Wordsworth's The Thorn

William Wordsworth wrote a ghost story, and it's called The Thorn. The note that is included in our anthology reveals that Wordsworth's intention in writing the poem was merely to turn something he saw, a thorn, into an "impressive object". To do this, he gave it a fictional story, using the thorn as the inspiration for and poetic representation of the 'ghost' character, Martha Ray.

Although it reads as a fictional narrative, it is still a poem with lots of figurative language and interesting linguistic components. What stood out to me was the way in which the words "thorn" and "infant" evolve in meaning throughout the poem. At first, the thorn seems to be nothing more than an object, lacking any deeper meaning. However, as the poem progresses, and the mystery of Martha Ray is introduced, the thorn becomes a symbol. It begins to mirror Martha's character. The thorn is described in the first stanza to be inanimate, old, boring, and dead. As Martha's character is developed and the narrator begins his story of their encounter, we see that Martha herself is so inanimate, old, boring, and dead that the narrator mistook her for a gosh darn rock formation (a "crag").

Where as the word "thorn" moves from literal to figurative throughout the story, the word "infant" does the opposite. It's first usage appears as a simile when the narrator compares the small mound to an infants grave (which I must say seemed a very odd and slightly morbid comparison on my first reading). Although, when Martha is introduced at the story's turn, the word becomes literal and that simile is made true. The mound actually becomes an infants grave, and the flowers on it are no longer vermillion, but the color of infants blood. Mirroring Wordsworth's intention in writing the poem, the story itself introduces a small scene and then moves to develop those objects into something much more meaningful.

What is the significance of bringing back the thorn in the final stanza?
What does this poem have to say about the societal pressures faced by women?