always aching for the happier days of her past. Her tears stem from the realization that she can never return to those joyful times. The next lines states that her heart drinks “the pale drug of silence” (line ten). This metaphor expresses how silence, like a drug, inhibits the emotions and senses. The wife wants to transport herself from this miserable marriage so she can find true happiness. Silence pervades their sleep, which is “heavy” (line eleven), as in heavy on the soul. The couple is “moveless’ (line twelve) because both partners are paralyzed by their melancholy. They reflect upon their “dead black years” (line thirteen), an image that conveys just how bleak and empty their years together have been. Man and wife both carry “vain regret” (line fourteen), which has been written on the wall for years, but neither one will blatantly acknowledge their unfortunate situation. Meredith’s use of the word “effigies” (line fourteen) implies a certain death; since effigies are stone and stone is generally a very sturdy material, there is a certain amount of irony because their love for each other is not permanent since it is not true. The detail about the sword positioned between their effigies again implies an emotional distance between the couple. What is most poignant about the poem is the final line, which reads “Each wishing for the sword that severs all” (line sixteen). They want nothing more than for this marriage to end.
From telling diction to dark metaphors, Meredith employs a variety of different rhetorical devices to illustrate the hopelessness of a loveless marriage. Husband and wife have no romantic interest in one another—they never did and they never will. And what is saddest about their situation is that they are both too apathetic to defy convention and end the marriage.
