19 pages • 38 minutes read
William WordsworthThe World Is Too Much with Us
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1807A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context
Shortly before and throughout Wordsworth’s career as a poet, England was the scene of an immense economic and cultural shift that would forever alter its citizens’ way of life. Spanning from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century, the First Industrial Revolution fundamentally altered the landscape and lifestyle of English people and later spread to other countries like the United States and France. The Industrial Revolution saw the development of new technology like the spinning jenny, which greatly assisted textile manufacturers, and the steam powered locomotive, which accelerated transportation and made trade between different cities and even countries much more efficient. There was an increased demand for labor in coal mining to support these new locomotives and a newly developed railroad system, and as a result of these sudden economic changes, England began a period of rapid urbanization. English citizens left their rural homes in droves in order to find work in major cities where manufacturing was booming.
While the Industrial Revolution greatly improved England’s economy and saw the rise of a more powerful working middle class, not all of its changes were for the best. The rapidly increasing population of cities meant overcrowding, pollution, and a lack of clean water, and lower-class workers in the new factories were seldom paid enough to survive in their new living situations. Abuse of child labor within the expanding coal mining industry became increasingly prevalent, and the centuries-old and dangerous practice of using young children as chimney sweepers continued.
It was this era of unprecedented economic progress, urbanization, and human rights violations that would inspire Wordsworth’s laments about humanity’s divorce from nature. The escalation of problems like pollution, dangerous work environments, and poorer quality of life for the lower classes was caused by an increased economic demand and England’s burgeoning consumerist society, a development Wordsworth alludes to with his reference to “getting and spending” (Line 2). In a period becoming increasingly defined by commercialism, Wordsworth used poetry to retreat to a simpler time, away from the contaminating influence of industry in the city.
Literary Context
Beginning near the close of the 18th century and continuing until the middle of the 19th century, the Romantic literary movement was closely intertwined with and critical of the Industrial Revolution for its entire duration. This movement featured some of the most well-known and revered poets in all of English literature, including Percy Shelley, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, John Keats, and of course, William Wordsworth. While none of these poets self-identified as Romantics, they each shared an understanding that the world was entering a new age and hoped it would bring greater personal liberties and equality between social classes.
Romantic literature is characterized by several key ideas, many of which can be found in Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us.” Romanticism emphasized the idea of the poet as a genius, creative, and solitary individual, drawn to nature and disdainful of his urban environment. The poet was also a meditator on and a conveyer of truth to his audience. In “The World Is Too Much With Us,” Wordsworth depicts himself as a withdrawn, “forlorn” (Line 12) figure whose meditation is on old and divine things and who immerses himself in natural scenes like the “pleasant lea” (Line 11). As a perceived conveyor of truth, Wordsworth takes seriously his responsibility to criticize England’s current social climate, and he attempts to steer consumerist humanity towards a more spiritual and reflective way of life.
Romanticism’s portrait of the poet as a meditative seeker of the truth is consistent across Wordsworth’s oeuvre. In “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” Wordsworth refers to the “bliss of solitude” (Line 22) and mentions the hours he spends “in vacant or in pensive mood” (Line 20), revisiting in his memory the beautiful sight of daffodils “beside the lake, beneath the trees” (Line 5). Similarly, in “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey,” Wordsworth speaks of his quiet “repose” underneath a “dark sycamore” (Lines 9-10) and his pastime of remembering and imagining beautiful landscapes when faced with “the din / Of towns and cities” (Lines 26-27). In each poem and in “The World Is Too Much With Us,” Wordsworth rejects his present surroundings and imagines himself in a place and time attuned to nature.
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By William Wordsworth
