The Importance Of Female Figures In Wordsworth

The female figures in Wordsworth’s poetry, such as Lucy in the Lucy poems and his sister Dorothy in “Tintern Abbey,” are essentially blank, idealized screens onto which the poet projects his musings of nature or his recollections of his past self. Although Wordsworth appears to be enraptured by and loving of these female figures, nothing of their personalities, aspirations, or words are ever revealed to the reader. The elusiveness of these women gives them a two-dimensional quality and makes the invocation of these female figures seem like its sole function in the poem is to be an instrument through which Wordsworth can convey his beliefs. Keats’ poems such as “The Eve of St. Agnes,” “Lamia,” and “La Belle Dame sans Merci” contain contrasting

She is his “dear, dear friend” (l. 116) and he sees much of “what [he] was once” (l. 120) in her. However, Wordsworth has spent the length of this poem giving the reader no hints or clues as to their being a second person present, and when he does refer to his sister he wants to “catch from [her] wild eyes these gleams/ Of past existence” (148-9) rather than actively take any interest in what her goals or feelings about the surrounding nature may be at that moment. Wordsworth here places the fruition and conveyance of his poetical ruminations above fleshing out any sort of characteristics for his beloved sister outside of what he sees of himself in her. One might argue that Dorothy’s being three-dimensional is irrelevant to the meaning of the poem as a whole. It is true that Dorothy has nothing to do with “[Wordsworth’s] boyish days” (l. 73) and that the poem itself is very much a meditation on the journey of a young man rather than a young woman, but in that case it still seems odd for Wordsworth to powerfully have a vision of his former, masculine self when he looks at Dorothy. Because she shows up at such a pivotal part of this poem, it would also appear that Wordsworth feels oddly dependent on his sister for his own fulfillment which contradicts the independence with which Wordsworth lives out his youth in the first part of the

Two things about Lucy are made clear, the first being that she is beautiful. This is seen in nature’s speech in “Three Years She Grew” when nature declares that “‘A lovelier flower/ On earth was never sown” (l. 2-3). Secondly, it is evident that because of Lucy’s beauty and purity nature will absorb her into itself, which both gives her life and restrains her. In “A Slumber did my Spirit Seal” Lucy is “a thing that could not feel/ The touch of earthly years” (l. 3-4) and is thus rendered insensate by nature, yet she continues to “[roll] round in earth’s diurnal course” (l. 7). However, that is the extent of Lucy’s activity or revealed characteristics in these poems. In this way Lucy consistently enters into a relationship with nature that effectively robs her of any human identity apart from what qualities Wordsworth believes nature will give her. It is true that nature appears to be this benevolent keeper who will take Lucy’s beauty in exchange for a life lived purely because it is so aligned with nature, but Lucy herself is evidently nothing more to the poet than someone whom he can idealize as nature’s mistress. Because he holds nature in such high regard, it is understandable that Wordsworth would seek out his ultimate female