The Ruined Cottage

First, I am confused about the printing of this poem. I was searching the internet trying to find some background information on it but nothing would really come up. As the introduction notes, The Ruined Cottage, is an excerpt from Wordsworth’s 9 book epic, The Excursion, and the Ruined Cottage is from the end of book 1 titled “The Wanderer”. So my question is, is what we have in our anthology, “The Ruined Cottage”, part of a bigger poem? And if so why is this portion significant in comparison to the whole?

The poem begins with the narrator coming across a “wanderer” laying beneath some elm trees. He notes that for a couple of minutes the “wanderer” does not notice him as he stands in the shade (6). This reminded me of our discussion in class on Tuesday about how the speaker was watching the leech gatherer from a distance, unnoticed, before he finally greeted him.

Finally the narrator greets the “wanderer” and begins a conversation by saying that it is a hot day and that he is thirsty, but can see by the “wanderer’s” wet hat that he has already found a place to get water. After the narrator says this, the “wanderer” points to a sweet-briar and tells him to climb the fence that is beside it. The narrator does so and notes that he sees a garden that seems to be abandoned. After looking around he noticed a well between two tall hedge-rows, so he goes over and quenches his thirst.  He returns back to the shade where the “wanderer”, now referred to as the Old Man (28), is sitting on the cottage bench. Here, the Old Man begins his tale of Margaret and the cottage.

The tale is about the inhabitant of the cottage, Margaret, whose husband abandoned her and her children during hard times to join a Troop of Soldiers (243-244). There was a blight that cut their harvest in half for two seasons on top of the war that was going on across the lands. So this was a period of turmoil. Throughout the Old Mans tale, he comes and goes from the cottage and Margaret. It seems every time he returns to the cottage he finds Margaret changed--becoming more consumed by grief due to her husband leaving her and her not knowing whether he was alive or dead. With more time passing since her husband left, and the deeper Margaret gets in her grief, the appearance of the cottage itself declines. We see this in lines 282-298, 390-412, 471-475. So again, the slow decline and decay of the cottage, seems to symbolize Margaret’s decline. At the end of the poem we learn that Margaret died in the cottage that she loved so much (486). 

What I found interesting about this poem is that the majority of it is the Old Man telling his tale of Margaret to the narrator. There are occasional shifts from the Old Man to the narrator reflecting back on what the old man had said. Examples of this are stanza 5- 6 (167-188) as well as lines 488-502. I also found it interesting that the Old Man mentions these feelings that “seem to cling upon me,” (224) or “but my spirit clings/ to that poor Woman,” (358).  It is interesting that on more than one occasion he uses the word “clings” when he is reflecting on how his encounter with Margaret makes him feel.

Nature seems to play a big role in the poem. Wordsworth seems to give human-like qualities to the plants when he is describing the declining state of the cottage and example are lines 292-295, “Carnations, once/ Prized for surpassing beauty, and no less/ For the peculiar pains they had required/ Declined their languid heads—without support,”. In  our discussion of aesthetic contemplation we said that there are two things that are required: some interaction with the landscape and some interaction with another person. The Ruined Cottage certainly has both.  The whole poem is showered in natural objects that are supposed to connect the narrator and the reader to the landscape.

Some questions I have are:

            -Through the Old Man’s tale of Margaret, what is the narrator supposed to get from it? What deeper purpose does this story of Margaret serve? On lines 187-188 the narrator says “And begged of the Old Man that, for my sake/ He would resume his story,”. What does he mean by “for my sake”. At the end of the poem he also says that he found comfort in thinking about Margaret’s sufferings (493-494). 

            -Wordsworth refers to the Wanderer in the beginning of the poem different all throughout. He goes from being called the Wanderer, to the Old Man, and in the intro to the poem, he is referred to as the peddler. Why is this?

            -I found it interesting that in the first stanza on lines 59-62, the Old Man feels as if Margaret is his own child. And throughout the poem it seems they have this father/daughter like relationship. Then at the very end of the poem on lines 493-495, the narrator says “Reviewed that Woman’s Sufferings; and it seems/ To comfort me while with a Brother’s love/ I Bless’d her—in the impotence of grief.” What is the significance of this sense of fatherly and brotherly relationship that they feel towards her?

            -The word “things” is used quite often throughout the poem (33, 157, 179, 344, 367, 452, 506). Why does Wordsworth use such an ambiguous term and what does that do for the poem?

            -There are certain words that Wordsworth capitalizes and im curious what the significance of this is.