The Perception of Solitude in 1805 Prelude

            In the second book of The 1805 Prelude, William Wordsworth describes how the union between children and nature can change how one perceives solitude in later life.   Wordsworth first evokes the importance in perception as he describes how adults have a tendency to believe that, “puny boundaries are things / Which we perceive, and not which we have made” (223-224).  Adults live by rules that have been established, living within the borders they are afraid to cross.  Children, meanwhile, have an active part in building the worlds that they perceive.  As Wordsworth states, child’s mind is, “Creates, creator and receiver both, / Working but in alliance with the works / Which it beholds” (273-275).  Children are able to accomplish this because they do not have clearly established “boundaries” yet.  For children, there is no established manner in which to perceive the world.  For example, Wordsworth insists that children are, “eager to combine / In one appearance all the elements / And parts of the same object, else detached / and loth to coalesce” (247-250).  Children take the world as a whole, unaccustomed to the denominations that adults have used to separate objects.

            Because of the inability of children to impose restrictions on their perceptions, Wordsworth considers them to be more connected to nature and therefore less lonely.  He states of a babe in his mother’s arms, “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”.  It is clear from Wordsworth’s evocation of his childhood that he never felt truly “alone” in the presence of nature’s objects.  He states, as “a boy I loved the sun” (184), demonstrating how he feels associated with the world around him.  Wordsworth also describes how this specific relationship with nature can fade as one begins to analyze and measure their world.  Moreover, other objects take the place of “natural” ones.  For example, to the adult mind, society can be “made sweet as solitude” (315).

            Interestingly, Wordsworth views a mother’s love as a key element in the formation of a child’s relationship with nature, for a mother is the object that first makes a child feel like it is not “alone.”  For instance, Wordsworth states, that “passion from his mother’s eye” (243) is the catalyst for a babe’s connection to the natural world.  Rather than being brought into consciousness of the natural world by the landscape itself, the child is introduced to nature by a human.  However, the mother is merely one object of a larger system (that of the natural world).  Therefore, the child can survive being alone after his mother because his tether to nature has already been established.  For example, Wordsworth states, “The props of my affections were removed, / And yet the building stood, as if sustained / By its own spirit” (294-296). 

            Overall, Wordsworth emphasizes how a connection with nature as forged by a mother’s love is integral to a healthy life.  He describes (perhaps contradictory to his previous statements about city life) how even in the cacophony of a city, a connection to nature can be forged.  For example, he notes that the city-raised Coleridge has sought “truth in solitude” (476) and is one of “Nature’s worshippers” (477).  It is possible that Wordsworth is suggesting that the strength of Coleridge’s bond to nature as created by Coleridge’s mother was enough to overcome the negative forces of the city.  If so, this stresses the utmost importance with which Wordsworth treats a child’s initial years.