Supplemental Essay: "Gender Personas" in
Chapter 11 of Sexual Personae

[Note 1] 

William Wordsworth is the latest in a series of Romantic passive males in thrall to the Great Mother: The murderous fertility goddess of the ancients, the daemonic side of nature, motherhood, and femininity. Wordsworth's male characters are sexless and quiescent to the point of immobility. Virility and action are renounced so as not to awaken the daemonic side of nature. Instead the poet crushes his male characters and then sentimentalizes them in their suffering. 

 

In her analysis, Paglia addresses the following themes:

 

In his early poems Wordsworth emulated the voice of the poet John Milton (Paradise Lost), which resulted in a very masculine style (pp. 309, 313). Eventually, however, he found his own poetic voice with the help of his sister Dorothy. Quoting Wordsworth, Paglia says, "Dorothy's 'sweet influence' drew him away from the severity and 'terror' of Milton’s masculine style: 'Thou didst soften down / This over-sternness.' Her femininity flowed into and tempered him." (p. 309)

 

The result was a much softer, more feminine style. The main feature of Wordsworth's "post-Milton voice" was a worship of nature. Paglia says, "Wordsworth read and admired Rousseau. Disillusioned by the French Revolution’s moral degeneration, he turned away from politics toward nature, the focus of his hopes. [...] From first to last, he sees nature with Rousseau’s eyes." (p. 300) But in worshiping nature, Wordsworth sentimentalized her. Paglia says, "Wordsworth created Victorian sentimentalism. [...] In the sentimental mode, too little is asked to bear too much. Wordsworth’s story-poems are self-dramatizations of excessive pathos, the ever-present trap in Wordsworth’s world." (p. 313)

 

Wordsworth refused to say anything bad about nature, which means he censored cruelty, sadism, and even sex from his poetry. Comparing Wordsworth to Blake, Paglia says, "He must renounce sex in order not to see or feel nature's sadism. Blake wants sex without nature. Wordsworth wants nature without sex." (p. 300) This attitude makes nature seem rather sterile and hampers Wordsworth's development of his own poetic voice in the post-Milton years. Paglia says, "Wordsworth is under tremendous self-imposed pressure to find a persona, for that is the voice he needs to justify the ways of nature to men. 'I do,' Wordsworth says to the nature-mother, but he cannot allow himself to see her clearly. Censoring out the negativity and savagery in nature, he puts his own voice in a bind. Wordsworth is the first humorless liberal." (p. 315)

 

Paglia says that this results in a "depressive" theme in Wordsworth's "post-Milton voice": "Nature’s inability to sustain him emotionally becomes one of Wordsworth’s sad themes. [...] Wordsworth’s refusal to acknowledge the sex or cruelty in nature is one source of the palpable repression in his poetry, which constricts and weighs it down. This repression, approaching depressiveness, accounts for Wordsworth’s lack of appeal to young readers, who are drawn to energy, not to mention lust. Wordsworth’s sexlessness is not neurotic failing but conceptual strategy. He must renounce sex in order not to see or feel nature’s sadism." (p. 300) Paglia concludes, "Wordsworth hopes for happiness through pure feeling, but the happiest things in his poetry are daffodils." (p. 315)

 

The same problem arose with the women in Wordsworth's poetry. Wordsworth's sister Dorothy lived close by Wordsworth almost all of their lives, and Wordsworth chose to represent her in his poetry as a type of muse, a spirit who materializes within his poetry at times of inner turmoil. Paglia says that Dorothy and another semi-spiritual figure named Lucy represent Wordsworth's anima. (pp. 307-308). The trouble with such figures is that, like nature, they can't be the subject of ordinary human love or lust; they have to be kept at a distance and sentimentalized into spiritual beings. Paglia says, "Wordsworth’s ardor dematerializes or seraphicizes the beloved. She ceases to be an object, much less a sex object. Does Wordsworth fear his own aggressive eye?" (p. 310)

 

If the women had to be kept at a distance, then male figures similarly had to be void of any virility or aggression to remove any suggestion of sexuality from their existence. So the male "solitaries" became quiescent, inactive worshipers of the Great Mother. Paglia says, "Wordsworth’s first principle is 'wise passiveness,' a feminine receptivity opening us to nature. [...] Enlightenment means androgyny. Nature is man’s model. Since she is female, he must become feminine." (pp. 300-301)

 

Paglia sees these male "solitaries" as projections of Wordsworth himself: "The aged and infirm male is Wordsworth’s most powerful self-identification. Contracted body-image is his psychomorphic topos. The solitaries are a nightmare other self, and Wordsworth’s dialogues with them are daemonic communion with a doppelgänger." (p. 311) As a result, Paglia views his desexualization of the male figures as a type of self-castration. She says, "Wordsworth forfeits maleness for spiritual union with mother nature: wholeness through self-mutilation." (p. 301) This transformation allows Wordsworth to sentimentalize the men, but the men also seem rather depressive and tormented. Paglia says, "The solitaries are dignified but paralyzed. They exist in a melancholy state of contraction from which there is no escape through action. Only passive responses are possible: fortitude and endurance. The thinness of Wordsworth’s solitaries is another reduction of self." (p. 310)

 

Paglia suggests that Wordsworth is working out a hidden aggression on such figures: "But the force pressing so fiercely on these old men is Wordsworth’s 'love,' a love that desiccates their flesh and crushes them to skeletal scarcity of being. Like Blake in 'Infant Joy,' Wordsworth demonstrates the secret aggression in Rousseauist sympathy. [...] The solitaries express Wordsworth’s secret fear. They are what is left when mother nature is done with man, dry bones she has picked over." (pp. 310-311) Paglia concludes, "His devotions to mother nature simply produce frightful hallucinations of parched, mute spectres, his starved self." (p. 315)

 

To sum up: 

 

Paglia says that Wordsworth has two "voices": A masculine voice, cultivated during his early emulation of Milton, and a feminine voice that he developed in his post-Milton years. Paglia says, "Wordsworth’s best moments are when he achieves a balance between his male and female voices." (pp. 313-314) However once he worked out his feminine "post-Milton voice" he increasingly drifted into sentimentalism. Paglia says, "Such sentimental narratives are disguised dramas of Wordsworth’s feminine self. [...] Wordsworth’s poetry is weakened when his identification with a suffering character is too extreme. Empathy degenerates into sentimentality, which I interpret as self-pity, since the protagonists are self-projections." (p. 313)

 

Such sentimentalized figures have no existence separate from Wordsworth and his views on nature; as a result, Paglia doesn't assign them separate personas. They simply exist as projections of Wordsworth's own Romantic/Dionysian ideas on life. As such, Paglia views them as "false": She says, "Wordsworth is bedeviled by male and female impulses, which he struggles to harmonize in a single style. [...] Wordsworth’s persona is one of the strongest, fiercest, and falsest in all poetry." (pp. 314-315)

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~Posted October 14, 2024