The Suppression of the Other and Self-Enlightenment in William Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence

My response to William Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence focuses upon the precept that Wordsworth's narrator uses the tale of the Leech Gatherer as a means to achieve ‘resolution' to his own internal crisis. This is highlighted by, in my opinion, the narrator not so much paying attention to the Leech Gatherer's tale, yet instead his pre-occupation with what he wants to interpret from the tale in order to satisfy his needs. I further argue that in doing so Wordsworth's poem constructs the Leech Gatherer as the ‘other', and that his ‘otherness' is suppressed by converting him into a mere instrument by which the narrator attains enlightenment.

Although my reading of the poem is heavily focused on the encounter between the narrator and the Leech Gatherer, this doesn't occur until the eighth stanza. The poem starts with the narrator out for a stroll, feeling "as happy as a boy" marveling at the offerings of nature in the sunshine following a "roaring in the wind all night." What struck me from these opening stanzas was the rhyming pattern used throughout the poem. Set in ‘rhyme royal'   I found the meter both inviting and accessible, which made for an entertaining read from the outset.

However from this pleasant beginning, quite suddenly and apparently inexplicably during the fourth stanza, the narrator undergoes a violent mood swing: ‘As high as we have mounted in delight/In our dejection do we sink so low;/ To me that morning did it happen so.' This sudden change left me quite disorientated and perplexed as to cause of his depression. After re-reading the passage and considering it in the context of the entire poem I felt that this mood swing was the reader's first indication of the narrator's status as a poet. This notion of a poet's perspective remained at the foreground of my reading and I felt constantly reminded that the narrator's subsequent quest for resolution and enlightenment came from the perspective of a poet, not merely an individual. My... [continues]

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