Summary
The speaker describes her tenuous and unbalanced friendship with Hope, a personified figure for the emotion of the same name. The speaker says that Hope turned away from her when she tried to get Hope's attention. She then goes on to say that Hope sings when she is suffering, but stops when she pays attention to the song.
Analysis
"Hope" is about the speaker's unstable relationship with the emotion of hope. The speaker characterizes "her" as a "timid friend" whose flightiness she finds discouraging and confusing. The poem explores how and when the speaker most needs Hope alongside Hope's mysterious refusals of the speaker's attention. It is about when Hope chooses to emerge, and when it disappears.
The poem begins with a personification of "hope" ("Hope Was but a timid friend") followed by a comment on how she watches the speaker ("She sat without the grated den, / Watching how my fate would tend,"). But this watchfulness does not lead to action, as indicated by the way the speaker ends the stanza: "Even as selfish-hearted men." The speaker uses the word "timid" to suggest that Hope is not forthcoming or welcoming. The line "watching how my fate would tend," implies that Hope is primarily observing the speaker, without offering anything. The speaker feels trapped in a prison cell, and sees Hope on the outside ("she sat without the grated den"); however, Hope makes no overtures to the speaker. The line about Hope neutrally observing "how [her] fate would tend" also suggests that Hope never intervened or sought to make the speaker feel better. Even in this opening, the dynamic between the speaker and Hope is a discomforting one. Hope seems to leave the speaker to suffer. In the next stanza, the speaker shows her attempt to get Hope's attention ("She was cruel in her fear; / Through the bars one dreary day,") only for Hope to turn away from her ("I looked out to see her there, / And she turned her face away!"). The speaker complains that Hope's "fear" was "cruel," meaning that her passive observation felt cold and upsetting to the speaker. Then, "one dreary day," the speaker sees Hope "through the bars." Along with the earlier mention of the "grated den," the use of the word "bars" in this line further supports the idea that the speaker feels trapped in a prison cell. She feels that Hope is simply lingering outside, passively observing her. She looks at her and Hope responds by turning "her face away." The speaker seems to be saying that whenever she takes notice of Hope, Hope hides from the speaker. This, to the speaker, feels like an extension of Hope's earlier detached behavior, and it frustrates and baffles her.
She begins the third stanza with a continuation of her earlier critiques: "Like a false guard, false watch keeping." She repeats the word "false" to describe Hope's observation of her because she feels it does not actually protect or help her. From there, the speaker continues emphasize the lack of connection between Hope and herself: "Still, in strife, she whispered peace; / She would sing while I was weeping." The fact that hope only whispers "peace" strongly suggests that it is too soft to be meaningful. Likewise, the fact that Hope would choose to sing while the speaker weeps implies a fundamental disconnect between them. This impression is only heightened when the speaker notes that "If I listened, she would cease," meaning that if she stopped to pay attention to Hope's song she would stop singing. This stanza deepens the characterization of hope as unreliable and indecipherable for the speaker. In each of these moments, the speaker cannot communicate with Hope, as she acts in a way that completely fails to provide the support that the speaker needs.
The poem is written in five quatrains with an ABAB rhyme scheme—two formal elements which remain fairly consistent throughout Brontë's work. The major stylistic move that Brontë makes is personifying Hope. This allows for the speaker to characterize her relationship with Hope more effectively, as she portrays it as a distant and neglectful friend. This deceptively simple choice gives Brontë the ability to make the speaker's struggle with Hope all the more tangible, as she interacts with it like another person.
