In a course I am now taking, I have come to admire the wordsmithing of the Romantics. What I came to admire, in Wordsworth particularly, anticipates the technique of Browning and subsequent moderns. This essay was written for that course and I admit that I enjoyed the process. Wordsworth had at least the tenacity to poeticize “in a selection of language really used by men…” This done while treading on the heels of an era defined by exuberance and mellifluous worthlessness (his opinion). He held a role in the formation of what I enjoy most in literature. I concede due credit here.
“She dwelt among the untrodden ways” is Wordsworth’s stab at explaining the troubling uncertainties of which individualism is composed. The poem achieves this through the use of syntactic and linguistic ambiguities that offer two distinct interpretations of their meaning to the reader. In consequence of this approach, the venerated “maid” and the poem itself become symbols for Wordsworth’s imaginings of selfhood and poetic individualism set inside a hostile world.
With the title, the poem opens in an aggressive mood. Untrodden—alone and in its root tread—is a heavy word, implying an element of violence and obstinacy inconsistent with the poem and its imagery. Both the voice of the poem and his beloved are vulnerable, and consequently the speaker seems distrustful of all that encroaches upon this idealized and unfrequented environment. The scene and its contents are to be protected and cherished, just as they are enshrined within the margins of Wordsworth’s poem. This idea, hinted at by the tone of the poem’s title, sets the stage for Wordsworth’s portrayal of an individuality that exists in a threatened state.
The first stanza displays Wordsworth’s manipulation of syntactic form. In its third line, the speaker describes the subject of the poem as “A maid whom there were none to praise/And very few to love” (l.3). With this line, the reader’s attention is held by the difficulty in its syntax. Seemingly, a preposition has been omitted. For is it to be “by whom there were none to praise…” or rather “for whom there were none to praise…”? The problem centers upon semantic duality: what did Wordsworth intend to mean?! Arguably, both possibilities—that is, the insertion of for or by—construct our understanding of the poem. What is suggested is that individuality, for Wordsworth, exists in a social vacuum—it is a maid both for whom none exist to praise and who is praised by none. The reader’s preference of one over the other is just as irrelevant as the phrase’s ambiguity is important—i.e. the paradox within the phrase’s syntax extrapolates itself into our attempt at interpretation and thus informs our understanding—the obscurity becomes the clarity; the meaningless becomes charged with meaning, and we are left with two distinct possibilities that engage in a dialectic to ultimately expand our understanding of the poem in toto.
Here it is perhaps appropriate to digress with the words of Wordsworth’s one-time friend, Thomas De Quincey. He states, “Wherever two thoughts stand related to each other by a law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are apt to suggest each other.” Wordsworth’s poetics operates on this principle. Instead of lending further semantic obscurity, this simple omission offers additional routes of interpretation through variety; what was omitted is simultaneously implied by way of its omission. Thus, considering both options in unison, the maid—virginal and innocent—seemingly exists in an extra-rational and extra-social sphere; she is ignored, yet perhaps remains so only as a result of her self-inflicted exclusion. She is a type and degree of individuality that is easily forgotten in consequence of her infrequency and insignificance—stated: “she lived unknown” (l.9) and has since “ceased” to be (l. 10).
Lucy, rather than being a poetic representation of a specific personage, seemingly becomes a symbol for Wordsworth’s notion of the individual. As the figure in the poem “[dwells] among untrodden ways” (l. 1) and remains “half-hidden” (l. 6), it becomes apparent that she has broken from the confines of conformity in all of its guises. However, Wordsworth seems to focus his poem upon the consequences of this solitary existence. Even the speaker seems to address her from a removed perspective; all description is delivered entirely in the past tense—e.g. “she dwelt,” “there were,” “she lived,” “she ceased,” etc. She subsists entirely apart from the speaker’s physical and temporal plane of existence. Moreover, she is never associated with communal scenes or society. Instead she is invariably equated with singularities in nature: a lone star, and a “half-hidden” violet (l.5-8)—both natural objects that are defined by being singular and distinct.
Arguably, Wordsworth has aired anxieties regarding his own individuality. Presumably Wordsworth—through the speaker—indentifies with Lucy. Perhaps this would explain why the speaker feels that “few” but him “could know” of Lucy’s demise; he maintains an almost uncanny awareness of Lucy’s state at all times, as if she is a component of his own being (l. 9). Thus Wordsworth laments the destruction of individualism, but also anticipates the inconsequential death of his fabricated, and heavily poeticized self. A conclusion that is affirmed in his closing line—“the difference to me!” (l.12) Perhaps Wordsworth doubts the validity of his “natural” individualism and fears the consequences of its implementation.
Masked behind the deceptive simplicity of the poem, Wordsworth is seeking reconciliation. The poem attempts to unite the disconnection one must experience in pursuit of an individualized way of being with the inclusive consciousness required of a poet. For the poet must—as Wordsworth specifically believed—speak for himself while simultaneously speaking for his race. But the two pursuits are mutually exclusive, because the true individual remains, by Wordsworth’s definition, a figure for whom there are none to praise and who is praised by none.
