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Wordsworth's Prescient Baby: Conceptions of the Mother-Infant Relationship in the Development of the Self (1790s-1890s)
By Emilia Halton-Hernandez
2014, Vol. 6 No. 03 | pg. 3/4 | « »
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"A Mother's Responsibility:" Infancy and the Power of Love in the 1830s
As we have seen at the turn of the nineteenth century, parents had to rely on a narrow scope of literature for childcare advice, either by those with a philosophical preoccupation or medical focus. By the 1830s there was a huge increase in the publication and consumption of childcare literature. 48 Baby-care books were no longer a spin-off from medical manuals concerned with infant mortality and advice shifted to a focus on moral and spiritual welfare. 49 I shall try to show how maternal care was now being understood to shape the infant and how some of the ideas that evolved resembled Wordsworth's but viewed through a moral lens.
Around the late 1820s and 1830s, many childcare manuals came to be written by women, often by those who were mothers themselves. Melesina Trench reflected on her own experiences as a mother to inform the advice she gave in Thoughts of a parent on education (1837). When publications such as Mother's Magazine, Parent's Assistant and The Family Magazine came on the market they were very popular amongst middle and upper class families.50 This was a significant change from the male dominated literature of the eighteenth century with its close connections to the philosophical and medical professions. By the 1830s child rearing literature became a popular and respected field in its own right.
How do we account for this emergent boom in the 1830s? Advances in printing, literacy and in the sciences and lower mortality rates were important. Hardyment also points to the new wave of evangelism in Victorian society which made child-rearing a moral task of 'continual nourishing and pruning, staking up and cutting back.'51 With increased religious and moral responsibilities, the role of the mother as 'primary' carer came to be seen as increasingly important. William Cadogan's simple belief in the 1750s that once feeding was established 'there seems nothing left… to do but keep the child clean and sweet'52 was no longer sufficient by the 1830s.53 Now writers like JSC Abbott in The Mother at Home (1830) urged to 'be the happy mother of a happy child, give your attention, and your efforts, and your prayers, to the great duty of training him up for God and heaven.'54
A focus on the earliest stages of infancy in the shaping of character comes to the fore in 1830s childcare literature, but its motivation is not to solve philosophical questions about the nature of the mind and existence. The rise of observational studies, not philosophical speculation reflected the rise of empiricism in the natural sciences. Mme. Necker de Saussure, a French writer whose Progressive Education was published in French and English between 1828 and 1832 was widely read by British mothers including Elizabeth Gaskell.55 She stressed the importance of forming character early on in infancy as 'It is then that we have the greatest chance of exercising that influence over the relative proportion of the different inclinations, in which consists the art of forming the character.'56
Similar counsel was expressed by others. 'Education of the heart,' wrote Melesina Trench, 'must begin in the cradle… ideas impressed on infancy- these- and, in most cases these alone, enable us to do our part, and so-operate with the assistance from above, in resisting strong and urgent temptation.57
Gaskell's diary also provides corroborative evidence about the greater attention paid to moulding character early on. She reveals a sense of urgency (1835-1838) about the education of her 6 month old daughter. Upon reading Mme. Necker de Saussure's advice, she planned 'to act on principles now which can be carried on through the whole of her education.'58
Now that infancy was seen as the locus for the development of moral character, the mother's psychological responsibilities increased alongside heightened anxiety to make a good job of it. Sarah Stickney Ellis's The Mothers of England: Their Influence and Responsibility (1843) stressed the importance of a woman's virtuous qualities on the wellbeing of her child. 'Influence there must be arising out of the close connection and constant association of the mother and the child,' but she warns, 'that where good sense, and good principle, are wanting in the mother's conduct, the absence of these essentials to good influence...will…tell upon the characters of her children in after life to an alarming extent.'59 She added that 'In vain might such a mother train her children according to the most approved and best established rules'.60 Such a sense of maternal importance and accountability was nowhere to be found in Stanley or Wedgwood.
In the opening lines of her diary Gaskell dedicates the book to her daughter Marianne as 'a token of her Mother's love, and extreme anxiety in the formation of her little girl's character.'61 She openly chides herself for feeling jealous when Marianne shows affection to her Nurse Betsy.62 Gaskell describes with sensitivity the developing relationship between herself and Marianne. Her sense of responsibility for shaping Marianne's character is absolute and unquestioned. She worries that 'my dearest little girl, if, when you read this, you trace back any evil or unhappy feeling to my mismanagement in your childhood, forgive me, love!'63 Moreover, in her later fictional work, The Old Nurse's Story, (1852) she ends a story about a young girl's curse with the line 'alas! what is done in youth can never be undone in age!'64 Motherhood now required not only maternal devotion but the perfection of the maternal soul to fulfil this task.
Interestingly, male childcare writers most burdened mothers with a sense of anxiety for the successes or failures of their offspring in later life. John SC Abbott in The Mother at Home (1830) wrote gravely: 'It was the mother of Byron who laid the foundation of his pre-eminence in guilt. She taught him to plunge into the sea of profligacy and wretchedness.'65 Whereas George Washington's 'inestimable' mother, alongside God's hand, was a primary factor in the President's success.66 Jabez Burns' Mothers of the Wise and Good (1846) sought to inspire mothers with tales of famous men who supposedly owed everything to maternal influence in infancy. Clearly, the growing sense of the power of the mother's role impelled such gentlemen to write these cautionary tales.
With the greater recognition of maternal influence we also see more emphasis placed upon Wordsworth's notion of the importance of the 'discipline of love'. Andrew Combe's Treatise on the Physiological and Moral Management of Infancy (1840) identifies a possible connection between a loving mother and a loving child: 'If we wish to call out and give healthy development to the kindly and affectionate feelings in an infant' we must treat it 'with habitual kindliness and affection, because these are the natural stimuli to such feelings, just as the light is to the eye, or sound to ear.'67 Mme. Necker de Saussure similarly describes the importance of an attentive mother, who with 'a smiling air, a caressing ascent, raises a smile on his lips…she has smiled affectionately on him; he feels that he is loved, and he loves in return.'68 This is now clearly Wordsworth's territory.
However, others expressed alarm about excessive maternal affection, echoing Locke's theories of spoiling the child. The philosopher repeatedly instructed parents to suppress their love in the interests of training up a virtuous child. 'Parents being wisely ordained by Nature to love their children, are very apt, if Reason not watch their natural Affection very warily, I say, to let it run into Fondness.'69 Abbott similarly explained the perils of over-indulgent love in the account of a vagrant: 'Why is he there, far from his own pleasant fireside and the love of him? Because his mother never established any control over her boy. In his infancy she indulged him, under the influence of an overweening maternal fondness.'70 Particularly damning on the effect of unchecked maternal love, Thomas Bull in his Maternal Management of Children (1840) wrote that: 'Tender human feelings are as useless as the blind caresses that cause animals to strangle their own young without the knowledge that we assume a gardener must have of plants.'71
Like Saussure and Combe, Wordsworth's babe who when he 'Doth gather passion from his Mother's eye' (273) is capable of returning passion. Two writers of the 1830s shared remarkably similar views to Wordsworth on this aspect of infantile development. Sarah Lewis translated and added to passages from the French writer Louis Aimé Martin's (1781-1844) book De l'éducation des mères de famille (1834) to form Woman's Mission (1839). They explain 'that in children sentiment precedes intelligence; the first answer to the maternal smile is the first dawn of intelligence; the first sensation is the responding caress. Comprehension begins in feeling; hence, to her who first arouses the feelings, who first awakens the tenderness, must belong the happiest influences.'72 This bears a striking resemblance to Wordsworth's lines that with love, the infants 'organs and recipient faculties/Are quickened, are more vigorous, his mind spreads/Tenacious of the forms which itreceives' (282-284).
Both Wordsworth and Lewis/Martin locate a crucial part of the development of the self at the beginning of life in the baby's first sensual relations with the mother. Experiences of the new-born are therefore crucial. Although we have seen other writers in the 1830s such as Saussure and Trench recognise the importance of maternal care in emotional development, none go as far as Wordsworth and Lewis/Martin in their assertions that here lies the origins of the emergent self and the creation of a dynamic inner world. In this view the subjective self is always an intersubjective one, i.e. the child's subjective sense of its inner world and its interactions not just with external objects but also the internal worlds of others. The baby is not just a recipient of sensation but itself seeks interconnectedness with the subjective self of the mother.
In this sense I would argue that Wordsworth and Lewis/Martin understand the infant to have a pre-verbal affective self, whereas the tabula rasa model seems to believe the self is formed by passive cognitive registration of external stimuli. Although the tabula rasa model understands sensual experience to be formative from birth, following associationist logic it leaves no means of accounting for intersubjectivity and inner experience in shaping thought. Locke wrote in 1693 that 'little and almost insensible impressions on [their] tender infancies have very important and lasting consequences'73, but it was only once they reached the age of language that they began to develop the capacity for self-reflection, and hence intellectual thought.74 Locke and Hartley were adamant that feelings derive from ideas, and ideas are derived only once experience is reflected upon. Therefore self-reflection necessitates language to put reflection into thought. Their emphasis gives the impression that only in the later stages of infancy or childhood would the self really take meaningful shape. Newborns were considered to lack the full range of senses and faculties required for mature thought. Indeed, Locke felt it was in the early submission of the child to his father's will that began his education: 'Be sure then to establish the authority of a father as soon as he [the child] is capable of submission and can understand in whose power he is.'75 Whereas Wordsworth and Lewis/Martin propose a very different picture- 'the discipline of love' beginning in the first tender caresses of the mother.76
Wordsworth's account resembles that of Klein's 'memories in feelings'. She writes that the infant's feelings towards the mother are felt in a 'more primitive ways than language can express. When these pre-verbal emotions and phantasies are revived…they appear as 'memories in feelings''77 Before the development of language, early experiences are encoded as recollections of feeling which aren't attached to words or concepts.78 These ideas are also similar to Piaget's studies showing the capacity for pre-linguistic conceptualisation.79
In addition, like Wordsworth, Lewis and Martin go on to make clear a more nuanced notion that the mother 'is not however to teach virtue, but to inspire it…What she wishes us to be, she begins by making us love, and love begets unconscious imitation.'80 The claim that a mother inspires rather than teaches virtue was highly unusual in the 1830s. Saussure untypically says a mother should aim 'to influence the motives of children. At every age it is on the heart alone that any salutary effect can be produced; and at this early period it is only by sympathy that we can influence the heart.'81 More commonly writers like Trench, Abbott and Stickney Ellis stressed that defects of character could and should be 'remedied by training'82, much in the way that Catherine Stanley felt she could mould Owen. Locke's reach and influence can be seen everywhere.
A counter appeal came from Sara Coleridge who expressed the belief that external training and discipline had its limits. In her correspondence with her brother Hartley Coleridge in 1833, she tells him not to attempt to 'to pour sensibility, generosity, and such other good qualities, which cannot be supplied from without, but must well up from within, by buckets full into their [children's] hearts.'83 Instead, it is necessary 'to give nature elbow room…to trust more to happy influences, and less to direct tuition'.84 Coleridge here demonstrates an understanding of the infant's internal world as nourishing itself.
Coleridge also echoes Wordsworth's conviction that emotional sensitivity breeds intelligence and creativity. 85 In a letter to her husband in 1838, she remarks upon the temperament of her son Herbert: 'Indeed I believe that this sensitiveness does itself tend to quicken and stimulate the intellect'86, and 'Where the senses are active and rapid ministers to the mind, supplying it abundantly and promptly with thought-materials, no wonder that the intellect makes speedy advances; and such sensitiveness is doubtless one constituent of a poet.'87 In response to some theorist's warnings of maternal over-indulgence, she wisely wrote in 1844 that 'young people that are spoiled by an indulgent home are spoiled, I think, not by over-happiness, but from having been encouraged in selfishness'. 88
Sara Coleridge also kept a baby diary from 1830-1838, but for the purposes of this essay her letters are much more illuminating. Her diary is largely preoccupied with her postnatal depression and opium addiction and this is related with much personal anguish. Her observations of Herbert and her daughter Edith are concerned with their physical growth and health, whilst her letters reveal a deep understanding of emotional and psychological development. This highlights one of the problems of using baby diaries as a source through which to garner attitudes and ides. Mothers did not always feel that a baby diary was somewhere they wanted to explore their deeper feelings. Although Gaskell certainly used the diary to openly reflect upon her relationship with her daughter and her role as a mother, diaries like Sophia Holland's are much less candid.
Sophia Holland, Gaskell's cousin by marriage began her diary in 1836 when her son Thurstan was 6 weeks old.89 Holland adopts a fairly detached emotional tone. At five months old she writes that Thurstan began 'to hold out his arms to come to me to be fed'.90 A month older, she notes that he cries out for her when he was not hungry, acknowledging that this attachment went beyond the desire for food.91 But beyond this, Holland's sparse entries tell us nothing of her own thoughts and reflections.
Procuring an insight into the mother-infant relationship from baby diaries in part depends upon the psychological propensities and insight of the parent. Psychologist Kurt Koffka calls attention to the fact that 'these diaries of child-life… are not uninfluenced by the character of the writer…indeed, by the level of his child-psychology'.92 This most likely applies to childcare advice writers also.Continued on Next Page »
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1.) The term 'infant' is taken here to mean the age before talking. The word infant comes from 'infans' which means speechlessness. Typically the period between 0 and 12 months old.
2.) For more baby diarists from the rest of Europe and the United States in this period, see Doris Wallace, Margery Franklin & Robert Keegan, 'The Observing Eye: A Century of Baby Diaries', Human Development, eds. A.L. Dean, 37, (January 1994), p.1-94. For information on child care advice writers from the USA in 1830, see Christina Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, Frances Lincoln Publishing, (1983) p.92-94.
Hardyment also points out that American childcare advice books were much less widely read in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century which is why I have chosen not to look at them.
3.) Jeffrey Side, Wordsworth's Empiricist Poetic and its Influence in the Twentieth Century, PHD Dissertation, Leeds (September 2006), p.63.
4.) Peter Coveney, The Image of Childhood, Penguin (1957), p.39.
5.) Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self, Cambridge, (2005), p.88.
6.) Arthur Beatty, William Wordsworth: His Doctrine and Art in their historical relations, University of Wisconsin, (1922) p.103.
7.) William Wordsworth, Two-Part Prelude, (1799), Book II line 131 cited in Ron Britton, Belief and Imagination: Explorations in Psychoanalysis, Psychology Press (1998), p.134
8.) Britton, Belief and Imagination: Explorations in Psychoanalysis, p.134.
10.) Britton, Belief and Imagination: Explorations in Psychoanalysis, p.137.
11.) David Hartley,Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations. In two parts, 2 vols, James Leake and others, London, (1749) p.368 cited in Russell Goodman, 'Transcendentalism',The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(Spring 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta(ed.),<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/transcendentalism/> (December 2012), p.102.
15.) See also: Colwyn Trevarthen 'Descriptive analyses of infant communication behaviour' in H.R. Shaffer (ed.), Studies in mother-infant interaction: The Lockh Lomond Symposium, pp. 221-270, London (1977)
16.) John Bowlby, Child Care and the Growth of Love (1953) cited in Christina Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, Frances Lincoln Publishing, (1983) p.236.
17.) William Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1799, 1805, 1850: authoritative texts, context and reception, recent critical essays, eds. Jonathan Wordsworth, M.H. Abrams, Stephen Gill, New York, (1979), p.164.
18.) William Wordsworth and Sameul Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, eds.R. L. Brett,A. R. Jones, Routledge, (1991) p.83.
19.) Stern, The interpersonal world of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology, p.241.
20.) Jonathan Wordsworth, William Wordsworth: The Borders of Vision, Oxford, (1982), p.78.
21.) Wordsworth, William Wordsworth: The Borders of Vision, p.78.
22.) Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, p.18.
24.) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emilius; or an essay on education, p.17.
25.) Mary Wollstonecraft, Thoughts on the education of daughters, with reflections on female conduct in the more importance duties of life, London (1787), p.4.
26.) Hugh Downman, Infancy or the management of children: a didactic poem in six books, 6th ed. Exeter: Treman and Son, (1803) p.1.
27.) Downman, Infancy or the management of children: a didactic poem in six books, p.3.
29.) George Armstrong, Account of the Diseases most Incident to Children, London (1767), p.1 cited in Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, p.13.
30.) Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, p.4.
32.) Keele University Special Collection and Archives, Keele, W/M 1116, Wedgwood Manuscripts, Josiah Wedgwood II, 'Hints on the Management of the Children', (1797-9) p.12.
34.) Thomas Reid, Works, (ed.) G.N. Wright (4 vols.), Edinburgh, 1843 cited in, Cheshire Record Office, DSA 75, Catherine Stanley of Alderley, 'Journal of Her Four Children', (1812), p.1.
35.) Catherine Stanley of Alderley, 'Journal of Her Four Children', p1.
36.) Catherine Stanley of Alderley, 'Journal of Her Four Children', p.17.
39.) Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child relations from 1500 to 1900, p.120.
42.) Josiah Wedgwood II, 'Hints on the Management of the Children', p.1.
43.) Josiah Wedgwood II, 'Hints on the Management of the Children', 1797-9 p.1.
45.) Josiah Wedgwood II, 'Hints on the Management of the Children', 1797-9 p.19.
47.) Cheshire Record Office, DSA 75, Catherine Stanley of Alderley, 'Journal of Her Four Children', (1812), p.5.
48.) For more British childcare advice books that focused on the physical and practical rearing of infants/children see: Thomas Bull, Hints to Mothers (1837), Isaac Taylor, Home Education (1838), Pye Henry Chavasse, Advice to Mothers (1839), Samuel Smiles, Physical education, or the nurture and management of children (1838), William Cobbett, Advice to Young men …on how to be a Father (1829), Louisa Mary Barwell, Nursery Government (1836) Note the greater number of male writers concerned with practical and physical matters.
52.) William Cadogan, Essay on the Nursing and Management of Children, John Knapton, London (1748) cited in Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, p.19.
54.) John S.C Abbott, The Mother at Home, London (1830) p.39.
55.) Shuttleworth, The Mind of the Child, p.222.
56.) Mme Necker de Saussure, Progressive Education or, Considerations on the course of life (Volume 1), London (1939), p.67.
57.) Melesina Trench, Thoughts of a Parent on Education, John W. Parker, London, (1837), p.12.
58.) J.A.V. Chapple, Elizabeth Gaskell: A Portrait in Letters, Manchester University Press, (1950), p.65.
59.) Sarah Stickney Ellis, The Mothers of England: Their Influence and Responsibility, London (1843), p.53.
60.) Stickney Ellis, The Mothers of England: Their Influence and Responsibility, p.53.
61.) Elizabeth Gaskell, My Diary, printed privately, London (1923), p.5.
62.) Gaskell, My Diary, p.16.
63.) Gaskell, My Diary, p.6.
64.) Elizabeth Gaskell, 'The Old Nurse's Story' (1852), Gothic Short Stories, eds. David Blair, Wordsworth Classics (2002), p.105.
65.) Abbott, The Mother at Home, p.37.
67.) Andrew Combe, Treatise on the Physiological and Moral Management of Infancy, Maclachlan, Edinburgh, (1840), p.35.
68.) Necker de Saussure, Progressive Education or, Considerations on the course of life (Volume 1), p.144.
69.) John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, (1690), p.51 cited in Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, p.16.
72.) Sarah Lewis and Aimé Martin, Woman's Mission, London (1839), p.28.
73.) Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education cited in Jamie Gianoutsos, 'Locke and Rousseau: Early Childhood Education', The Pulse, Vol 4. No 1 Baylor University (2004), p.2.
74.) Seigel, The Idea of the Self, p.100.
75.) Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, (1690) cited in Gianoutsos, 'Locke and Rousseau: Early Childhood Education', p.4.
76.) Rousseau's ideas on this matter are quite contradictory. Before the child is learning to walk and talk, he is nothing 'more than what he was in the womb of his mother: he had no sentiments, no ideas, he scarcely had sensations; he could not even feel his own existence.' Whereas later on in Book One, 'at the beginning of life…his sense experiences are the raw material of thought'.
77.) Melanie Klein, Envy and Gratitude: A Study of Unconscious Forces, New York Basic Books, (1957), p.180.
78.) Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Jane Milton and others, The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought, Routledge (2011), p.63.
79.) Richard Coe, When the Grass was Taller, Yale, (1984), p.257.
80.) Lewis and Martin, Woman's Mission, p.28.
81.) Necker de Saussure, Progressive Education or, Considerations on the course of life (Volume 1), p.79.
83.) Sara Coleridge, Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge, eds. Edith Coleridge, London, (1873), p.57.
84.) Coleridge, Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge, p.57.
85.) Although The Prelude was not published until after Wordsworth's death in 1850, we cannot say for sure that William Wordsworth and his ties with the Coleridge family did not inspire some of Sara's thinking. However in the letters she seems to come to these conclusions by herself, and furthermore expressed a somewhat serendipitous surprise at The Prelude's 'delightful' content when she read it in 1850.
86.) Coleridge, Memoirs and Letters of Sara Coleridge, p.215.
89.) Chapple and Wilson, The Diaries of Elizabeth Gaskell and Sophia Holland, p.76.
92.) Kurt Koffka, Die Grundlagen der psychischen Entwicklung, (1925) p.31-32 cited in Wallace, Franklin & Keegan, 'The Observing Eye: A Century of Baby Diaries', p.1.
93.) Jere T Humphreys, 'The Child-Study Movement and Public School Music Education', Journal of Research in Music Education, Summer vol 33, (1985) p.79.
94.) Wallace, Franklin & Keegan, 'The Observing Eye: A Century of Baby Diaries', p.14.
95.) For more information on baby diaries focussed on language development, see the bibliography of Carolyn Steedman's, The Tidy House, Virago Press, (1982), p.230.
97.) James Sully, Studies of Childhood, New York (1896) p.399.
98.) Darwin, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 4 1847-1850, p.412.
100.) Charles Darwin, 'Biographical Sketch of an Infant', Mind, no.7, (1877) cited in Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, p.150.
101.) James Sully cited in Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, p.98.
102.) Wallace, Franklin & Keegan, 'The Observing Eye: A Century of Baby Diaries', p.23.
103.) Henry Ashby, Health in the Nursery (1898) cited in Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, p.92.
104.) Samuel Smiles, Character, (1871), p.69 cited in Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, p.92.
105.) Hardyment, Dream Babies: Childcare advice from John Locke to Gina Ford, p.94.
107.) William Thierry Preyer, The Soul of the Child: observations on themental developmentof man in the first years of life, (1988) cited in Wallace, Franklin & Keegan, 'The Observing Eye: A Century of Baby Diaries', p.15.
109.) Anna Karpf, (2013) 'Mothers on the naughty step', The Guardian, 20 April, p.5.
110.) James Fotheringham, Wordsworth's 'Prelude' as a study of Education, London (1899) cited in Peter Coveney, The Image of Childhood, p.68.
111.) William Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1799, 1805, 1850: Authoritative texts, context and reception, recent critical essays, (eds.) Jonathan Wordsworth, M.H. Abrams, Stephen Gill, New York (1979), p.20-21.
Appendix 1: The Two-Part Prelude of 1799 111
Blessed the infant babe-
For with my best conjectures I would trace
The progress of our being- blest the Babe
Nursed in his Mother's arms, the Babe who sleeps ln. 270
Upon his mother's breast, who when his soul
Claims manifest kindred with anearthlysoul,
Doth gather passion from his mother's eye!
Such feelings pass into his torpid life
Like an awakening breeze, and hence his mind, ln. 275
Even in the first trial of its powers,
Is prompt and watchful, eager to combine
In one appearance all the elements
And parts of the same object, elsedetached
And loath to coalesce. Thus day by day ln. 280
Subjected to the discipline of love,
His organs and recipient faculties
Are quickened, are more vigorous; his mind spreads,
Tenacious of the forms which itreceives.
In one beloved presence- nay, and more, ln. 285
In that most apprehensive habitude
And those sensations which have been derived
From this beloved presence- there exists
A virtue which irradiates and exalts
All objects through all intercourse of sense. ln. 290
No outcast he, bewildered and depressed:
Along his infant veins are interfused
The gravitation and the filial bond
Of Nature that connect him with the world.
Emphatically such a being lives, ln. 295
An inmate of thisactiveuniverse.
From nature largely hereceives, nor so
Is satisfied, but largely gives again;
For feeling has to him imparted strength,
And- powerful in all sentiments of grief, ln. 300
Of exultation, fear and joy- his mind,
Even as an agent of the one great mind,
Creates, creator andreceiverboth,
Working but in alliance with the works
Which it beholds. Such, verily, is the first ln. 305
Poetic spirit of our human life-
By uniform control of after years
In most abated and suppressed, in some
Through every change of growth or of decay
Preeminent till death. ln. 310
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APA 6th
Halton-Hernandez, E. (2014). "Wordsworth's Prescient Baby: Conceptions of the Mother-Infant Relationship in the Development of the Self (1790s-1890s)." Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse, 6(03). Retrieved from http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=873
Halton-Hernandez, Emilia. "Wordsworth's Prescient Baby: Conceptions of the Mother-Infant Relationship in the Development of the Self (1790s-1890s)." Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse 6.03 (2014). <http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=873>
Chicago 16th
Halton-Hernandez, Emilia. 2014. Wordsworth's Prescient Baby: Conceptions of the Mother-Infant Relationship in the Development of the Self (1790s-1890s). Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse 6 (03), http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=873
HALTON-HERNANDEZ, E. 2014. Wordsworth's Prescient Baby: Conceptions of the Mother-Infant Relationship in the Development of the Self (1790s-1890s). Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse [Online], 6. Available: http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=873
Emilia Halton-Hernandez graduated in 2013 with a Bachelors degree in History/Literature from University of Warwick in Coventry, United Kingdom.
Keywords:Wordsworth Child Development Psychoanalysis Poetry The Prelude
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