{"id":222,"date":"2023-02-18T06:11:40","date_gmt":"2023-02-18T06:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/?p=222"},"modified":"2023-02-18T06:11:40","modified_gmt":"2023-02-18T06:11:40","slug":"the-immediate-verdict-on-martha-ray","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/2023\/02\/18\/the-immediate-verdict-on-martha-ray\/","title":{"rendered":"The Immediate Verdict on Martha Ray"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever since we discussed it in class, I\u2019ve been wanting to explore how William Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cThe Thorn\u201d looks from a psychological\/social perspective, due to the fact that the whole poem operates on gossip! The speaker of the poem\u2019s perspective stems from both their own brief observations of the setting and woman in question, Martha Ray, as well as what others have told them about Martha. The first six stanzas alone communicate a depth to the poem\u2019s central characters and symbols.<\/span><\/p>\n

The poem begins with an intricate description of nature, establishing the setting and main subject of the poem\u2019s title: the old tangle of thorns, \u201cwretched,\u201d \u201covergrown\u201d (lines 1-11). The second stanza continues to describe the thorn, but also surrounding nature trying to \u201cbury\u201d the \u201cmelancholy crop\u201d (lines 15-22). The landscape\u2019s view itself is eerie: the third stanza\u2019s extended description of setting mentions \u201cthirsty suns and parching air\u201d (line 33). The elaboration on this view and the detail of what surrounds the thorn goes on for five stanzas before Martha Ray is ever mentioned\u2014yet the specific language the speaker uses has already set the tone for the gossip that is about to unfold. The diction is heavy and sinister, painting a beautiful, but certainly haunting, picture of the poem\u2019s setting. The introduction of Martha herself is not by name: added to the landscape in the sixth stanza or part is a \u201cWoman,\u201d and though all she does in her introduction is sit by a pond and cry \u201coh misery,\u201d readers are already on edge. The setting she resides in has already been established as mysterious in nature\u2014despite all of the detail that has been poured into describing its appearance, particular word choice has given readers the impression that something sinister lurks there. So although all readers are introduced to is a grieving woman, they are inclined to believe that something about her is amiss, consistent with the speaker\u2019s belief and setup. Prior to introducing her, it seems, the narrator of \u201cThe Thorn\u201d has pointed out the thorn, representing her supposed murder of her child, as well as setting readers up for a scare through setting before they ever introduce Martha, a woman in clear emotional distress (regardless of how strong the evidence for or against her is). They do not give her a name yet, either\u2014the speaker\u2019s mindset regarding Martha is immediately clear for all of these reasons: they are, at the least, highly suspicious of her. Later stanzas confirm, of course, that this train of thought is consistent with the wider community of the poem, but I especially found it interesting that before readers even realize it, the speaker has taken on a role of not only a storyteller, but an observer and gossip-teller.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever since we discussed it in class, I\u2019ve been wanting to explore how William Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cThe Thorn\u201d looks from a psychological\/social perspective, due to the fact that the whole poem operates on gossip! The speaker of the poem\u2019s perspective stems from both their own brief observations of the setting and woman in question, Martha Ray, … Continue reading The Immediate Verdict on Martha Ray<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spring-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/britishpoetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}