Wordsworth and her Brother

[steepholm]

Yesterday in class we were comparing the poetry of William Wordsworth - "I Wandered Lonely" and "Resolution and Independence" - with the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth. Before the seminar, I resolved to make a feminist point by never referring to William simply as "Wordsworth", as if only Dorothy required a forename; but I've got to say, it was incredibly difficult, and I stumbled more than once. I do hate the way these things get embedded in one's brain and habits.

Meanwhile, sparked by From our Own Correspondent, I've been admiring the stained-glass windows of Notre-Dame-Du-Rugby in south-west France. Much as I like the "La Vierge au Joueur Blessé", a virtually blasphemous take on the Pietà, my favourite has to be "La Vierge a la Touche" (The Virgin at the Lineout), which shows the baby Jesus about to lob the ball to the supplicant players like an ovoid benison. What will future archaeologists make of it?

Comments

[kalypso]

Dorothy's journals made A Good Read last week - along with Mistress Masham's Repose, which I was delighted to see getting a rec, even if they were a bit snooty about the Lord Lieutenant who was one of my favourite bits.

Talking of siblings, Lisa Jardine was also on Radio Four yesterday, complaining that no one had ever heard of The Winter Queen. So I spent a lot of the ten minutes shouting "Yes I have!" and "Yes, I know that!" at the radio. Afterwards I thought, OK, I may not be a representative member of the public, but though Jardine's argument (that historical women are less well remembered than men) is generally true, in this particularly instance I'm not convinced it is; I would have said that Elizabeth's brother Henry's profile is probably lower, despite the recent NPG exhibition - no doubt because her progeny still occupy the British throne. What do you think? Elizabeth or Henry - more recognisable?

[steepholm]

Personally I'm more familiar with Henry - but that's because I used to live with a Jonsonian, and Jonson was always trying to get into Henry's good books. Also, I feel that a lot about Charles I is explained when you remember that he was living in the shadow of his dead brother. Still, I have no problem with saying Elizabeth is the more important figure historically.

I heard part of the Good Read programme, but only the very end of the Wordsworth bit. I too was pleased to see the T. H. White getting an outing. Despite my feeling that Francis Spufford's last book was unsatisfactory, he is very good on children's literature.

[kalypso]

I think Charles was probably overshadowed by both of them as a child - they're so glittery! And Elizabeth got all those poems from Donne and Wotton and so on. I suppose Charles did get a good walk-on part in Marvell's Horatian Ode after he died...

Perhaps I will try to remind myself of how to do a poll, and indeed whether I can do it on DW.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I love the Lynn Peters poem: here, in case any of your readers don't know it. I had never come across her before the poem (though I was only 14 when I read it, so some excuse), and I have the journals and have been meaning to read them for ages.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I hadn't seen that - but that's exactly what reading the journals is like!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've noticed a tendency, possibly just a recent one, for scholars, when writing of siblings or a married couple with the same last name, to refer to both parties by first name in that context. (Though if the overall topic is just one of them, last name may be used in other contexts, where there's no possibility of confusion.) The context of an intimate first-name relationship prevents this from sounding awkward. Even in a biography, in the childhood section where the principal subject may be referred to by first name, the parents might be also.

When indexing a book on the Inklings, in which four of the principal characters were a pair of brothers and a father-son pair, I solved the surname problem by referring to all four of them, plus the two other main characters, by initials everywhere except the main headings. Pretty much all of them are frequently referred to by initials anyway, so that was easy.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I have sympathy with all these predicaments. I think the difficulty comes where one (male) party has traditionally been much the more famous, and known to posterity by his surname, but critical fortunes have effected a rise in the fame of the wife/sister/mother - at least in certain contexts of reception. To travel writers, "Trollope" probably means Frances, not Anthony; to SF buffs, Mary Shelley may be better known than Percy; and while Dante Gabriel Rossetti still has standing as an artist, as a poet he has arguably been eclipsed by Christina. (It's not a matter of surnames, but I suspect the day is not far off when Ada Lovelace will be more famous than Byron.)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

However, perhaps your friend's ancestor was incestuously ***ing her brother?