The Bounds of Memory
Holly Boland
The relationship between the poet siblings William and Dorothy Wordsworth has been
criticized as unnatural, boundary-crossing, and even incestuous by some. It is easy to read their
poetry with a fixed mindset to finding evidence of a complicated relationship but this prohibits
the reader from discovering the pure simplicity of William and Dorothy’s love for each other,
and countryside around them. William, twenty months Dorothy’s elder, was a published poet by
age 17 in 1787. Dorothy was never and never wished to be published in her lifetime. William
and Dorothy were inseparable after their nine year separation as children after their mother’s
death. They lived, travelled, and wrote together until William’s death in 1850.
The siblings spent most of their time wandering in woods and meadows of northern
England; a lot of their poetry involves the natural world that surrounded them. When William
and Dorothy’s poems are read separately by poet, there does not seem to be a continuous theme
from poem to poem. However, when the siblings’ poetry is read together, a significant trend
appears. Not only do the poems seem to be responses to each other, each poem is a commentary
on the importance memory. Near the end of Dorothy’s life, she concludes that even when
confined to a sickbed, as long as she had happy memories that could be relived, memories could
sustain a miserable life because they offer hope for future happiness. William’s poems Nutting,
and Dorothy’s poem Grasmere- A Fragment, among other pairs of their poems, can be compared
as responses to each other. It is clear and evident through these works that William and Dorothy
worked off each other’s thoughts and used each other’s poems to influence their own. They used
the ever changing natural world in comparison with the constantly unstable nature of human life;
memory is the reliable anchor in life.
1
One of William’s earlier poems, Nutting, is one of the backbones of his later poems about
memory. This poem is clearly linked with Dorothy’s Grasmere- A Fragment; Dorothy’s poem
written about two years later is most certainly a response to and a rebuttal of Nutting. In Nutting,
the speaker remembers a day from his childhood when he ventured through the woods. “Forcing
[his] way, [he] came to one dear nook/Unvisited” (Nutting.16-17) in the woods. He describes the
“virgin scene” as an undiscovered nook with white flowers dotted around the area. He picks all
the flowers but then realizes that the nook is now “deformed and sullied” (47) and no longer
beautiful. He “felt a sense of pain when [he] beheld/The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky”
(52-53) because the scene is ruined.
The poem is a metaphor for taking a maid’s virginity. The speaker heads out that day
with the “eagerness of boyish hope” (4) and finds an unvisited nook, which symbolizes a virgin
woman. He picks the flowers with “a temper known to those, who, after long/And weary
expectation, have been blest/With sudden happiness beyond all happiness” (27-29). This can be
translated to a man having sex for the first time after years of “weary expectation”. The sudden
happiness, presumably the moment when the act is finished, is sudden, fleeting. When the
speaker rises from the nook and finds it destroyed, he is unhappy and disappointed. His years of
“weary expectation” have been wasted on a single moment of joy. He feels no different after this
long awaited event. William here implies that once something has been enjoyed, it is ruined. This
poem is different from later poems of William’s and Dorothy’s because of this implication.
Taking someone’s virginity, or losing one’s own virginity, is a memory that cannot be revisited
because the event occurs only once in a lifetime. William later revisits this poem in other works
and comments on the boyish unawareness of the beauty of nature. He rewrites his thesis in
poems such as Tintern Abbey and I wandered lonely as a cloud to say that memory is the
2
substance of happiness; if one can remember a lovely day on the bank of a river then the dreary
city life with no natural surroundings will be bearable.
Dorothy’s Grasmere- A Fragment responds to William’s Nutting, perhaps not directly but
it is certain that she had read Nutting before writing her poem. In the first stanza Dorothy, or the
narrator, describes a valley with some beautiful cottages “each in its nook” (Grasmere.3). Nook
is a word used in both poems; in Grasmere the nooks are sheltered, in Nutting, the nook is
“unvisited” (Nutting.16) and sheltered by thickets. Dorothy admires more the “lowly shed”
(Grasmere.7); she says the cottage is “a brother to the rest” (8). Dorothy says that a “wonderer’s
mind” might be more “seduced” by other cottages in that valley (15). She does not blame them,
but her “fancies they perchance are wild/-[she] love[s] that house because it is/The very
Mountains’ child” (18-20). She describes the land of that shed/cottage; the land is quite barren
and wind stricken. There is a grove of trees on the property; “a green unfading grove it
is,/Skirted with many a lesser tree,/Hazel and holly, beech and oak” (33-35). The wind cannot
pass through this grove and “they screen the cottage” (48) that Dorothy loves from the weather.
If Dorothy represents the wild mountain cottage, their fraternal relationship, the grove,
and William, the wind, then the following can be found. The nook was completely destroyed by
William in Nutting. In Grasmere, the wind can howl: Dorothy and William can have a very
strong, passionate relationship. That they are brother and sister (the sturdy grove), protects
Dorothy and her wild mountain cottage from the wind, or William’s sexual desires. Simply the
fact that the wind cannot destroy the grove must symbolize that Dorothy and William have a
relationship stronger, complicated, and perhaps than any sexual or marital relationship. Their
minds were completely entwined.
3
Dorothy then embarks on a wander up the mountain side. She reaches a “stately rock”
(Grasmere.59) covered in moss. Near the rock, there is a “silver birch whose purple twigs/Bend
to the softest breathing air” (67-68). Dorothy sits beneath the rock and speaks to it. She asks the
rock “what need of flowers? The splendid moss/Is gayer than an April mead” (77-78). The
flowers are a reference back to Nutting. William picks all the white flowers in the nook, and in
so, destroys the beauty of the nook. Therefore, Dorothy is asking William what need he has for
sexual relationships when he has such a powerful fraternal relationship with Dorothy already
(this is if William is the rock, and Dorothy is the moss). Dorothy is perhaps also denying her
need for romance for she has enough love in her life already. This way, the wind can rage and
howl, and Dorothy will stay on the rock no matter what.
Finally, a voice from somewhere tells Dorothy “Rejoice!” (Grasmere.84). She concludes:
My youthful wishes all fulfill’d,
Wishes matured by thoughtful choice,
I stood an Inmate of this vale
How could I but rejoice? (85-88)
In Nutting, William expresses that his “eagerness of boyish hope” (Nutting.4) is destroyed at the
end of his endeavour, where as Dorothy’s mature wishes are fulfilled (this is also a response to
William’s Tintern Abbey, more to follow). Dorothy rejoices in her relationship with William. She
is an “inmate of this vale”; she and William are bound for life by this relationship. Using the
surrounding nature of their home, she creates a sturdy foundation for their changing lives.
William could not find this in Nutting because he was boyish and blind to the wonders of nature.
William’s memory in Nutting cannot be revisited because he cannot relive the moment of sexual
love, but Dorothy can always relive the memory of William and her relationship as siblings. She
can forever rejoice in the memory, no matter how violently the wind howls.
4
Dorothy and William were beyond the phrase ‘great minds think alike’; they embodied a
relationship where great minds think together and feed off each other to an almost frightening
extent, essentially a symbiotic relationship. Their relationship was passionate, even more so than
a sexual relationship because their poetry taught each other how to survive anything. No
boundaries were crossed, because there were no boundaries to their free flow of thoughts
between each other. Memory is the substance of happiness. It provides hope of future happiness
as well as reassurance of past happiness. The Wordsworth siblings use nature to prove this thesis
because nature is so pure and ever changing. It is certain yet also uncertain. Flowers will always
grow in spring, but the wind may howl enough to destroy the flowers. If one can find beauty in
this, the memories of nature can provide eternal happiness. Nature is in that case, just like human
nature. William and Dorothy will always be brother and sister, but they may not always have
each other. If William and Dorothy can rejoice in the former, the latter is trivial. Some
fundamentalist readers of their poetry may argue that the poems are only about nature, and not
the repercussions nature has on one’s mind, memory, and happiness. These readers are limited to
the beauty William and Dorothy offer. They will perhaps see the beauty in nature, but will never
think “what wealth the show to [them will bring]” (Cloud.18). William and Dorothy withstood
the violent winds of life together and died within five years of each late in life, aged 80 and 85
respectively. Their memories have forever lived on, bound in the pages of their many cherished
poems.
Bibliography
·Dorothy Wordsworth, Grasmere- A Fragment (c. 1800), [New York: Norton Anthology, 2006].
·William Wordsworth, Nutting (1798), I wandered lonely as a cloud (c. 1804), [New York:
Norton Anthology, 2006].
5
Word count: 1626 including bibliography.
Note: line numbers of poems may vary depending on source.
6