Thomas Hardy's "On The Departure Platform"

“On the Departure Platform” is yet another account of Thomas Hardy’s ill fortunate luck with women and love.  Once again, the new found partner “who was more than [his] life to [him]” is leaving him.  After reading his other works, such as “Western Circuit,” and “Wessex Heights,” it is noticeable that Hardy never presented love and romance in any perfect or complete form.  The many encounters of love ends up short lived as a passing zephyr moment in his life.  This piece show’s this reoccurring theme that is frequently highlighted in his other works. (1075)

Like the romance in “Western Circuit” and “Wessex Heights,” “On the Departure Platform” portrays a brief passion of love and lust.  In all three stories, it is the woman who leaves the man (see the end of the post for further details).  In this particular piece, the character is left on the platform while “she left [him]” after their last kiss before departure.  The girl’s leaving presence becomes “smaller and smaller, until [his] view [of her becomes] but a spot.”  This gives us the impression that even though she leaves, he is still waiting for her. The fact that he stands there to wait for her to disappear shows his loneliness and wishful hope for her promised return.  Images of her disappearing and “diminishing” into the “hustling crowds of gentle and rough” gives us a feeling that this may very well be the last time he will see her “to the carriage door.”  The tone is quite sad, but also ironic in that it is the man that waits for the woman.  During this time, woman was viewed as helpless and dependent on the support of men.  However, Hardy breaks this tradition as he portrays the waiting man in the place of the leaving woman.

Hardy does a very good job with visual imagery and wordsmanship as he choreographs the scene of a crowded train station.  “Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough… [she leaves] To the carriage door” gives us a sharp visual image of the chaotic nature of a train station and its inhabitants.  People of all kinds “behind dark groups from far and near” with different directions and “[without] interests… apart from [theirs]” pass by randomly as their parting continue.  The industrial times is reflected in these lines as railway trains was the popular mode of transportation and their workings are obstructive just as they are in the way between the man and the woman’s disappearing figure.

As we move on to the fourth stanza, the woman’s return is further diminished as Hardy uses specific words to describe the man’s account.  Although “she would disappear, then show again” he will still “ceased to see” her heavenly appearance of “nebulous white” as she “vanquish quite.”  It is clear in these lines that his hope to see her again is diminished and that he is rather heartsick.  Hardy’s use of words such as “ceased” and “vanquished” reinforces this concept.  In this poem, it is always from the eyes of the man.  In addition, we have no account of the woman looking back or having further attachments to the man, except for the departing kiss.  The focus on just the man shows the one-sidedness of the relationship between him and his partner.

Once again, hanging on to the brink of hope, the character holds on to their promise of “new plans since that fair fond day” and believes she will appear again “in season.”  However, his uncertainty is obvious when he considers that “perhaps in the same manner… But never as then!” she would come back again.  I was able to find a double meaning to this very last line of this stanza.  On the one hand, "But never as then!" can mean that every moment is unique and that special moment they shared can never be recreated.  On the other, it could express his subtle acceptance that she will not be the same the next time he meets her, in that she may no longer be  in love with him as he will be to her.

In the last stanza, Hardy changes tones to converse with the reader to elegantly address the question as to why it will end (“eternally fly”) when it will “repeat” when she comes back as long as he still “love her well.”  The question is self contemplative, rather than a speech between him and a stranger.  The answer Hardy gives is that love doesn’t happen “twice” and that he cannot predict what may happen in the “future.”  Uncertainty is a common theme portrayed in Hardy’s work, and these last lines are yet another reoccurrence.  It gives me the feeling that Hardy (or the character rather) is uncertain in absolute love and long lasting love due to the nature of change.  Ironically, his characters are the only one who doesn’t change for they seem wait endlessly with unmoving love of their "departuring" partner.
(All references above from page 1075 of the text)

For clarity, I want to give a quick reference to other works that was not discussed but briefly referenced in this blog so as to not break the flow of my thoughts.  The following gives examples of Hardy’s other works that show how incomplete his character’s love experiences are:

In “Western Circuit,” Charle’s true love (Mistress Harham) leaves him as she is already married, and that he is chained down to the responsibility of taking care of Anna (who he does not love) as her lifelong husband as punishment for his own lust (Anna is now pregnant bearing his child).
 (see “Western Circuit” e-text)

In “Wessex Heights” verses 25-28, the character remembers and describes his short lived love with “one rare fair woman” in which he was only “but a thought of hers.”  Sadly, he is betrayed by her moving on as he only “enters her mind [while] another thought succeeds [him] that [she] prefers,” although his love for her is still in its “fulness [that] she even did not know” (1074).  In this account, the male character is also left by a woman and the only thing to cure his broken heart is time.

Another interesting observation to note is that this “imperfect love” may have been one of the new movements in early twentieth century literature lead by Bernard Shaw’s paradigm shift.  Particularly similar to Hardy’s poems, Shaw’s “Pygmalion” portrays the untraditional love story as the transformed Liza leaves her most interesting subject, Professor Higgins, even though they were felt or predicted by the reader (such as I) to be meant for each other, disregarding their quarreling nature and differing views.  The authors of the modernistic movement tend to veer away from the romantic love relationship while leaving the reader with uncertainties of the future to promote the mind's imagination to deduce differing outcomes other than the obvious in the traditional works at the time.  It even holds true today as many of us are dissatisfied with the quality of a movie as we walk away feeling the predictability of its plot since it was just another movie with a different shell, only with different actors, settings, and makeup.  The unpredictability and complex but rewarding plot is what really leaves us with feelings of awe, satisfaction, and amazement of the author’s work.