User:Rae (BYU)/dorothy wordsworth

Life

She was born on Christmas Day in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1771. Despite the early death of her mother, Dorothy, William and their three brothers had a happy childhood. When in 1783 their father died and the children were sent to live with various relatives, Dorothy was sent alone to live with her aunt, Elizabeth Threlkeld, in Halifax, West Yorkshire. (MACLEAN 7) After she was able to be reunited with William, firstly at Racedown Lodge in Dorset in 1795 and afterwards (1797/98) at Alfoxton House in Somerset, they became inseparable companions. The pair lived in poverty at first, and would often beg for cast-off clothes from their friends.(DEATH OF DW)

William wrote of her in his famous Tintern Abbey poem:

Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes ...
My dear, dear Sister!

Writing

Wordsworth was primarily a diarist, and she also wrote poetry though without much interest in becoming an established poet. She almost published her account of traveling in Scotland with William and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1803, Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, but a publisher was not found,(DE SEL vii) and it would not be published until 1874.

She wrote a very early account of an ascent of Scafell Pike in 1818, climbing the mountain in the company of her friend Mary Barker, Miss Barker's maid, and two local people to act as guide and porter. Dorothy's work was used in 1822 (and later in 1823 and 1835) by her brother William, unattributed, in his popular guide book to the Lake District – and this was then copied by Harriet Martineau in her equally successful guide(MARTINEAU 158–159) (in its fourth edition by 1876), but with attribution, if only to William Wordsworth. The account was quoted in other guidebooks as well. Consequently, this story was very widely read by the many visitors to the Lake District over more than half of the 19th century.(SW ON SCAFELL, INTRO TO SCAWFELL)

She never married, and after William married Mary Hutchinson in 1802, she continued to live with them. She was by now 31 and thought of herself as too old for marriage. In 1829 she fell seriously ill and was to remain an invalid for the remainder of her life. She died at eighty-three in 1855 near Ambleside, having spent the past twenty years in, according to the biographer Richard Cavendish, "a deepening haze of senility".(DEATH OF DW)

Her Grasmere Journal was published in 1897, edited by William Angus Knight. The journal eloquently described her day-to-day life in the Lake District, long walks she and her brother took through the countryside, and detailed portraits of literary lights of the early 19th century, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Lamb and Robert Southey, a close friend who popularised the fairytale Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

The Grasmere Journal and Wordsworth's other works revealed how vital she was to her brother's success. William relied on her detailed accounts of nature scenes and borrowed freely from her journals. For example;

I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.

— Dorothy Wordsworth, Grasmere Journal (15 April 1802)(EXCERPT)

This passage is clearly brought to mind when reading William's "Daffodils," where her brother, in this poem of two years later, describes what appears to be the shared experience in the journal as his own solitary observation. Her observations and descriptions have been considered to be as poetic if not more so than those of her brother.(ELLACOMBE 79) In her time she was described as being one of the few writers who have lived who could have provided so vivid and picturesque a scene.(LQR 112)

Critical reception

Dorothy Wordsworth's works came to light just as literary critics were beginning to re-examine women's role in literature. The success of the Grasmere Journal led to a renewed interest in Wordsworth,(POLO 66) and several other journals and collections of her letters have since been published. Scholar Anne Mellor has identified Wordsworth as demonstrating a 'model of affiliation rather than a model of individual achievement',(MELLOR 186) more commonly associated with Romanticism.(GILBERT 32–33)

Life

• Death of DW: buried in churchyard in England at Grasmere in the Lake District with William, William's wife, and other family, remembered for diaries not published until years after her death, started first journal in 1798, friendship with Coleridge and created Lyrical Ballads, end of 1799 Dove Cottage in Grasmere, year younger than William, parents died when children and she and William were close, lived in poverty, "cast-off clothes", "unconventional person" who took long walks in the country, never married, remained member of household when William married in 1802 (age 31), decided too old for marriage, rumours of incest with William baseless but close relationship, didn't attend William's wedding and eventually stopped keeping her diary, 1813 Wordsworths moved to Rydal Mount, D fell ill in 1829 and was an "invalid", age 60s-84 (death) "deepening haze of senility", William looked after Dorothy during his last years until his death in 1850, D journals first published in 1897.
• Grasmere journals: no job outside of house, no strict routine, journal conveys the "unpremeditated rhythms" of her and William's lives (p1), Tintern Abbey: "Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,/My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch/The language of my former heart, and read/My former pleasures in the shooting lights/Of thy wild eyes, Oh! yet a little while/May I behold in thee what I was once" (xiii), journal reflects moments of "overwhelming feeling", not writing for strangers but Wordsworth only (xv), private diary, daily life of a poet (WW) from his sister's pov and without focus on him, details of daffodils for WW, "She gave me eyes, she gave me ears", "Dorothy's way of seeing, when she purposively set out to produce a 'character', was to capture first of all the detail of appearance" (xvi), [interpretation of her goal w writing xvii], many revisions of the journal, dorothy's care was for william and the stress writing poems gave him, looked after WW, journal contents: (settling of house and garden, composition of poetry, WW marriage and the return), ends in early 1803 with completion of notebook

Life timeline

December 25 1771, 1778

• Born in Cockermouth, third child of Ann and John Wordsworth
• Death of her mother in March: DW moved away from father and brothers to live with her second cousin Elizabeth Threlkeld and ET’s extended family in Halifax, Yorkshire until May 1787. Attendance and religious education at Unitarian Northgate End Chapel in Halifax.

1781, 83, 84

• Age 9, attends boarding school at Hipperholme near Halifax
• Death of father at end of year: DW not brought back for funeral
• Transfers to day-school in Halifax

1787, 88

• Required to move from Halifax to her grandparent’s house at Penrith. Renews contact w her brothers Richard, William, John and Christopher.
• Moves w her uncle William Cookson and his wife Dorothy to live at Forncett, Norfolk, where William Wilberforce, friend of her uncle, allows Dorothy funding for her to give to charity.

1790-91

• Six-week visit from WW to Forncett

1794, 95, 97

• To Halifax for her first meeting w WW in 3 years, followed by 2 months in their first ‘home’ together at Windy Brow, near Keswick.
• Settles at Racedown Lodge, Dorset, w WW, fostering the little boy Basil Montagu until July 1797.
• After meeting CR, DW and WW move to live near him at Alfoxden, Somerset until June 1798.

1798-99, 99, 1800

• DW keeps her Alfoxden journal (Jan-May 1798) and is the subject of WW Tintern Abbey. Arriving in Germany w WW and CR and writes her Hamburg journal. Spends coldest winter of the century in Goslar until Feb 1799, where William begins The Prelude.
• On 20 Dec DW and WW move into Dove Cottage, Grasmere.
• Begins Grasmere journal (14 May)

1802, 03, 04

• After visit w WW to Annette and Caroline Vallon at Calais, DW and WW travel to Gallow Hill, Yorkshire, for the marriage on 4 Oct 1802 of WW to Mary Hutchinson DW not present at wedding and they return to Grasmere
• DW devoted aunt to WW and Mary’s children born 1803-1310. 6 week Tour of the Scottish Highlands w WW and CR. (Her Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland eventually completed in 1805/6.) completes Grasmere journal
• Helps write out a copy of WW’s poems for CR to take to Malta. Short tour with WW into the Duddon Valley

1805, 1805-07

• Death on 5 Feb of her brother John. Writes a short journal that is later extensively revised by WW and forms part of his Information for the tourist in the Guide to the Lakes, 1822. DW composes three stanzas “To my niece Dorothy, a sleepless baby” that were published by WW in his Poems (1815) as “The Cottager to her infant by a female friend”. Towards end of the year memorializes an autumn holiday in her Excursion on the Banks of Ullswater, November, 1805.
• First poems written for, or abt, WW’s young children.; 1806: DW poem “An address to a child in a high wind” included as by a “Female Friend of the author” in WW Poems (1815); 1807: DW poem “The Mother’s Return” third and final poem in WW Poems (1815)

1808, 11, 13

• Dorothy’s Narrative of deaths of George and Sarah Green is influential in fund-raising. Moves with WWs to Allan Bank, Grasmere.
• Rift betwn CR and the Wordsworth family, after WW alerts Basil Montagu to the effects of CR’s increasingly erratic habits.
• The WW family move to Rydal Mount where Dorothy will live for the rest of her life.

1818, 20, 21, 22

• Ascent of Scafell Pike w Mary Barker, written up as An Excursion up Scawfell Pike, 7 October, 1818 for her friend WIlliam Johnson, makes a second version revised by him and introduced as an ‘extract from a letter to a friend’ published in the Guide to the Lakes, 1822. D’s authorship not revealed.
• Continental tour w family party, including a traverse of the Alps reversing the direction of WW’s walking tour of 1790/1?: Journal of a Tour on the Continent.
• Works at the tour of continent journal meant for friends and the children
• Tour of the Scottish Highlands and Edinburgh with Joanna Hutchinson result in DW’s Journal of my Second Tour in Scotland, 1822 revises 1803 recollections of the scottish tour but not published until 1874.

1824-35

• Rydal journals, some record of daily events, often fragmentary in texture (gaps until 1833) but including the extended Isle of Man sequence. Stays with various friends and family during this period, visiting and helping take care of housework.

1826, 28, 29

• Restarts her poetry-writing on a visit to the Hutchinsons in the Wye Valley.
• Summer visit to Joanna Hutchinson in the Isle of Man: Journal of a Tour in the Isle of Man, 1828.
• DW becomes ill at Whitwick (April) and Mary W comes to nurse her. D returns to Halifax staying her “aunt” rawson. Back at Rydal DW has periods of great pain but goes out to the “family phaeton” or is pulled in small carriage along the new terrace in the garden by James Dixon, the WW’s gardener and handyman.

1829-1835, 1830-1831

• Two serious bouts of illness are followed by cessation of her journal entries in 1835 and very infrequent subsequent correspondence.
• Regains strength (1830), stays with friends and family, falls ill again (1831) and diary entries cease until Oct 1832

1832, 33, 35

• Composes more poems later published in WW Poems (1836) and WW‘s collection of 1842 and now the “female friend“ is identified as “D.W.“ This was fifth and last of DW‘s poems to be published in her lifetime.
• DW sick again, self-educated Cockermouth artist, Samuel Crosthwaite, comes to paint WW and paints DW too (sept)
• Death of Sarah Hutchinson, an event thought by WW to have given DW’s mind a shock from which it never recovered. DW in decline

1835-1855, 1850, 55, 87

• Though suffering from a degenerative illness characterized by dementia-like symptoms, still writes poetry until at least 1840 She is cared for lovingly by WW and Mary and the household at Rydal.
• Death of WW in April
• Jan 25: death of DW: “our dear sister” wrote Mary W to her brother Thomas’s widow, “was released after her gradual but fitful sinking and some few hours of peaceful and anxious waiting.”
• First publication of the Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. by William Knight.

Citations

• Profession of authorship:
• Recovering Dorothy:
• DW & Romanticism:
• Poetry of relationship:
• All in each other:
• Rebels and con:
• Women writers [check pub date]:
• Women in romanticism:
• DW and CR poetics:
• DW, Writer:
• ':