Monique Latortue
ENGL 475
May 3, 2013
Professor Potkay
Wordsworth’s Defense of the Isolated and Independent Child
The independent child is a reoccurring motif in many of William Wordsworth’s poems.
Wordsworth’s usage of children seems to endorse the development of the self through
isolation and self sufficiency. In those poems focusing on the independent child, especially
Ode and Books 1 and 2 of the Prelude, there is little to no mention of a human parental or
caretaker figure. In Nancy Yousef’s book, Isolated Cases, she works to dispel the
counterintuitive human origin myth of the independent youth. She stresses that “human
individuals are born and develop in intimate and constant contact with others, that
dependence is our inescapable first condition and interaction with others necessary for our
survival and formation” (Yousef 1). Wordsworth’s unique usage of Nature, however, casts
doubt on Yousef’s argument. Wordsworth portrays Nature as a sometimes matronly,
sometimes guiding, but always distant presence. Doing so allows him to grant the child a
guide and caretaker while he retains his isolated and independent identity. In essence, the
various utilizations of Nature in Wordsworth poems work as allies to the independent child
motif in order to make the idea seem less absurd.
The relationship between child and Nature in Ode is especially complicated, and must first
be redefined in a positive light. Once the maternal nature of Nature has been pointed out in
the Ode, it can be used to reduce the absurdity of the idea of autonomy and seclusion being
the best factors of development for a child. An initial analysis of the poem hints that the
child, still close to its prenatal celestial origins, enjoys a close relationship with Nature. As
time passes, and the child moves farther away from those celestial origins, the narrator
implies that Nature expels the child from their alliance into the unimaginative world of the
adult due to the fact that the child is unnatural. The idea of the child warranting
segregation from Nature is attributed to the quote, “Yearnings she [Nature] hath in her own
natural kind,” (Ode 78). The narrator’s pointed use of “natural” in regards to what is
keeping Nature’s attention versus the juxtaposition of calling the youth a “Foster-child”
and “Inmate” seems to imply that as time passes the youth becomes more unnatural to
Nature, and must be expelled from her celestial majesty.
The idea that the relationship between child and Nature is negative stems primarily from
the sixth stanza of Ode. The narrator’s original personification of Nature states that
Even with something of a Mother’s mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely Nurse doth all she can
To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came, (Ode 79-84).
It is only after this stanza that analyzers begin to review the poem and retroactively
attribute negative connotations to the relationship illustrated throughout the poem. In Ode,
Nature is usually interpreted as subtly making the child forget its ability to perceive
“glories” and its celestial origins, but previous lines and stanzas in the poem alter the sixth
stanza’s surface meaning. In the fifth stanza of the poem the narrator states that “At length
the Man perceives it [the celestial light of his childhood] die away, / And fade into the light
of common day” (Ode 75-76). The address of the poem’s subject has been changed. He is
no longer identified as a child. Instead with the passage of time he has become a “Man.”
As a man he has lost his youthful ability to perceive celestial light on his own.
Furthermore, the man could consciously perceive that he had lost his ability. Keeping the
context of those two verses in mind when interpreting the lines that describe Nature’s
maternal actions and assuming that the sixth stanza follows the fifth in a normal
progression of events, it is possible that Nature is not taking away the child’s ability to
perceive supernatural phenomena and remember its own supernatural origins, but the
memories of the true majesty of Nature when appareled in celestial light. Like a true
mother, she may be choosing the experience that will cause her child the lesser amount of
hardship, so she takes away the memory of Nature appareled in celestial light. In essence,
Nature cushions the loss of the child’s ability to perceive celestial light by taking away the
concrete memories of what they used to see. The logic behind Nature’s decision being: it is
harder to miss something if you cannot remember the actual thing being missed. The
argument that Nature has made man forget his actual experiences with the supernatural is
further supported by the narrator himself. The narrator begins the poem by stating that he
can no longer see the “celestial light” that appareled Nature, but that is the extent of his
description of his childhood experiences with Nature. He does not give any concrete
description of what Nature may have looked like through a child’s celestial gaze. The
closest he comes to a concrete description of Nature through a child’s eyes are his
identifications that “common sight[s]” (Ode 2) are “Apparelled in celestial light” (Ode 4)
and have the “glory and the freshness of a dream” (Ode 5). The lack of a concrete
depiction implies that not only can he perceive the lack of celestial light in Nature, but that
he can no longer remember how these glories – of Nature – looked. If asked he cannot
describe how Nature looked when clothed in celestial light. In essence, by making the Man
