R. Hale
Notes
1 In her introduction to the very important
collection, Romanticism and Feminism , Mellor says, "The six male poets
have been heralded because they endorsed a concept of the self as a power that
gains control over and gives significance to nature, a nature troped in their
writings as female. They thus legitimized the continued repression of women
"(8). In The Contours of Masculine Desire Ross argues that the female
companion "allows the poet an external object (as an aspect of her otherness)
to move toward in order to make real (to realize) his internal need (because
she is also seen as an aspect of the self)"(93).
2 Alan Richardson offers a useful warning that "too rigid a dichotomey of
male subject and female object allows us to forget that, even according to
men's depiction of themselves, subjectivity is initially produced through
interaction w ith a woman. The Romantic tradition did not simply objectify
women. It also subjected them, in a dual sense, portraying woman as subject in
order to appropriate the feminine for male subjectivity."(22).
3 Note on implications for culture--Lifton's take on Civilization and
Its Discontents.
4 An apparent difference between making poetry and mourning work is that
making poetry generally involves the recollection of an experience while
mourning involves the recollection of a person. Linda Edelstein has ar gued for
a broader definition of mourning which includes "other changes"which "entail
separations."She sees mourning as an example of "adaptation"or a "striving
toward acceptable compromise with life."She says that "When viewed as reactions
and adaptations to loss and change, mourning can be seen occurring continuously
throughout life"(11-12). With this conceptualization of mourning work as
including experiences and people, the paradigmatic similarity remains that both
poetry and mourning require a person's separation from a person or experience
and the recollection or reconnection with that person which accepts actual
difference.
5 By framing the song with a speaker, Wordsworth illustrates his practice
of poetic identification, of the poet's "slip[ing] into an entire delusion, and
even confound[ing] and identify[ing] his own feelings with"those he describes
in order to make his poetry more realistic (Preface 49).
6 Although Benjamin's description characterizes a mother and her
biological child, her characterization also applies to the "mother"and
"child"in the poem.
7 I should emphasize that the poem is not clear on whether the son is
alive or dead.
