Womans in the poesy of Wordsworth have ever been the Centre of involvement. It can non be denied that he was really much influenced by modern-day position of adult females in society. Womans in his personal life, besides, had a function to play. But, how did he picture adult females in his poesy? The aim of this paper is therefore to research the intervention of adult females in the poesy of Wordsworth. The findings reveal that in Wordsworth ‘s poesy, adult females are of import but they are ne’er ruling. He maintained this unusual balance in his poesy. Although female figures, in Wordsworth, manifest agony, isolation and disaffection, they ne’er fail to busy the cardinal place. Besides, readers can non but sympathise and fall in love with these adult females. Although Wordsworth was non a women’s rightist in the rigorous sense of the term ; his manner of paying testimonial to adult females, in a patriarchal societal concept, is model.
Cardinal words: women’s rightist, romanticism, intervention of adult females, pantheism
Introduction
William Wordsworth maintained a really cautious attack while portraying adult females in his poesy. They are neither ruling nor devoid of any peculiar significance. Rather, they seem to hold maintained a position between these two extremes. If it is judged from a women’s rightist ‘s point of position, Wordsworth does non truly measure up excessively extremely in the scrupless of his readers. Rather, it would be appropriate to state that the manner he has depicted adult females and the feminine facets in his poesy, have really undermined the feminist causes. In most of his verse forms, we find the female supporter playing a low-level function. Women seem to be synonymous or compared with Nature which can be wholly annihilated by adult male. Besides, in most instances, female characters are in 3rd individual demoing their passivity in the face of the author ‘s self-assertion and self-positioning. Womans have been portrayed as weak, volatile, and something less than homo. While speaking about them, his prevailing accent was on their agonies which really reinforce the historical period ‘s gender stereotypes of adult females as helpless, inferior victims. But, cut downing Wordsworth to a conventional patriarchal villain-as some feminist critics, Page ( 1994 ) for illustration, see him to be- will be excessively rough a unfavorable judgment for person who did non get away the gender political orientations of his clip. It is, hence, justified to profile the intervention of adult females in the poesy of Wordsworth. This paper explores this cardinal issue with mention to a few famed verse forms like “ The Thorn ” , “ Tintern Abbey ” , “ Immortality Ode ” and the “ Lucy Poems ” .
Analysiss and Discussion
Wordsworth ‘s intervention of adult females in his poesy was surely influenced to a great extent by the adult females in his personal life. Womans in his house had to execute two creases of responsibilities: making the wash and taking command every bit good as laboring to do just transcripts of manuscripts. In Dorothy Wordsworth ‘s diaries we find an attestation of this fact as ladies like Dorothy, Mary Wordsworth, Mary ‘s sister Sara Hutchinson and subsequently the Wordsworth ‘s girl Dora and her friend Isabella Fenwick used to supply domestic and editorial aid. But more of import than all these was, possibly the fact that these adult females were the beginning of inspiration for Wordsworth ‘s poesy. They were the 1s who provided emotional and rational context in which he could compose.
If these adult females had direct and positive impact on the creative activities of William Wordsworth, there are at least two more female figures that could hold disturbed his scruples with a sense of guilt and empathy. Wordsworth ‘s forsaking of Annette Vallon, his first love, and their girl Caroline are eventually connected in his imaginativeness to his feelings of forsaking by his female parent ( who died when he was eight ) and to his womb-to-tomb fright of farther loss. Therefore, in his life, there is a self-contradictory sense of forsaking as he had suffered the mourning of his female parent before he himself left Annette Vallon and Caroline. And it will non be improper to state that all these experiences with adult females shaped Wordsworth ‘s feeling about adult females and his subsequent intervention of them in his poesy. That is why the grieving or abandoned adult females in his poetry- in the Lyrical Ballads, in “ Laodamia, ” and in The Excursion- can be seen as looks of guilt and empathy.
The verse forms like “ The Thorn ” , “ Tintern Abbey ” , “ Immortality Ode ” and the “ Lucy Poems ” are the 1s that can give a complete image of Wordsworth ‘s portraiture of adult females. The form that these verse forms set up is that though Wordsworth had ever been really sympathetic towards adult females, he did non believe in their dominant functions in life. The supreme place used to be kept for males.
In “ Tintern Abbey ” , the presence of Dorothy is as a soundless hearer. And this certainly gives a unusual feeling to the reader. He all of a sudden becomes cognizant of the presence of a 2nd individual in the verse form. Initially, the verse form seems to be so much a soliloquy that the sister ‘s presence gives the reader a jar. The silence of Dorothy gives rise to a few inquiries in our head. Is she there merely as a machinery to convey Wordsworth ‘s ain message? Is at that place any deliberate effort to stamp down her voice? Is her sentiment being regarded as something keeping no importance at all? Although, we do non acquire direct replies to these inquiries, we realize that a sort of gender related metaphysics is working behind the intervention of Dorothy. To set it in the words of Day ( 1996:190 ) in the chapter named “ Gender and the Sublime ” in Romanticism, “ precedence and ultimacy reside with the masculine while the feminine is accorded a secondary, supportive function ” . Dorothy is placed as a sort of silent, auxiliary support to the male talker ‘s imaginativeness.
In “ Immortality Ode ” , the ‘Earth ‘ is portrayed as holding some feminine features. As Day ( ibid ) observes, mother “ Earth ” in this verse form is associated with the sensory and natural. But its function in the verse form is limited to a certain point. She is paying compensation to the poet for his irreparable loss and offering solace with whatever she has ;
Earth fills her lap with pleasances of her ain ;
Hankering she hath in her ain natural sort,
And, even with something of a Mother ‘s head,
And no unworthy purpose,
The plain Nurse doth all she can
To do her Foster-child, her inmate Man,
Forget the glorifications he hath known,
And that imperial castle whence he came. ( 79-86 )[ 1 ]
As Day ( 1996:190 ) says,
here, the feminine Earth is seen as inferior to the religious glorification of what is merely her ‘Foster-child ‘ , her inmate ‘Man ‘ , so in The Prelude feminine nature is non of ultimate or cardinal significance. That significance is reserved for the religious, the unseeable, the transcendental, which in contradistinction to feminine nature is associated with the masculine. Nor is it unimportant that that masculinized religious power is described in footings of imperial power ( ‘that imperial castle ‘ ) . In this economic system the feminine is expunged by the divinely sanctioned, masculine, imperial force of spirit or imaginativeness.
The intervention of feminine as sensory and natural is once more reflected in Lucy Poems. Although, Lucy seems to be the cardinal character, she is valued up to a certain point. The male poet ‘s imaginativeness seems to hold occupied the dominant place. The individuality of Lucy has ever been a contention. ‘Who was Lucy? ‘ There is no reply to this inquiry except to state that it is irrelevant. Lucy may or may non hold been inspired by Dorothy Wordsworth, by Annette Vallon, or by another immature adult female. Whoever Lucy is, she remains an elusive figure. Like Dorothy, Lucy is besides tongueless throughout all the verse forms. Wordsworth, excessively, has tried to picture Lucy as an stray and cryptic person:
A violet by a mossy rock
Half hidden from the oculus!
Fair as a star, when merely one
Is reflecting in the sky. ( Lucy Poem: “ She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways ” , 5-8 )[ 2 ]
The image of the half-hidden violet suggests that the poet is non inclined that much to do Lucy known to the universe as she remains ‘unnoticed ‘ . Bing a flower ‘hidden from the oculus ‘ , her exposure, excessively, is besides exposed to some extent. The image of a just but lone star intensifies the same idea- she is beautiful but she is wholly stray which exposes her weakness.
The 3rd verse form of this series to be considered is “ A sleep did my spirit seal ” , where Lucy ‘s individuality under goes a curious alteration. The two stanzas below reveal that Lucy has so become a ‘thing ‘ . Like an inanimate object, she is inactive ; without any force. She is no more of import than ‘rocks ‘ , ‘stones ‘ and ‘trees ‘ that ‘rolled unit of ammunition ‘ the Sun with the Earth itself. And all of these are under the authorization of the existence, which is in every manner, a masculine figure.
A SLUMBER did my spirit seal ;
I had no human frights:
She seem ‘d a thing that could non experience
The touch of earthly old ages.
No gesture has she now, no force ;
She neither hears nor sees ;
Roll ‘d round in Earth ‘s diurnal class,
With stones, and rocks, and trees. ( 1-8 )[ 3 ]
Although Lucy is no more of import than other natural objects, it is the male poet ‘s head that gives her a particular stature in the head of the readers. These descriptions may exercise the fact that Lucy has been trivialized to some extent. But one may reason that they surely do non exhibit the image of Wordsworth ‘s intervention of Lucy. These objects of Nature like ‘violet ‘ or ‘star ‘ can bear some other readings besides. The image of a lone polishing ‘star ‘ , apart from proposing farness, establishes the fact that it had an ‘unrivalled luster ‘ . Both the ‘star ‘ and the ‘half-hidden ‘ ‘violet ‘ attest the fact which harmonizing to Gardiner ( 1990 ) “ while Lucy was everyday to others, she was of supreme significance to the poet. ” The first two lines of the reasoning stanza continue the accent on the universe ‘s indifference to Lucy ; reflected in the unemotional, affair of fact description of her decease:
She lived unknown, and few could cognize
When Lucy ceased to be ;
( Lucy Poem: “ She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways ” , 9-10 )[ 4 ]
But how of import she was to the poet and how acute his loss was to him are clearly expressed in the undermentioned two lines:
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!
( Lucy Poem: “ She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways ” , 11-12 )[ 5 ]
The heartache and hurting felt by the poet is clearly reflected in the words of Durrant ( 1979:77 ) :
In these last two lines, a dramatic alteration, a acknowledgment, is achieved with a sudden displacement of point of position. To one who loved her, Lucy- who has non ‘disturbed the universe’- is immeasurably valuable and though her decease makes no difference to the universe, it makes an unexpressible difference to one individual. The poignance of this acknowledgment is increased by the isolation of the griever ; heartache is all the harder to bear because it is non shared, and because there is no ground why it should be shared.
In “ The Thorn ” , we are introduced to a adult female named Martha Ray who is the cardinal figure of this verse form. Her destiny drags her to the last point of hurt. She has been betrayed and abandoned by her male lover Stephen Hill. But that is merely the beginning of her wretchedness. The full small town accuses her of killing her bastard kid. Apart from this monstrous allegation, there is besides a general intuition of her being a enchantress. The poet, himself, aggravates all these by projecting a cryptic ambiance about her as nil of the birth, being or decease of that kid has been dealt with in concrete footings. And the enigma reaches its extremum when the mossy hill shakes which drives away the villagers meaning to penalize her for her fanciful misbehaviors.
Wordsworth ‘s word picture of Martha Ray raises understanding in us. It is non she who corrupted the love-relationship. Although she has relinquished her virginity, she has done it:
aˆ¦with a maiden ‘s true good-will
Her company to Stephen Hill ; ( “ The Thorn ” , 106-107 )[ 6 ]
Stephen Hill is the 1 who is to fault for what has happened to Martha Ray as he has betrayed Martha and abandoned her on their twenty-four hours of nuptials.
The accusal that she has killed her newborn kid is merely a guess without any base. And the poetic justness finally takes topographic point in the signifier of a supernatural event when the nature comes to the deliverance of the adult female from the nearing rabble. This intercession of nature itself bears out the artlessness of the deplorable adult female.
Wordsworth is successful plenty in eliciting understanding for Martha in the heads of the readers. She is the hapless victim of false and unfair accusal of a male dominated society. She is guiltless ; still she is enduring. The lone voice that is incorporated to her is:
“ Oh wretchedness! Oh wretchedness!
Oh suffering is me! Oh wretchedness! ” ( “ The Thorn ” , 65-66 ; 76-77 ; 241-42 )[ 7 ]
And that reflects Wordsworth ‘s typical form of portraying adult females. And the most interesting point to observe is that in malice of all his understandings, Wordsworth does non confer her with the power to protect herself. A supernatural event takes topographic point but it is attributed to nature alternatively of the fallen adult female.
If Lucy is an stray person in the passion and imaginativeness of the poet and under the constructive influences of Mother Nature, Martha Ray in “ The Thorn ” , although in arrant isolation as she is estranged from the society, is in a much more disadvantageous place. This is, possibly, because she has transgressed the societal system by developing an illicit relationship with Stephen Hill. Although the relationship is something that can non be approved by any conservative society and Martha Ray must be blamed for this, one thing that can non be denied is the fact that her love for Stephen has ever been true. The mental daze and the subsequent lunacy that she experiences after she is abandoned by Stephen are, surely, attestations of her true love. Stephen, on the other manus, has betrayed Martha by abandoning her on the twenty-four hours of their matrimony and by being betrothed to another adult female.
Wordsworth seems to hold done unfairness to Martha by pulling her to the last point of misery. She is the 1 who suffers all the effects of a iniquitous act whereas Stephen is relieved of his condemnable act even from the imaginativeness of the reader. The glowering contrast between these two interventions work stoppage readers with a sense of incredulity. The chitchat and guesss sing Martha Ray go to the atrocious point of killing her ain bastard kid. The full small town unites against her and arranges a rabble justness to penalize her.
At this point, the narrative takes a bend for the better. We experience a sense of alleviation and happen a renewed involvement recognizing that Wordsworth ‘s usual form of portraying adult females has yet been maintained one time more. None but Nature herself comes to deliver the ‘fallen adult female ‘ . The supernatural event that takes topographic point ( the shaking of the mossy hill ) makes the so called ‘justice searchers ‘ retreat.
This sudden intercession of Nature can hold several readings. As Nature, for Wordsworth, is the ultimate moral instructor of adult male, a manifestation of God and “ the ground tackle of my purest idea ” , an act of Nature is really an act of justification. It seems to be bespeaking that Martha Ray is non guilty of the wickedness that the villagers think she has committed. She is guiltless ; hence, she draws all the understandings of the readers. And that completes the circle that Wordsworth has planned for the suffering adult female.
A close observation reveals that even here, the form of portraying adult females is non different from that of other verse forms. In “ Tintern Abbey ” , Dorothy ‘s position seems to be nil more than a soundless hearer. But as the verse form approaches towards its terminal, Wordsworth is found to hold placed her as his other ego, a contemplation of his ain being:
thou my dearest Friend,
My beloved, beloved Friend ; and in thy voice I catch
The linguistic communication of my former bosom, and read
My former pleasances in the shot visible radiations
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a small piece
May I behold in thee what I was one time,
My beloved, beloved Sister! ( 116-122 )[ 8 ]
And the remainder of the verse form is a sort of exhortation that Wordsworth makes to his sister. Dorothy ‘s function in the verse form experiences an lift, a sort of turning in stature. Like Dorothy, Lucy in Lucy Poems, besides, is barren of address. Throughout all the verse form of this series, her being is merely inactive and deaf-and-dumb person. The glory of Nature and the poet ‘s strength of passion are the two major facets busying the cardinal function of these verse forms. In malice of all these, Lucy does non neglect to pull readers ‘ understanding. She becomes an object of love for the readers and remains in their bosom forever.
The character of Martha Ray follows the same form. We, because of our conservative frame of head, can non but fault her for perverting the sacred establishment of love by giving her virginity. We even tend to surmise her of killing her ain kid. Her misery seems to be rather justified. Wordsworth, excessively, participates in this disapprobation by denying Martha Ray a voice ( like Lucy or Dorothy ) ; her lone words, “ Oh wretchedness! Oh wretchedness! /Oh suffering is me! Oh wretchedness! ” ( “ The Thorn ” , 65-66 ; 76-77 ; 241-42 )[ 9 ]are distinguishable and frequently mingle with ululation of the air current. But as the narrative progresses, we begin to see Martha Ray in a different visible radiation. In malice of being true and committed to her lover, she bears the brunt of the treachery. We realize that she is non supposed to be blamed for her bad luck. Immediately, she becomes an object of understanding. When the supernatural event attests her artlessness, she raises herself further in our appraisal.
Wordsworth ‘s position on adult females is reflected in his intervention of Nature besides. Throughout the ages, Wordsworth has been appreciated as a true truster in an extraordinary power of Nature. To him, it is non merely beautiful ; it has besides the power to act upon human life in an impossible but positive manner. Footings like ‘Worshipper of Nature ‘ , ‘Prophet of Nature ‘ and so on are justifiably applicable to him. In those verse forms of his, where Nature is the Centre of focal point, his doctrine sing adult females is non at all absent. Day ( 1996 ) in his Romanticism has discussed this issue in the most convincing manner. In the chapter named “ Gender and Sublime ” , Day has shown how Wordsworth ‘s intervention of Nature is biased by the domination of masculine over feminine. To demo this, he has foremost brought into treatment the theory of Edmund Burke.
Nature, for Burke, possesses both ‘sublime ‘ and ‘beautiful ‘ facets. And they have their distinguishable impacts on the head of adult male. In his Philosophic Enquiry into the Beginning of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful ( 1757 ) , Edmund Burke, trying to specify the experience of sublime, “ radius of an experience of a power that exceeds the quantifiable and the useable ( Day, 1996: 183 ) . This power evokes hurting and panic instead than pleasance and love in our head. The spectator is awe-stricken and what he feels can merely be termed as ‘terrifying bang ‘ which is the consequence of something expansive and commanding. As illustrations of ‘sublime ‘ Burke has cited those that can bring forth an feeling of eternity: “ in natural phenomena and in human buildings, whose dimensions, peculiarly along the perpendicular line, are immense and expansive: in the overpowering mass of mountains or in deep dark caves, in surging edifices, peculiarly ruins, or even in poesy ( such as that in the Old Testament or in Homer ) which celebrates the superhuman or the Godhead ( Day, 1996: 184 ) . And the ultimate sublime object, for Burke, is God. As opposed to masculine gendering of sublime, things which are beautiful have been termed by Burke as feminine and are of a lesser order than sublime.
In Wordsworth ‘s poesy, sublime has ever occupied the supreme place. In “ Tintern Abbey ” he is grateful to Nature for all its gifts-‘sensations Sweet ‘ during the weary hours of metropolis life in London, ‘tranquil Restoration ‘ that passed into his head and made it purer or feelings of ‘unremembered pleasance ‘ that made him execute ‘acts of kindness and of love ‘ . But above everything, he values most ‘that blessed mood’- an ‘aspect more sublime ‘ .
In “ Ode: Hints of Immortality ” the poet ‘s grasp works on two degrees. He is basking and appreciating the sights and sounds of Nature. But amid this joy or felicity of May forenoon, her felicity seems to be disturbed by a sense of loss:
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
-But there is a Tree, of many, one,
A individual Field which I have looked upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone ;
The Pansy at my pess
Doth the same tale repetition:
Whither is fled the airy glow?
Where is it now, the glorification and the dream? ( 51-58 )[ 10 ]
The empyreal facets of childhood which he has glorified throughout the verse form, is no longer there in his full-blown ego. The high quality of empyreal childhood over the ‘feminine ‘ beauty of Mother Nature is therefore established. If we go by Burk ‘s doctrine, we can construe this intervention of sublime and beauty from a gender position. And that Wordworthian form resurfaces once more. There is that grasp of feminine but when there is a inquiry of presenting domination, it goes to the masculine sublime ; to the kid who is:
Thou, whose exterior gloss doth belie
Thy Soul ‘s enormousness ;
Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost maintain
Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read’st the ageless deep,
Haunted for of all time by the ageless head, –
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are laboring all our lives to happen,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ; ( 108-117 )[ 11 ]
The treatment can non be concluded without a mention to pantheism. The thought of pantheism gained through the authorship of Wordsworth. This is the characteristic that has made his intervention of Nature exceptional- much different from that of others. When he looked on Nature, particularly in his mature old ages, he felt ‘a presence ‘ , ‘a sense sublime’-
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated ideas ; a sense sublime
Of something far more profoundly interfused,
Whose home is the visible radiation of puting Suns,
And the unit of ammunition ocean and the life air,
And the blue sky, and in the head of adult male ;
A gesture and a spirit, that impels
All believing things, all objects of all idea,
And axial rotations through all things. ( Tintern Abbey, 95-104 )[ 12 ]
So, Nature was, for him, non merely to satisfy his senses and supply him pleasance ; instead, it was, for him, endowed with a presence- a presence of something Godhead. That is why, it will non be incorrect to state that the experience of Nature used to take him to the pinnacle of sublimity since a Godhead being, possibly God Himself, used to be reflected in his eyes.
Therefore pantheism is nil but an indicant of God ‘s ubiquity in all objects of Nature. The glorification and sublimity of God adds to the glorification and sublimity of Nature and that was, possibly, the ground why Nature provided a empyreal spectacle to him. And since it is empyreal, it is undoubtedly masculine. Nature, which is mere flora and is an prototype of beauty, is, in that instance, feminine. Wordsworth ne’er avoids this feminine nature, but his ultimate compulsion lies with the sublimity of Nature which he worships.
Decision
Romantic literature has ever been enriched by the debut of female figures in poesy. It is true that they have frequently been deprived of supreme places. But it is besides true that they have ne’er failed to pull our attending and understanding. And Wordsworth stands supreme in this respect. He has projected his adult females in such a manner that although they do non keep the laterality in footings of attitude but they are found to busy the cardinal place in the verse form. So, Wordsworth has surely done justness in that regard. Besides, it is undeniable that Romantic literature would hold lost its spirit and appeal if females and feminine qualities were non incorporated into the poesy of that clip. They have non been portrayed to defend the cause of Feminism ; instead they have been incorporated to ease the beginning of a new tendency in literature as opposed to the bland and non-Romantic creative activities of the earlier age. Although William Blake is credited as the pre-cursor of Romanticism, it is with Wordsworth that Romantic literature emerged wholly as a literary tradition. And without the females and feminine features, it would hold ne’er been possible.
