Wordsworth attitude towards women is becomes very clear to readers in certain poems, such as “Lines” [Tintern Abbey] and “Lucy” poems. The poem “Lines” is a reflection of Wordsworth life, explaining his love for nature as a child and a mature adult. Wordsworth explains how his matured age allowed him to appreciate his younger memories of nature more and how they are his personal escape and distraction from his hardships. When Wordsworth sister Dorothy appears in his poems, it is spoken from her point of view, but only as a reflection of himself five years younger. He writes only how he sees her and his younger self through her. His sister is someone he has spent a good deal of his life with but he only speaks of her in a sense of age, nothing more. He states in the poem how he likes her around because of the reminder of himself, younger, and about what she feels.
In the “Lucy” poems it is difficult to know if the poems are about the women in his life, past or present, or about a character Wordsworth created. There are many signs it could be a little of both, but whichever it may be, it is clear, again, Wordsworth writing relates to himself more than to the female. It is said that Wordsworth was sort of a solitary person and a loner. The reason he is so infatuated with Nature is because it’s somewhere he liked to spend alone, only with his thoughts. At the beginning of “Lucy” poems, Wordsworth writes “Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray: And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day, The solitary child.” Here we see again Wordsworth relating a female character to him self. He continues the poem talking about Lucy being a solitary child (just as he was) and relating the poem to experience similar to his own.
I think Wordsworth attitude towards women was a clear sign of his time. He wasn’t negative or harsh towards women in his stories he just wrote as if superior to them. I don’t really believe this was an attitude towards women, I think it was just all he knew. It seems all Wordsworth’s important influences where women. If Wordsworth had lived today, we might have seen a major change in how women in his poems were narrated.
In “What is a poet?” Wordsworth describes the characteristics of a poet and tells us what a poet does. The poet, he says, is “a man speaking to men,” but a man who is more aware, more sensitive to his surroundings, and better able to express “what he thinks and feels.” Read 1502-7 more than once and get a grip on what Wordsworth is saying about poets (whom he sees as exceptionally important). Then focus on any two of the poet’s characteristics and show them in action in any of his assigned poems.
“What is a poet?” We could define this in many different ways but Wordsworth believes poets were men who differed from everybody else. He believed that poets had almost a sixth sense compared to the common man who were not affected by things poets were. Poets large sense of imagination allows them take a feeling they have and transform it into a story, putting that feeling in the lives of their characters. Poets have much passion for things such as nature and human nature. Poets see things that most of us overlook and analyze things in a way we understand but would never have thought to think. Poets have a great ability to present what they are thinking and feeling, which is why we become so fascinated with their poems. Their poems are forms of expression of self that allows us readers to understand what they or society went through and felt no matter if it is past or present.
In “We Are Seven” the poet, Wordsworth, shows us imagination in his writing and a strong emotion