I LOVED this poem... sort of wish I had signed up to read this one. Cole posted earlier about the simplicity of the rhyme, and I agree. I think this nursery-rhyming sing-song tone made it a very captivating and enjoyable poem to read, and I believe that Wordsworth made it so to really drive home this deeper meaning of solitude. Basically, I think Lucy is just supposed to represent the human form of solitude, and although we have no clue as to what happened to her, I think the point is not whether she lived or died, but rather that her inevitable fate was solitude. This was something that no parent, or any other force could stop from happening, as Lucy Gray's path was set out from the beginning.
A few lines that stuck out to me to make my point more clear:
1) No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
2)
But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
Will never more be seen. -again, I know this is referring to her disappearance, but I think it is more telling of her solitude
3) She wandered up and down; 30
And many a hill did Lucy climb: But never reached the town.
I like your read on the poem's fatalism; it captures how the poem comes full circle from the opening stanzas (no mate Lucy knew, no comrade) to the closing ones (she sings a solitary song). Formally, the poem is a ballad wedged in between lyric reflections: the narrator spins the rather unpleasant story of a little girl's death into something that reflects a sense of peace--by the end of the poem, she is incorporated into nature in a way that replicates her seemingly peaceful state of rural innocence. I wonder what the ideological undercurrent of this move is: we might try doing something similar to our discussion of "Old Man Traveling" and ask if the poem would work differently if we deleted the narrator's framing stanzas. If we just had the ballad, what kinds of conclusions might we draw from it? Do those conclusions become effaced by the narrator's commentary? Or do they just take on a different meaning?
ReplyDeleteI think the sing-song nursery tone can have two effects: one is show the beauty of this unique, possibly lonely lucy, and the other as a kind of horror story about a girl plagued with a lifelong solitude. Nursery rhymes can be both creepy or pleasing. I do agree that her fate for solitude was inevitable and this shows a very real choice man/woman encounters during their lives. Many a times someone can find themselves on a path of solitude or feel like their in solitude when surrounded by people based on their beliefs, goals etc. Yes, Lucy has the aura of an embodiment of solitude but when the narrator says "the difference to me," one gets a sense that even though someone (Lucy) is in solitude, this person still has great meaning/effect on someone else. Therefore, no one, based on an affective attachment, is ever in complete solitude as they are emotionally connected to those they know.
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