Loss and Remembrance in 'Tintern Abbey'
Sheree Frappied
November 5th 2001
Soderholm provides an opinion of much recent criticism that he says views William's turn to Dorothy in verse paragraph six of 'Tintern Abbey' as inauthentic, and that suggests the lack of authenticity proves William 'never gets out of his sublime mediations' and uses her for his own poetic ends.'[1] Criticism in this vein, he feels, comes across with a 'high moral tone.'[2] I am thinking that object relations theory, a basic tenet of modern psychoanalytic thought, may be helpful in establishing an argument which might counter these allegations by positing the notion that William's treatment of Dorothy in the poem is suggestive of a rather strong empathic impulse that, being seen, would be incompatible with narcissism. Kramer, for instance, uses object relations theory to argue that 'Dorothy's image in the text is . . . invested with a powerful current of Wordworth's narcissism.'[3] His reasons for asserting this rest upon an assumption, a judgment, really, that William's relations with others arise out of a relatively primitive and impoverished state of internal object relations, requiring others to function as self-objects (Kramer says that for Wordsworth, Dorothy is not a person but a self-object): following this logic, Wordsworth's psychological and emotional integrity necessitates using others to uphold a restored self in what would otherwise be a depleted self. Yet, the manner in which Wordsworth is seen to deal in his poetry with object loss ('object loss' in this commentary means loss of a human being)--both real and anticipated--does, I think, convey a more mature individual. I propose a psychological reading of the final verse paragraph of 'Tintern Abbey,' (see: 2, 2a, 2b) and consider 'Elegiac Stanzas, Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont' and 'Surprised by joy--impatient as the wind,' and others, as interesting examples of how Wordsworth deals imaginatively with loss.[4]
1) Dietrich writes about the life-long effects of early childhood parent death. He stresses that the loss does not 'simply recede into the past.'[5] Rather, 'various aspects of the object loss and trauma may be experienced almost continuously, intermittently but throughout and in time--the loss is lived and reexperienced in time--and are always present.'[6] Central to his concerns are what he calls the lost-immortal parent complex and its effects. The complex occurs only as a result of parent loss--if the loss does not occur, the complex ('where the object is both lost and simultaneously immortal')[7] does not result:
Here the lost parent is centrally immortalized internally within the child's ego, superego, and id compromise formations and inner object world. Here the lost, dead parent is immortalized in a core: an organized constellation of unconscious fantasies, and is reflected in various facets of object relations, self and object representations, and identifications, introjects, incorporated objects, as well as in preconscious and conscious longings, wishes, and fantasies.[8]
Dietrich emphasizes that good replacement parents can alter some of the effects of this complex. (For a time line indicating early childhood parent death and other dates significant to Dorothy and William see 1a; and, for an overview of Dorothy's and William's replacement parents see 1b.) The four effects he outlines are as follows: '(i) on identification (see: 1c-A, B, and C) and how the identification process is interfered with; (ii) on the aggressive drives (and the common unconscious experience of having killed one's own parent)'; (iii) on 'the unique manner in which competitive and murderous impulses are experienced as having come true--the death as being caused by the child (and therefore becoming in fantasy, and in a certain sense in reality, the oedipal victor or loser)'; (iv) on a specific affect--'the great and profound ongoing experience of rejection.'[9] Wahl writes of the effects Dietrich summarizes in (ii) and (iii) above, and emphasizes that the normal frustration and aggressive impulses that the child naturally directs towards his parents, and that result in death wishes, become much more intense when the extreme external circumstance of parental death occurs. The child perceives the event as proof positive that his death wishes cause powerful consequences in the external world (The Law of Talion).[10] As a result of this perception, the child believes he deserves punishment for a crime he senses he has committed. Hence, his guilt and fear (Talion-law death fears for himself--his own death wish) become as operative in his psychic life as the rage he directs towards the deceased parent who has abandoned him. Wahl reminds us that consciously, paradoxical beliefs (I've killed my mother and I'm enraged because she's left me) are thought contradictory but that unconsciously they are held in juxtaposition without contradiction.[11] The effects of the lost-immortal parent complex on the aggressive drives can be represented in one's creative work (for an in depth look at how (ii) and (iii) are reflected in Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' see: Miall).[12] My interest in Wordsworth and 'Tintern Abbey' centers on the first effect (i) Dietrich names, an effect that involves issues of identification. It is important to note, here, that issues having to do with the aggressive drive, reflected (as Miall suggests) in Coleridge's poem, and issues pertaining to identification which may be reflected in Wordsworth's poem, are different dynamics as evidenced by the the two poems I have mentioned. The Mariner's horrific, supernatural universe and his place within it stands in stark contrast to Wordsworth's soothing, natural one (in 'Tintern Abbey') and his place within it. However, these contrasts do not negate the idea that the lost-immortal parent complex is operative in both poets and that some of their poetry is reflective of the complex. Dietrich points out that not all creative work issuing from individuals in whom is born the lost-immortal parent complex centers on the dark aspects of aggressive drives when he says that '[c]olorful, evocative, and moving external, creative manifestations of the lost-immortal parent complex can be vividly experienced in the creative production and lives of certain individuals, especially writers,' and that 'creations reflective of the complex can be seen . . . in the re-created, enclosed, 'perfect world,' controlled (as opposed to what was experienced passively as a child with the death of his parent), and self-contained.'[13]
1a) Time line--William and Dorothy
1770 William Wordsworth born at Cockermouth in Cumberland 1771 Dorothy Wordsworth
born, at Cockermouth in Cumberland (21 months after William)
1778 Mother, Ann Wordsworth, dies of pneumonia: William and his brothers are
sent to Hawkshead to be raised by a Quaker, Ann Tyson in the Vale of Esthwaite--Dorothy
is sent to live with Elizabeth Threlkeld (her mother's cousin) in Halifax
1783 Father, John Wordsworth Sr., law agent of Lord Lowther, dies
1787 William enters St. John's, Cambridge--Dorothy moves to her grandmother's
home in Penrith
1788 Dorothy moves to her Uncle's home in Forncett Rectory in Norfolk
1795 Dorothy and William first settle at Racedown in Dorset and then (in 1797)
at Alfoxden in Somerset, near Coleridge
1798 William and Dorothy travel with Coleridge to Germany (they spend the
winter there). The Lyrical Ballads published anonymously 1799 Dorothy
and William settle at Dove Cottage in Grasmere--Dorothy writes the Grasmere
journals over the next three years
1802 William and Mary Hutchinson marry and eventually produce five children
1805 Brother John dies on the Earl of Abergavenny in Weymouth Bay
1812 William loses two children (Catherine at four, Thomas at six); Dorothy
loses a niece and nephew
1813 William takes his post as Distributor of Stamps
1b) When Ann Wordsworth died, William (at the age of nine) and his three brothers, John, Christopher, and Richard, were sent to live with Hugh and Ann Tyson. Ann, especially, seems to have been a good replacement parent for William. Of her, he writes, Prelude (1850), IV, 27-32:
Glad welcome had I, with some tears, perhaps,
From my old Dame, so kind and motherly,
While she perused me with a parent's pride.
The thoughts of gratitude shall fall like dew
Upon thy grave, good creature! While my heart
Can beat never will I forget thy name.[14]
Although the loss of his mother at the age of eight can be thought nothing less than immense, William's circumstances after her death appear to have been optimal. He was able to experience familial continuity, despite the fact that all of the children left the family home subsequent to their mother's death, because he had not been separated from his three siblings, and because it is likely the four boys visited their father's home until his death in 1783 (John and Christopher may even have lived with their father when they attended Gilbanks' School in 1781).[15] Dorothy seems not to have been as lucky as her siblings. When she left her parents' home in 1778 at the age of six, Dorothy experienced a long period of estrangement from her brothers and her father (whose funeral in 1783 she apparently did not attend though her brothers did)[16] and by 1788 she found herself inhabiting a third relative's home since her mother's death. According to Woof, however, she was 'happy enough' with Elizabeth Threlkeld in those first nine years following her mother's death.[17] I think it is important to stress that after the Wordsworth children lost their mother, they seem to have encountered adequate, if not better than adequate, replacement parents. (Unfortunately for him, or, fortunately for us, assuming we like 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,' as a result of his father's death, Coleridge was parented by an institution from the age of nine onward.)
1c) While outer structures (availability and quality of replacement parents) will have a bearing on a child's negotiation of the death of a parent, so too will the child's inner structures. Both the Wordsworths and Coleridge lost a parent (two parents in Dorothy's and William's case) in latency years--a developmental time in which, according to Nagy, the child no longer denies death but meets it with some sense of reality; he is able to understand that death exists and is permanent but is not necessarily universal.[18] However, William and Coleridge were on the far end of Nagy's latency phase (in William's case upon the loss of his mother) because they were of the age at which a new phase begins (about nine or ten). In this new phase, death is universalized, recognized as a process which takes place in all of us, and is inevitable. Just reading this data reminds me of a colleague with whom I was conversing on the subject of her fears of flying. She said, 'Well, my mother died when I was eight, so ever since that I've known anything can happen.' The adult who has lost a parent in childhood has undergone an experience that may perhaps cause heightened sensitivity to subsequent actual object loss and a greater propensity to anticipate future loss. Wordsworth, I believe, was such an adult. Looking at his creative works, one may find intriguing artistic representations of these sensitivities and propensities; more to the point, I think Wordsworth's work shows that he possessed an intuitive understanding of the psychological processes that Tahka describes (see A, B, and C).
Tahka describes a hierarchy, a developmental sequence of the unconscious methods of dealing with object loss, based on a progression from the primitive to the sophisticated. He says, '[w]orking through an object loss will . . . normally always involve all three main types of internalization: introjection, identification and remembrance formation. Introjection makes the process possible by preserving the object so that the abandonment of its external existence can gradually be performed (see: A). Identification is used in attempts to replace the loss of the self and auxiliary ego represented by the object, (see: B) while forming remembrance of an object proper makes it possible to abandon it as a live person in the outside world' (see: C).[19]
A) Introjection: 'the first reaction to the loss of an important object will regularly be formation of an introject. It is a normal emergency measure which protects the subject against an unbearable experience of total loss and guarantees him an inner relationship with the object, as long as is necessary for working through the loss. The process traditionally called mourning work is essentially represented by various kinds of interaction and negotiation with this inner representative [introject] of the lost object [though the introject is a normal and usually necessary protective emergency measure, it eventually interferes with the bereaved's achievement of a more sophisticated way of dealing with the loss which would be by remembrance formation (see: C)]. The introject has all the characteristics of the latter, evoking corresponding feelings, fears and attitudes in the subject. The subjectively-perceived existence of the introject is usually strongest and most vivid at the beginning of the working through process. During this process, the introject of the lost object will increasingly fade away and finally disappear, corresponding to its replacement by other forms of internalization and substitutive object relationships. The most reliable indications of this development are often the subject's dreams, in which the lost object normally gradually loses its vitality and often finally appears as dying or dead . . . .'[20]
B) Identification 'is the form of internalization that builds and changes the structures of personality and progressive interaction with objects. What has previously been experienced as belonging to the representation of the object will after identification be experienced as part of self representation . . .'[21]
C) Remembrance Formation: 'I would like to add to the recognized forms of internalization an internal process the central position of which, in dealing with an object loss, is very well-known but the importance of which, as a developmentally higher form of internalization [my italics], has not been sufficiently recognized, and therefore, as far as I know, has not been presented as such. I am referring to the mental process through which an object hitherto experienced as existing in the outer world becomes a remembrance of the object. In this process, the nature of the object representation alters, as an object belonging to the present and to the outside world changes into one belonging to the past and to the realm of memories.'[22]
2) In verse paragraph
six of 'Tintern Abbey,' William anticipates something that is for him problematic:
the prospect that Dorothy may proceed into the future (e.g.,
'in thy solitary walk') and inevitably face any one or combination of the
kinds of suffering he names (e.g.,
'solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief') without him. The absence he envisions
is one principally brought about by his death or some intractable infirmity,
I think (e.g.,
'If I should be where I no more can hear / Thy voice'), and his focus on it
compels him to find a solution to Dorothy's prospective sufferings. To ease
these, he offers really just one striking exhortation:
'remember me.' The other possible comforts don't compare with this one. I
would argue that he knows full well that for Dorothy, recalling Nature, regardless
of how well their
'cheerful faith' in it has buffeted them from injury by unpleasant people
and uninspiring interactions (e.g.,
'evil tongues, . . . dreary intercourse of daily life'), in future times of
need is not going to be enough. The only significant action--though it is
action only in the sense that William hopes it is something that might
happen--in the whole paragraph deals with his reappearance in Dorothy's life
after his disappearance from it (see: 3, 3a).
There is only one principle repository, one larger holding space, for the
figure of his future remembered self, and that is in the
'mansion' of her mind. A subsidiary repository is memory and it, like a room,
will be a 'dwelling place' within that 'mansion' that contains 'all sweet
sounds and harmonies' and, when Dorothy is very much in need of comfort because
William is gone, William. In short, though William is dead, he and Dorothy
would continue living in the same 'house.' His anticipation of her grief and
his proposed solution to it (a suggestion based on his assessment (correct
or not) of Dorothy's emotional disposition --compared to his -- regarding
loss, see: 4) is perhaps made more emphatic when, at the
poem's conclusion, he says that in addition to remembering him, she should
also remember his feelings about specific aspects of this specific place (e.g.,
'these steep woods and lofty cliffs / And this green pastoral landscape').
But he fails to mention the river itself. I think he chooses to omit the river
because it represents that which is mutable (and so implies mortality since
it ends at the sea) as powerfully as the 'steep woods,' 'lofty cliffs' and
'green pastoral landscape' by contrast represent that which is immutable.
In other words, though he found comfort for distresses he experienced over
the previous five years when his
spirit (in memory) 'turned' to the 'sylvan Wye,' he is now experiencing a
different kind of comfort (e.g.,
'A presence that disturbs me with the joy / Of elevated thoughts, a sense
sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused'), one prompted, in large
part, by his present impressions of the river 'in motion' and 'rolling.' But
he's not set in this vision: he's uncertain what it may imply and what it
really means to him. However, he does know what Dorothy means to him and also
feels he knows what he means to her. In this poem, the mysterious processes
he undergoes (at present) as he contemplates the scene does not in any sense
match his recasting of that river as
'this delightful stream' in verse paragraph six. Here, he seems to diminish
the importance of the river, perhaps for Dorothy's sake (because it is a real
reminder that human scenes change: time passes and relationships terminate)
and intensify the significance of what does not appear to change. As he states
in the
last sentence in the poem, Dorothy should remember these representations of
permanence as being '[m]ore dear' to him because of what they actually are,
and because she was there to witness them with him. In verse paragraph six,
he is telling her that if he dies before she does, her memory of viewing these
unchanging entities in nature with him will keep him unchanged (despite the
fact that he would be decomposing in the grave) in her memory.
2a) That William could enter the 'mansion' of Dorothy's
mind, into that specific 'dwelling-place' (called memory) where would be found
'all sweet sounds and harmonies' when she is alive but he is dead, makes me
think of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Except here, the roles with regard
to gender have changed: Dorothy (Orpheus), by way of laboring to bring William
(Eurydice) back to life provides a space in which 'sweet sounds and harmonies'
can be heard, ones that may, astoundingly, reverse Dorothy's (Orpheus')--in
reality--irreversible separation (see: 3, 3a,
3b, 3c) from William (Eurydice). I wonder
if Wordsworth had this myth in mind when he wrote,
'[t]he still, sad music of humanity, / Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample
power / To chasten and subdue.'
2b) In my last oral presentation, I suggested that
anxiety on the parts of both William and Dorothy regarding their inevitable
separation may be evident in verse paragraph six of 'Tintern Abbey.' I would
like to revise that statement because the poem is, of course, William's poem
and in it there is no evidence of Dorothy's feelings. However, certain of
Dorothy's journal entries (See 3(a)
to (f) inclusive, in "Loss and 'Tintern Abbey'"; click Back
to return) do tend to reveal Dorothy's anxious attachment to William. I think
that what might be seen in 'Tintern Abbey' is this: William's empathic understanding
and acceptance of Dorothy's fears, fears he has sensed prior to 1798, much
before they are made evident in Dorothy's Grasmere journals, lead him to realize
that should Dorothy lose him, a reality-based remembrance (see: C),
in her grieving process would not be achieved. If one views the main adaptive
task of bereavement as a full acceptance of the reality of loss (remembrance
formation), then this task is thought to be complete when the intensity of
the subject's relationship with the deceased is lessened and the loss is accepted
as final.This acceptance, however, precludes neither feelings of sadness nor
periodic regressions to introjection (see: A) and/or identification
(see B). I think that when William imagines Dorothy living
without him (eg.,
'If I should be where I no more can hear / Thy voice . . . '), he thinks that
she will fare better if she is able to maintain a bond with him in the same
way it was maintained when they were together (e.g.,
'Nor . . . wilt thou then forget / That on the banks of this delightful stream
/ We stood together'). To this end, he creates a psychological space, a poetic
space, and invites introjection (see: A). If this is somewhere
near the truth, William could be seen as one who wishes to provide Dorothy
with the kind of emotional protection that introjection of him, or anything
she finds representative of their togetherness, would provide. He is offering
'Tintern Abbey' for her use as what Volkan calls a 'linking object.' [23]
Lines 21-22 in 'Thoughts on my Sickbed' demonstrate that even though Dorothy
has not lost William, she relies on 'Tintern Abbey' when she feels the loss
of those special times when she was healthier and more intimately involved
with William: 'Our cottage-hearth no longer our home, / Companions of nature
we were.' Thirty-three years after 'Tintern Abbey' was written, Dorothy, finding
herself quite ill, does follow the 'exhortations' in William's poem. (She
also seems to use his poem to help create her own.) In 'Tintern Abbey' William
tells Dorothy that she should utilize her memory of him, the landscape, and
his words as panaceas in future times of suffering (e.g.,
'If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief / Should be thy portion'). This,
she seems to do:
I felt a power unfelt before,
Controlling weakness, languor, pain;
It bore me to the terrace walk,
I trod the hills again.No prisoner in this lonely room,
I saw the green banks of the Wye,
Recalling thy prophetic words --
Bard, brother, friend from infancy!No need of motion or of strength
Or even the breathing air,
I thought of nature's loveliest scenes,
And with memory I was there. [24] (41-52)
3) In instances in which Wordsworth writes of real losses, he often represents the reality of death with concrete references to the grave as a symbol of the impenetrability of death, and then after, he will often create images of sounds (often including various forms of music, perceived in nature or man-made) and of silence in conjunction with remarkable visual images that seem to traverse boundaries provided by images of various kinds of physical structures or defined spaces (see: 3a, 3b). It makes sense to me that artists in whom are born the lost-immortal parent complex (see: 1) might be given to creating powerful representations of holding or containment spaces that are either penetrable or impenetrable, or both.
3a) Prelude (1850), XII, 302-326: Wordsworth, on the death of his father.
Wordsworth writes that since the day of their father's funeral, after he and his three brothers[25] 'Followed his body to the grave,' he revisited, in memory, the site upon which he sat in the last (ever) expectation of being collected by his father. In memory, the place is animated with sounds where no sounds had been noted (e.g., 'the noise of wood and water') and with visual nuances (e.g., 'the bleak music from that old stone wall') where, again, none had been noted, that are suggestive of a remarkable change in scenery (see: 3b). What is most striking is the mist: where in reality it obscured the ill-defined landscape and especially the two highways, in memory it becomes a presence that, oddly, makes the roads and other shapes both more distinct and more mysterious. At first, he 'watch[es] / Straining [his] eyes intensely, as the mist / Gave intermitting prospect of the copse / And plain beneath,' but in memory he perceives 'the mist / That on the line of each of those two roads / Advanced in such indisputable shapes.' I think it is worth noting that both descriptions of the scene from the crag are written from memory (the first represented as plain experience and the other as an imagined revisitation)--and that when Wordsworth composed this, he knew that his father's death occurred as a result of spending a December night lost, exposed to the elements on a similar field or landscape. I wonder if here he is representing this viewing place 'from the crag,' so insistently because he remembers doubting whether his father would keep his word (e.g., 'such anxiety of hope') and so doubted the appearance of those horses (in the first instance). Then, after his father's death, he may have felt guilty for his unfaithful thoughts and even, perhaps, for thoughts related to his being safe and protected, useless to his suffering father on that fateful night, and so he returns to the crag in memory to fully 'correct' that unfaithfulness as well as the sense of having failed to rescue his father. The imaginary 'indisputable shapes' might be 'the palfreys that should bear [them] home,' perpetually bursting into view, affirming his father's acceptance and forgiveness.
3b) Letter from S. T.Coleridge to Thomas Poole, 6 April 1799 (extract), Coleridge's first written response to the death of his infant son, Berkeley.
Oh this strange, strange, strange scene-shifter, death!--that giddies one with insecurity, and so unsubstantiates the living things that one has grapsed and handled![26]
3c) 'Elegiac Stanzas, Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont' (composed between 20 May and 27 June 1806).[27] Wordsworth, on the death of his brother John.
I think one might read this poem with the idea that when the poet examines this painting he is looking at a representation of the site of his brother's grave. More specifically, it is less the actual castle he sees in the painting that he remembers in real life (having lived right near it) and more the castle's reflection upon the surface of the sea: 'Whene'er I looked, thy image still was there-- / It trembled, but it never passed away.' In other words, the castle's reflection in real life is remembered by the poet as being penetrable (but lasting), 'glassy,' and 'trembling.' However, that once diaphanous yet resilient remembered image is perhaps now a vision of his brother's coffin. The sea is his grave. But the painting depicts a storm at sea (John drowned in a storm at sea) and so the castle in the painting has no reflection: what's left is, 'this huge castle, standing here sublime, / I love to see the look with which it braves, / Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time, / The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves. / Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, / Housed in a dream, at a distance from the kind!' In this poem, John's death is represented by the dream-like 'house' (recollected by the poet), the castle's reflection, and the impervious real, painted castle, a 'rugged pile.' This representation reminds me a little of the mist (in Wordsworth's spot of time regarding his father's death) that both obscures and provides clarity. (e.g., 'intermittent prospect' and 'indisputable shapes' see: 3a).
3d) [Surprised by joy--impatient as the wind] (composed between 1812 and 1814). Wordsworth, on the death of his Catherine, his daughter (dead at the age of four).
I wished to share the transport--oh, with whom
But thee, long buried in the silent tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love recalled thee to my mind--
But how could I forget thee? (2-6)
This seems to me an example of Wordsworth's understanding that while the poet's perceptions are often in flux, our most fundamental existential condition--that we all are, or will be 'long buried in the silent tomb' is not. His relations with this deceased child reflect most perfectly the central tenet of the concept of remembrance formation (that it is achieved when one's relations with the deceased take place in reality-based memory only, see: C) in the following words:
That thought's return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore. (9-14)[28]
4) In a letter written by Wordsworth (11 of February 1805) to his older brother following the news of the death of their brother John, he writes of Mary and Dorothy:
They are both very ill, Dorothy especially, on whom this loss of her beloved Brother will long take deep hold . . . When you can bear to write do inform us not generally but as minutely as possible of the manner of this catastrophe. It would comfort us in this lonely place, though at present nobody in the house but myself could bear to hear a word on the subject.[29]