Dorothy Wordsworth

1
Dorothy Wordsworth
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears The
Sparrows Nest

2
Feminist Critique of W. Wordsworth

• E.g. Anne Mellor
• Wordsworth finally replaces (feminine) nature
  with the productions of the (masculine)
  imagination, inevitably substituting for his felt
  experiences of the physical world a
  linguistically mediated memory of them,
  mediations which confine his consciousness to a
  solipsistic subjectivity, one that is troped as
  male. (Romanticism and Gender, 20)
• Love between them?

3
Wordsworths Love for Mary

William Wordsworth A Poetic Life John Mahoney
Fordham UP, 1996
4
Dorothys Style

• 1. Whats typical of her styles as a diarist?
• 2. How is her description of the daffodils
  different from that of Wordsworth?

• Oct. 3rd 1800
• April 15, 1802, Grasmere Journal

5
Oct. 3rd , 1800 Grasmere Journal ?Ws
"Resolution and Independence" (1802 ?1807)

• Listing the things shes done no closure.
• Detailed about the persons and things she met.
• e.g. The leech gatherer
• Appearance A coat over his shoulder, dark eyes
  and long nose.
• Birth
• Family
• Work, income and injuries
• Wordsworth views the man as having been sent "To
  give him human strength, by apt admonishment".

6
April 15, 1802, Grasmere Journal

• A process of discovery
• Stormy weather
• hawthorn black and green, birches greenish with
  purple
• Into a field (with different kinds of plants)
• A few, then more and more

• I wandered lonely as a CloudThat floats on high
  o'er Vales and Hills,When all at once I saw a
  crowdA host of dancing DaffodilsAlong the
  Lake, beneath the trees,Ten thousand dancing in
  the breeze.