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Oh for the coming of that glorious time When, prizing knowledge as her noblest wealth And best protection, this Imperial Realm, While she exacts allegiance, shall admit An obligation, on her part,to teach Them who are born to serve her and obey; Binding herself by Statute to secure For all the Children whom her soil maintains The rudiments of letters, and to inform The mind with moral and religious truth,'" (The Excursion Bk IX ll 292 --297)
Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow give us the following explication of what Michel Foucault describes as "The Repressive Hypothesis." It is the notion that "truth is intrinsically opposed to power and therefore inevitably plays a liberating role" (Dreyfus and Rabinow 127.) As I examine some facets of William Wordsworth's position on elementary education, I will argue that what otherwise might appear to be radically progressive, emanciptatory, an institutionalised effort to empower the underprivileged is in fact informed by a desire to create a very special kind of politically docile -- that is to say, teachable, manageable -- subject. Wordsworth's educational sympathies, theories reflecting his enthusiasm for the Rev. Andrew Bell's so-called Madras system indicate the poet's growing awareness not only of the political usefulness of education, but also of the specific disciplinary regimes by which that instruction could be delivered. John Lawson and Harold Silver describe the typical monitorial school as follows:
[These] schools were conducted in single large schoolrooms, in which the master could keep the whole school under scrutiny. Under Bell's arrangement the desks for writing occupied the outer space, facing the wall, and the central area was used by classes of children standing in squares for instruction by their monitors. ... The monitor drilled his group in work in which he had previously been drilled by his master. General monitors supervised the overall work in the different subjects as well as the general discipline (Lawson and Silver, 242.)
It immediately becomes clear from this necessarily brief description, that the emphasis in the monitorial school lay with observation, discipline, efficiency. These are fundamentals of the system to which I will shortly return. It is the province of education," Wordsworth writes in his pamphlet, A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff "to rectify the erroneous notions which a habit of oppression, and even resistance, may have created, ... it belongs to her to create a race of men (my emphasis) who, truly free, will look upon their fathers as only enfranchised" (Owen and Smyser 34.) The deceivingly radical tone overlays a fundamental conservative reaction. Education, that is to say, the instillation of "truth", masquerades as an agent of change. Subsuming his envisaged purpose in his rhetoric, Wordsworth seems to bring what he casts as education's emancipatory influence into play from the outside, as it were. Thus he is able to camouflage its function as a component of power, a product of those forces that constitute the very relations and operation of power, portraying education, rather, as an opponent of precisely the same regime of which it is an integral part. He is explicit. Following oppression's defeat, the task that befalls "education" is the creation of a "race of men". It is a task for which the Reverend Andrew Bell's Madras system of education with its internalized disciplines, its student monitors, its panoptic architecture, is well suited. Madras provides a blueprint for the exercise of power by which individuals may be shaped into objects of conformity.
Wordsworth did not read Bell's treatise, An Experiment in Education made at the Asylum of Madras, until his composition of The Excursion was well advanced. However, in a letter of March 13 1815 written shortly after The Excursion was published, Wordsworth enthuses to Thomas Poole about Bell, taking care to inform his correspondent that the poem stresses the benefits that Wordsworth believes to be inherent in Madras: "If you have read my Poem, the `Excursion', you will there see what importance I attach to the Madras system" (Moorman and Hill 210.) "Next to the art of Printing," he writes, "it is the noblest invention for the improvement of the human species. Our population in this neighbourhood is not sufficient to apply it on a large scale; but great benefit has been derived from it even upon a small one" (210.) Subordinated by his enthusiastic recommendations is the fact that it is the process, the efficiency of the system that he praises. Moreover, in asserting that it is humans as a "species" that will benefit, Wordsworth's terminology reveals the impetus to his earlier enthusiasm that arises from an arguably increasing interest in observation and control. It suggests too a movement toward a society typified by what Foucault identifies as "individualization" (DP 193.) The creation of a large obedient or "Docile" body requires that discipline be imposed individually: "as power becomes more anonymous and more functional, those on whom it is exercised tend to be more strongly individualized; it is exercised by surveillance rather than ceremonies, by observation rather than commemorative accounts ..." (193.) The object, then, is to create a useful, "productive" body. "Instead of bending all its subjects into a single uniform mass, it separates, analyses, differentiates, carries its procedures of decomposition to the point of necessary and sufficient single units" (170.) Exemplifying "Hierarchical observation" (170), the pupil-tutor method employed in Bell's system permits the "improvement of the human speci es" by delivering individual attention in the most economic way possible. Nowhere in his letter does Wordsworth mention that the provision of education is in and of itself his ultimate end. The Wanderer's vision of the future, as the introductory quote makes clear, is one in which the State would provide "The rudiments of Letters." Bell's experiments, -- and it is important to remember that "experiment" is precisely the word used by Bell -- experiments so enthusiastically approved by Wordsworth, evidence the potential for that vision not merely to be realized, but realized economically and efficiently. Generalisation and conformity propel Madras, and Bell's method is, therefore, most suitable for the delivery of a large scale national education system with all its attendant disciplinary effects, the purpose of which is grounded in a desire to promote not only "The rudiments of Letters," but also a conservative politico-religious vision of the state.
In Wordsworth's Historical Imagination, David Simpson devotes some space to an overview of Bell and his Madras system, acknowledging on the one hand that "Wordsworth's thoughts on education are somewhat confused in their finer details and implications even as his general priorities are clear" (198), and arguing on the other that the Wanderer signifies an "appeal for a national education founded in the ideal of universal literacy" (199.) To what end, though, is this "universal appeal" to be applied? Undoubtedly concerned with maintaining the established social order, universal literacy for Bell is not, apparently, synonymous with emancipation, as the following quotation makes clear:
Utopian schemes, for the universal diffusion of general knowledge, would soon realise the fable of the belly and other members of the body, and confound that distinction of ranks and classes of society, on which the general welfare hinges, and the happiness of the lower orders, no less than that of the higher, depends (197.)
Bell, then, explicitly states what much of Wordsworth's poem and private letters may be seen to imply. Simpson argues that the Wanderer's intention that "the poor" be taught "to `write and cypher'" (197) is not replicated in Bell's intentions. This may be imputing too large a spirit of social generosity to the Wanderer. Undeniably, as Simpson illustrates, Bell saw the "danger of `elevating, by an indiscriminate education, the minds of those doomed to the drudgery of daily labour, and thereby rendering them discontented'" (197.) But is the Wanderer's statement, with its multiplicity of implications, its ideological ambiguities, essentially different from Bell's more explicitly stated position? That it is "The rudiments of letters" that would be taught surely constitutes a very limited conceptual space within which a universal system of education may operate, and surely de-stabilizes what otherwise appears as the Wanderer's altruism.
Where should we look to determine the motive for Wordsworth's interest in, and enthusiasm for, Madras? A segment of the population that was both vagrant and mobile had been a cause for concern in England since before the Elizabethan era. It was this concern that prompted the Elizabethan government to effect "a poor law which remained in its essence until the nineteenth century .... Any poor person found away from his or her native parish was to be sent back there ... " (Youngs 121.) The same fear informs the thinking of M. Louis RenÈ de Caradenc de La Chalotais who, having been instrumental in the movement against Jesuit-run education in France, "came out in the year 1763 with an Essai d'education nationale" (Hazard 198.) This paper's essential argument, as Paul Hazard paraphrases it, is that "The nation must never let education get into the hands of the people whose aims and ideas run counter to those of the country as a whole. The schools have to form good citizens, men capable of serving their country . .." (198.) The social power and influence that works this variety of education derives from an imperio-mercantile hegemony. Its goal is servility, and obedience to that vision of national purpose held by an emerging powerful middle class. If the system of values that is to be imposed remains constant, then a network of schools represents the economy of scale by which the schools' populations may be indoctrinated. The next stage is to economise within the schools themselves with regard to the number of teachers employed. Bell's Madras system traces its roots to this concern with efficiency. Domination by physical force is to be replaced by an internalized control effected through a disciplinary mechanism, the conduit for which is the monitorial school. As Foucault reminds us, discipline "is an anti-nomadic technique" (DP 218.) Interestingly, it seems Wordsworth recognises that, following liberation, the former subjects of repression will not be immediately suitable for the purposes of the new government. Thus he writes in his letter to Llandaff, a further "province of education" is to "soften this ferocity of character proceeding from a necessary suspension of the mild and social virtues" (Owen and Smyser 34.)
Writing to William Matthews in June of 1794, Wordsworth asserts: "There is a further duty incumbent upon every enlightened friend of mankind; he should let slip no opportunity of explaining and enforcing those general principles of the social order which are applicable to all times and to all places" (Shaver 124.) The language he uses is reminiscent of that which he uses in his Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff. Echoing his concerns for the education of the masses, his phraseology here, though, is more explicit. The earlier tract speaks of the need "to rectify the erroneous notions." Now, however, when he asserts that the requirement to ensure compliance with the new order will be obtained by "enforcing" the rules, his language reflects a growing sophistication in his understanding of the "benefits" to be obtained byutilising education as a fundamental in the design of disciplinary regimes. On a national scale, the objective is to extract maximum potential by employing maximum efficiency. As Foucault comm ents: "The chief function of the disciplinary power is to `train' ... It does not link forces together in order to reduce them; it seeks to bind them together in such a way as to multiply and use them" (DP 170.)
Although it is not always readily apparent, a concern with social stability is never far from the surface in much of Wordsworth's correspondence. Writing in 1801 to Charles James Fox, for example, Wordsworth complains about the "rapid decay of the domestic affections among the lower orders of society" (Shaver 313.) This he blames on the profusion of "workhouses, Houses of Industry, and the invention of Soup-shops" (313.) It is not, we quickly realise, the conditions within the new manufacturing establishments that give him cause for alarm. Rather it is the exodus from the land into what Foucault describes in another context as "the floating population" (DP 218), that worries him. Wordsworth expresses a concern for the demise of "the spirit of independence [that] is, even yet, rooted in some parts of the country" (Shaver 314.) The rural society appears to be most laudable especially when Wordsworth proceeds to paint an attractive picture of "a class of men who are now almost confined to the North of Englan d" (314.) He advises that "They are small independent proprietors of land ... men of respectable education who daily labour on their own little properties" (314.) The scene that he depicts is not the bucolic idyl that it seems, though. Wordsworth has chosen his words with care, his use of "proprietors" being especially suggestive. He uses it in preference to the more forthright and less ambiguous "owners" and, I would argue, for good reason. Proprietorship denotes the duty of stewardship without necessarily inferring the possession of clear title. A little historical background helps establish the context in which his comments are made. A report made in 1794 to the Board of Agriculture makes the following comments regarding land holdings in the area of the country about which Wordsworth wrote:
There are probably few counties where property in land is divided into such small parcels as in Cumberland ... and those small properties so universally occupied by the owners, by far the greatest part of which are held under the lords of the manors, by that species of vassalage, called customary tenure, subject to the payment of fines and heriots on alienation, the death of the lord ... We cannot pretend to be accurate but believe that two thirds of the country are held by this kind of tenure in tenements (Hughes 209.)
The authors of the report also remark on "`the backwardness and the general lack of improvement everywhere evident'" (210.) Seventeen years earlier it was noted by "Nicolson and Burn, the county historians ... [that] Every man lives upon his own small tenement" (Hughes 25.) The rural dwellers' cottages did not inspire enthusiasm, being "`mean beyond imagination, made of mud and thatched with turf'" (25.) The poet had, by the time he wrote to Fox, already admitted in Tintern Abbey: "I cannot paint what then I was." It seems highly likely that when describing the living conditions of the rural population that he depicts, he also refuses to paint what then he saw. That which is portrayed as pastoral peace and innocence is in reality something quite different. Firmly anchored to their "little properties" there is a diminished opportunity for the rural population to congregate. Wordsworth not only values "proprietorship" but he also gives a special significance to the inheritance of property. He acknowledges it s importance when he provides details of the Wanderer's family history: "he was born: / There on a small hereditary farm" (Bk.I 112-113.) When Wordsworth asserts that "Their little tract of land serves as a kind of permanent rallying point for their domestic feelings" (Shaver 314-315), he is not restricting his allusions to the family unit. The "domestic feelings" serve also as a metaphor for feelings of national pride. Wordsworth regrets the demise of "This class of men" (315) because of the potential for social upheaval represented by their transfer from a rural to an urban location. He is, naturally, reticent to comment upon the reasons for their rapid disappearance; the departure from the small plots of land represents a potential for social instability that must be addressed. Wordsworth was not alone with his fear. It was this very same apprehension that Foucault identifies as one of the motivators for a phenomenon of control that he describes as "the great confinement." Not until Wordsworth is exposed to Madras, however, will he fully appreciate that "discipline ... arrests or regulates movements; [and] dissipates compact groupings of individuals wandering about the country" (DP 219.) That is to say, with Madras, Wordsworth recognises the usefulness to be extracted from individualised, disciplined, and docile bodies.
The answer to the threat posed by a mobile, essentially de-racinated population, lies in the imposition of discipline, albeit in the guise of education. Wordsworth recognises (even if he only strongly hints at the fact) the counter-force represented by the urban workers. Inspiring his approach is the need to "master all the forces that are formed from the very constitution of an organised multiplicity" (DP 219.) The poet appropriates the mechanism of control into his lexicon, employing metaphors from the very institutions that he supposedly despises. "A select library ... may be of the same use as a public Dial, keeping every Body's clock in some kind of order" (Shaver 249.) The clock of course, as Foucault reminds us in Discipline and Punish, symbolises both efficiency and control: "`In the large factory, everything is regulated by the clock'" (DP 174.) Wordsworth may equate a mechanical device with a literary asset, but both aim for the goals of conformity, one temporal, the other ideological.
Wordsworth's appreciation of the advantages to be gained from a network of institutions dedicated to confinement can, arguably, be traced to the influence of The Fleece, a poem written by John Dyer in 1757. One section, unironically subtitled "The Happy Workhouse and the Good Effects of Industry," is particularly notable for the language of subjugation and control with which it is invested. Wordsworth held Dyer in high regard, writing to Lady Beaumont in November 1811:
I will ... conclude with a sonnet, which I wrote some time ago upon the poet John Dyer. If you have not read The Fleece, I would strongly recommend it to you. The character of Dyer, as a patriot, a citizen, and a tender-hearted friend of humanity, was, in some respects, injurious to him as a poet, and has induced him to dwell, in his poem, upon processes which, however important in themselves, were unsusceptible of being poetically treated. Accordingly, his poem is, in several places, dry and heavy; but its beauties are innumerable, and of a high order. In point of imagination, and purity of style, I am not sure that he is not superior to any writer in verse since the time of Milton (Moorman 521.)
His comments on the Welsh poet's patriotism deflect our attention from the less easily digestible passages of The Fleece, and obscure what appears to be a serious contradiction in Wordsworth's professed views concerning the growth of manufacturing institutions. In a letter to Sir George Beaumont in 1806, for example, he comments on the changing face of the countryside and refers to the small estate received as a gift from Beaumont some three years earlier:
Applethwaite, I hope, will remain in my family for many generations. With my will it should never be parted with, unless the character of the place be entirely changed, as I am sorry to say there is some reason to apprehend; a cotton-mill being, I am told, already planted, or to be planted, in the glen (Moorman 76.)
This concern would seem to have evaporated by the time of his later correspondence when he can so adamantly endorse Dyer's poem, a work which contains the plea "O when, through ev'ry province, shall be raised / Houses of labour, seats of kind restraint" (Lonsdale 172.)
Wordsworth directly acknowledges Dyer's influence on The Excursion. In a note concerning lines 111-112 of Book VIII he writes:
In treating this subject, it was impossible not to recollect, with gratitude, the pleasing picture, which, in his Poem of the Fleece, the excellent and amiable Dyer has given of manufacturing industry upon the face of this Island. He wrote at a time when machinery was first beginning to be introduced, and his benevolent heart prompted him to augur from it nothing but good. Truth has compelled me to dwell upon the baneful effects arising out of an ill-regulated and excessive application of powers so admirable in themselves" (DS4 469.)
The concern with the effect of cotton mills and similar institutions on the countryside's character has been replaced, it would seem, by a concern with a lack of regulation. "The powers so admirable in themselves" are not the subject of criticism, and neither are the conditions within the burgeoning factories.
It is possible, of course, to see Wordsworth's admiration as pertaining only to Dyer's poetic skill. The comparison to Milton supports this argument, and the sonnet "To the Poet, John Dyer" commencing "Bard of the Fleece, whose skilful genius made / That work a living landscape fair and bright;" (DS3), certainly seems more concerned with the poet's form than with the epic poem's content. However, when comparing the workhouse passage to the Wanderer's speech on education, a number of similarities become apparent, indicating that the influence of the one work upon the other may extend further than pure poetic technique. The Wanderer's entreaty -- "Oh for the coming of that glorious time" (Bk.IX 289) shares a formal similarity with Dyer's: "O when, through ev'ry province, shall be raised" (Lonsdale 172.) The Fleece, especially in the passage under consideration, is overtly paternalistic. In arguing for the benefits provided by the institution, Dyer refers at one point to the potential inmates as "children of affliction" (172.) The device establishes a sense of gratitude through which the poor are constructed as societal debtors whose duty it becomes to accept the "largesse" (doubtful though it may be shown to be) of the manufacturing elite, and as a result "be compelled / To happiness" (172.) The "Houses of labour" are a further example of the eighteenth-century's "`great confinement' of vagabonds and paupers" (DP 141), and evidence a step in the institutionalised creation of what Foucault describes as "Docile Bodies" (DP 135-169) -- a phrase which captures all the overlapping qualities essential to the success of disciplinary regimes, namely teachability, manageability, and submissiveness.
Whereas in The Fleece it is "the mansion" (172) within which secular and spiritual needs are satisfied, in The Excursion a larger and more embracing entity is responsible for the poor. Expressing the relationship in almost contractual terms, Wordsworth sees the State as being in a position of benevolence relative to "the Children whom her soil maintains" (299.) The subject of the verb is the soil, a metonymy for the nation. The children are passive in a transaction that results in their condition of obligation. Certainly Wordsworth professes a reciprocal obligation on the part of the nation, but it is minimal in comparison. "Children", in the social context of his verse, is no longer applicable only to youth. The word embraces a whole social class. Education, then, while advanced as a means of liberation, functions rather as a method by way of which a population may be infantilised, controlled, confined, made useful and productive. The Wanderer's ostensible sentiment is exposed as a fiction within which is concealed the recognition of the threat posed by an educated underclass, a threat that can be managed, contained, made productive, by inculcating society's less advantaged members with the belief that they "are born to serve ... and obey" (297 emphasis mine.)