Literature: Essay writing Leila Maestri

Explore the ways in which the Wordsworth presents Lucy in

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways.

In his poem, William Wordsworth presents us Lucy in a very special way.

From the title itself, we can notice his use of formal words from ancient

languages used to describe her: “she dwelt among the untrodden ways”, where

we become aware that he talks about a woman who seems to have lived in a

place where no one has stepped; a different or deserted place.

Along the poem, and through different images and metaphors, we

discover that she was a single and lonely woman, who is dead at his present

time, “a maid whom there was none to praise”. Wordsworth portrays her as a

lovely and delicate lady by means of a yearning appositive, where visual images

and metaphors overrun. “A violet by a mossy stone”, he says, and makes us

think of such a special being that makes contrast with the rest; she is portrayed

as the one, compared not just with a fair star, but “fair as a star, when only one

is shining in the sky”. However, people cannot see her, because she is “hidden

from the eye”; there is something next to her that does not allow her beauty and

delicacy to be perceived by the rest, which could perhaps be another man, as

much cold and hostile as a “mossy stone”.

It is not until the last stanza, that we find out her name, Lucy, and that

she is currently dead “few could know when Lucy ceased to be” and away from

the only one that could have valued her for who she was, and how she

deserved: “(…) oh, the difference to me!”

In conclusion, although he does not mention Lucy until reaching the end

of the poem, the author, helped by quite amatory similes, metaphors and visual

images, gets to move the reader by recreating a fragile, unique and desolated

female being.

Good poems have a way of encouraging readers to see things

they have not seen before. Explore one poem from this section

which has this effect on you, bringing out the words that

encourage you to see the subject in a new way.

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Literature: Essay writing Leila Maestri

Poetry expresses a vision of the world from a completely different

perspective to the usual one.

In the poem “Muliebrity”, by Suhata Bhat, this characteristic is clearly

present and shown by the selection of mages the author present us from her

past. She denotes her nostalgia for her childhood by describing her memory of

a young girl while she is collecting excrements for the organic. Usually we

would not take this action as something poetic, but the author manages to let us

see how important the girl was for her as she reflected her culture and reminds

her about childhood days.

To show this importance, the author uses anaphora and parallelism from

the beginning: “I have thought so much about the girl (…) I have thought so

much”. Moreover, she makes use of several sensory memories, which play an

important part in making the poem special, because of their nature: sensory

images as “smell of cow dung and road dust” and “monkey breath”, which are

contrasted with “canna lilies” and “freshly washed clothes”. Through this

continuous juxtaposition of images she achieves to make a charming effect on

the reader, as if situating us into that distant place.

The words “greatness and power” confirm that, actually, the young

woman had an outstanding importance for her, which she is not able to put into

words: “(I) have been unwilling to use her for a metaphor”, denoting that her

feelings towards those past memories go beyond the visible beauty she could

have described.

In conclusion, helped by this new point of view, the author manages to

transmit us something really moving; a feeling of beauty and greatness through

the descriptions of a task that in another context would usually be related to a

disqualifying task.

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