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Discovering the Father in William Wordsworth's Poetry and Drama By Discovering the Father in William Wordsworth’s Poetry and Drama by Daniel Ferguson, B.S., M.A. A Dissertation In ENGLISH Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved Marjean Purinton Chair of Committee Rebecca Rickly John Samson Peggy Gordon Miller Dean of the Graduate School May, 2011 Copyright 2011, Dan Ferguson Texas Tech University, Dan Ferguson, May 2011 Acknowledgments I am indebted to Dr. Marjean Purinton for her willingness to work with me a second time in order to finish this study. Her encouragement and suggestions have been most helpful, and this work would not have been completed without her kind assistance. ii Texas Tech University, Dan Ferguson, May 2011 Table of Contents Acknowledgments..........................................................................................................ii Abstract.............................................................................................................................iv Introduction ......................................................................................................................1 Chapter One ......................................................................................................................9 Chapter Two ....................................................................................................................53 Chapter Three ...............................................................................................................103 Chapter Four .................................................................................................................158 Notes...............................................................................................................................196 Bibliography.................................................................................................................210 iii Texas Tech University, Dan Ferguson, May 2011 Abstract William Wordsworth is often considered the poet of nature, but he is also the poet of fathers. This study seeks to support this notion by examining Wordsworth's early and late poetry, as well as Wordsworth's only play, The Borderers. By providing a close reading of texts that involve fathers and their families, this study offers four components in building Wordsworth's poetic definition of father: the Sublime element of Nature that creates the poet; the suffering father who is overmatched in atrophied community; the abandoning father who has left the family in turmoil but can never escape himself; and finally, the child who is father of the man, perhaps Wordsworth's most famous notion of the father. Thus, Wordsworth's poetic definition of the father is quite complex, moving in dramatic swings from grand heights to the depths of despair: Sublime creator to ultimate sufferer and heavenly child to pathetic vagrant. Appearing throughout Wordsworth's works, the father casts a long, polarizing shadow, revealing a poet in the anxious state of revering him for his glorious creation and fearing for his potential ruin. iv Texas Tech University, Dan Ferguson, May 2011 Introduction The Approach It is understandable that William Wordsworth's works have been analyzed repeatedly through both biographical and psychoanalytical lenses. Sometimes the poet inserted himself as speaker in his poetry dramatizing episodes from his own life, including a thirteen book argument on the growth of the poet‘s mind. And surely it is difficult to write about Wordsworth‘s poetry without dealing with the poet himself. His biographical presence looms large over works that include characters patterned after himself and members of his family. And much of his work is about the people and events with which he came in contact, as well as his political views. However, I am more drawn to the works themselves and what they say, especially in terms of the development of families and how they are represented aesthetically, as opposed to Wordsworth‘s actual families. I am interested in the familial constructs as presented in the poetry—constructs of Wordsworth‘s mind. Thus, my approach is perhaps more textual or aesthetic in nature with some emphasis on psychological influences creating familial constructs in the poetry. To that point, then, beyond discovering what the biography reveals about Wordsworth's ideas regarding family, I seek to discover what his poetry reveals about the family. 1 Texas Tech University, Dan Ferguson, May 2011 Specifically, this study attempts to construct Wordsworth‘s aesthetic of the father as portrayed in his works: early poetry, late poetry, and drama. To do so, I look at the works themselves primarily; although, at times I draw biographical connections in order to demonstrate authorial anxieties. Certainly, Wordsworth‘s major biographical events involve anxiety created by the father. Going back to Wordsworth's childhood, it is significant that none of the numerous biographies of Wordsworth attempts to suggest a close relationship with the future poet and his own father. When Wordsworth was just eight years old, his mother died, and his father dispersed the family, leaving Wordsworth doubly hurt. Only five years later, his father died and left his children financially and otherwise dependent on relatives. And of course, years later Wordsworth‘s own initial foray into fatherhood was not at all what he had planned on or hoped for as he had impregnated Annette Vallon in France and was soon forced to leave the country due to England‘s declaration of war against France. His father had, in a sense, abandoned the Wordsworth children twice, and then Wordsworth followed suit by abandoning his first daughter Caroline, leaving her to her mother in another country caught in violent turmoil. Surely these anxieties played on Wordsworth and influenced much of his poetry as much of it, indeed, is about family relationships and abandonment. Beyond the biographical elements, however, I am more interested in father figures created and revealed in the poetic and dramatic works. The history 2 Texas Tech University, Dan Ferguson, May 2011 and the anxiety of influence are certainly there, but what is the result? What is the effect of this anxiety of influence? To discover the result, one must turn to the texts the poet created. Thus, my approach here is to focus on close readings of the texts. I attempt to draw out representations of the father through studies of many of Wordsworth‘s works in order to formulate his literary aesthetic of father. And as the representations of father reveal themselves, we will see that the father for Wordsworth is a complex, powerful force with the dynamic, contradictory responsibilities of both creation and destruction. The Study There are four basic elements to the Wordsworthian father as presented in his literary works. First of all, there is the father who created the poet. However, he is not so much a literal father as he is an abstract entity from nature who feeds the intellect of the poet child. The second component to the Wordsworthian father is the father who suffers. Suffering fathers populate Wordsworth's poetry as much as his daffodils and waterfalls. As such, suffering is a primary characteristic of the Wordsworthian father. A third characteristic is the tendency of the father to abandon the family. As much as Wordsworth's literary fathers suffer, many of them simply leave or give up and die, which has disastrous effects on the family. A final characteristic of the Wordsworthian father is the 3 Texas Tech University, Dan Ferguson, May 2011 famous notion that the child is father of the man. This father is the creator of poets and community. An intense inspection of these patterns of characteristics allows us to unpack the complex and often contradictory father figures so important in Wordsworth's poetry. Chapter one takes an adventurous look at what created the Wordsworthian poet, in his eyes. In other words, who fathered the poet, according to his poetry? Wordsworth argues in The Prelude (1799, 1805, 1850) that his parents were Nature. Thus, following Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry (1757), a work with which William Wordsworth was quite familiar, I break Nature down into feminine and masculine cohorts. Burke refers to the feminine in Nature as the Beautiful, while the masculine aspect of Nature is the Sublime. Therefore if Wordsworth argues aesthetically that his parents were Nature, I argue, through a close reading of the first version of The Prelude (the Two-Part Prelude of 1799), that the Sublime fathers the Wordsworthian poet. I use the initial Two-Part Prelude for a couple of reasons. One is that the initial version shows a Wordsworth closer to the idea of pantheism; thus, it focuses more on the idea that a spirit in Nature, the Sublime, created him. Not that Wordsworth was ever really a pantheist, but as he grew older and more conservative, he backed further away from the idea of a god-imbued Nature. The second reason is that the Two-Part Prelude focuses almost exclusively on the 4 Texas Tech University, Dan Ferguson, May 2011 period of childhood and the foundational father-child relationship; thus, the earliest version is more pertinent to my argument. Chapter two focuses on the suffering father. So many of Wordsworth‘s fictional fathers are men who suffer for their families. They are often abandoned by community, and this abandonment creates an overwhelming sense of helplessness and defeat. A few prominent
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