“The Thorn” by William Wordsworth

Dorothy Wordsworth describes the division of labor in the Wordsworth household at Dove Cottage,
Grasmere in Cumbria. She did the labor and William her brother did the “Romanticising.” But it shows the
division of experience wasn’t as clear cut as might appear at first. Dorothy shows her emotional response
to the world she inhabits too, as much as her esteemed brother does in his poetry.

Romanticism was a way of seeing and experiencing the world and which Wordsworth promoted in his
poetry. It wasn’t necessarily about being romantic, however. It was about an emotional response to the
world that balanced a logical factual approach. It promoted the importance of feelings, myth, symbolism,
and intuition as well as taking into account the facts of a situation.

“The Thorn,” written by William Wordsworth in 1789 is very melodramatic and tells the story of a solitary,
rejected woman, Martha Ray, whose baby has died and the mythology that builds around her.

Wordsworth, in the opening stanzas, introduces us immediately to the thorn describing it as, “so old and
grey,” “stands erect,” “A wretched thing forlorn.” And takes the personification to a higher degree saying it
is,” Not higher than a two year’s child.”

He is setting us up to respond to natural things emotionally. He then balances this emotional approach
with factual evidence as he gives us the thorns location,” high on a mountain highest ridge,” and the
minutest detail, telling us that three yards from the thorn are, “a muddy pond,” and close beside the thorn
is,

“A beauteous heap, a hill of moss.

Just half a foot in height.”
A mixture of fact and emotion balanced. Three things are described nearby and we wonder how they
relate to each other. The Colour is very important. The mound of earth near the thorn has, “vermilion dye,”
“lovely tints,” “olive green, “scarlet bright,” “green red, and pearly white.” Vivid in our mind’s eye.

Then, “A woman in a scarlet cloak,” Martha Ray, is introduced into this setting and we are asked,

“Now wherefore, thus, by day and night,

In rain, in tempest, and in snow,
Thus to the dreary mountain top
Does this poor woman go?”

The question all the local villagers ponder too. Observation, and imagination create a myth. Many believe
she has killed her baby and buried it next to the thorn but they don’t actually know that. Wordsworth
keeps pulling us back to reality, tempering our emotional response, “I cannot tell; I wish I could; for the
true reason no one knows.”

Wordsworth also begins to use the personal pronoun. It is an egotistical device but we are with him. It is us
as well as Wordsworth asking the same questions. He has got involved in this apparent tragedy and so
have we. Wordsworth relates to us the story of Martha Ray and what makes her mad.
“Full twenty years are past and gone
Since she (her name is Martha Ray)
Gave with a maidens true good will
Her company to Stephen Hill”

Stephen Hill, we are told, gets Martha pregnant but leaves her and marries somebody else. As result she
has the baby but it is never seen by other people. Then imagination intervenes again,

“For many a time and often were heard

Cries coming from the mountains head
Some plainly living voices were:
And other, I’ve heard many swear,
Were voices of the dead:
I cannot think, whate’er they say,
They had to do with Martha Ray.”

Wordsworth then draws us back to a cool scientific approach,

“But what’s the Thorn? And what the pond?

And what the hill of moss to her?”
And what the creeping breeze that comes
The little pond to stir?”
You can almost imagine Wordsworth and us being explorers into this mystery using investigative questions.
However, finally, myth is triumphant
“…but some will say
She hanged her baby on the tree
Some say she drowned it in the pond
Which is a little step beyond
But all and each one agree
The little babe was buried there
Beneath the hill of moss so fair.”

Fact, imagination, emotion, have combined to create a myth.

What use would this mythologizing be to those people in the hills and mountains of the Lake District?
Would it help them make moral decisions? They wanted to bring Martha Ray to public justice based on
what they thought and felt. Would it help them to create their own response to Martha’s predicament
without having to experience it themselves? Is that the purpose of mythologizing? The purpose of fairy
tales and myths have always been important to childhood and early emotional development and moral
growth. Wordsworth has created an adult myth. So does the need for myths go beyond childhood and
remain important to all?

……………………………………………………………………………………….
In a few weeks, a good friend of mine, Clive, is coming over from Canada for a reunion of old school
friends. Some of us are reaching 60 this year and we are getting together for a celebration in Liverpool.
Clive and I are going on further north into the Lake District for a couple of days. We will be staying in
Ambleside, not far from Grasmere and Wordswoth’s Dove Cottage. We will visit Dove Cottage and I
promise we will listen out for the cry of Martha Ray caught in the winds blowing about the peaks
surrounding Grasmere and we will too be able to say,

“That I have heard her cry,

“Oh misery! Oh misery!
Oh woe is me! Oh misery!”

The Thorn Analysis

The Thorn By Williams Wordsworth

When first reading this poem, it comes off confusing to a lot of readers. The poem starts out by talking
about an aged thorn, overgrown by moss that seems to be clasped around the thorn pulling it to the
ground. The author says "poor thorn" in stanza two line 6. The thorn sits on the highest mountain top. By
the thorn stands a mossy hill which Wordsworth calls "A beauteous heap." Also by the Thorn and mossy
hill is a small muddy pond that never seems to be dry. The author then introduces a new character to the
poem named Martha Ray. She often goes to the spot on that mountain top and weeps to herself crying
"Oh misery! Oh misery! Oh woe is me! Oh misery!" Wordsworth may be suggesting to us that the
beauteous heap is an infants grave because in several parts of the poem (ex. Stanza VI, line 6, Stanza IX,
line 5) he describes the hill "like" an infants grave. Going to the spot when the women is there is described
as a "dare" in the poem, this could be because she is sad and always weeping or she may be crazy, or
because she in depression. A common question might come to mind when reading this poem; Why does
the women go to the top of this mountain and weep? Well the author answers this with the best to his
abilities by saying what he knows previously about this womens life. She was supposedly going to marry a
man named Stephan Hill, but then on the wedding day he left her for another women, the poem then
describes the women 6 months later as pregnant. We can assume Stephan Hill is the father, and this is why
the women goes up to the mountain top to weep. Before she was pregnant people described her as crazy,
and in the poem Wordsworth suggests the baby turned her sane. No one knows whether the baby was
born or not, or if it died during childbirth, or if the woman may in fact killed the baby her self, either way,
the reader gets the idea that the child died and was buried under the beautiful hill covered in moss. Then
the poems says the speaker himself saw the woman; she was crying and saying again, "Oh misery! Oh
misery!"

This poem leaves us with a lot of unanswered questions, or answers that could be true, but the poem
never really justifies if its suggestions are actually correct. Throughout the poem we hear a lot of different
opinions, and views on the woman. Questions that come to my mind are; What does the thorn symbolize
and how does it relate to this obviously sad woman?

The quote "every rose has its thorn" stands out to me in this poem. Below this beautiful hill of moss, which
the author uses 2-3 stanzas to emphasizes its beauty, is a dead infant, which was either killed or died
during childbirth. And the fact that something so incredibly beautiful is hiding something so tragic, justifies
the quote.

Summary
William Wordsworth’s “The Thorn,” tells a story about a woman’s hardship dealing with her incredible loss
and grief. The poem starts with a large, wretched, old, grey thorn standing erect on a mountain top. Also
on the mountain top is a muddy pond of water, a heap of moss, and what is understood to be an infant’s
grave. At this location, a distraught woman in a scarlet cloak is crying out. The woman, Martha Ray, cries
and cries day and night, sitting beside the thorn. Previously, Martha had experienced immense happiness
while in a relationship with a man named Stephen Hill. However, on their wedding day, before their vows,
Stephen abandoned her. Martha was pregnant with their baby, but what later happened to the baby is
unknown. The villagers in town are curious to the whereabouts of her baby; some say it was hung, others
say she drowned it in a pond, but no one even knows if the baby was born alive. However, the villagers
believe the baby is buried beneath the fair moss that laid on top of the mountain. Martha sits on the
mountain top next to the wretched thorn and the assumed grave of the baby and continually cries. One
curious and brave man climbed the mountain to find Martha sitting on the ground crying out, “Oh misery!
Oh misery!”
In “The Thorn,” found in the poetry collection “Lyrical Ballads,” nature is incorporated into the poems. I
believe the thorn represents Martha’s grieving presence. After being jilted and left pregnant, Martha’s
incredible sadness and subsequent loss is expressed through her continual cries. The thorn which is short,
dark, old, and grey represents distraught Martha and her sadness. The beautiful mossy area which
Wordsworth references to be the grave of the baby, represents the beautiful baby Martha Ray was
pregnant with. A question that arose when reading “The Thorn” was did Martha Ray kill the baby? I do not
think that Martha killed the baby and I believe something happened to the baby while it was still in her
womb.
Wordsworth incorporates nature into all of his characters and all aspects of his poetry making it possible
for readers to make a connection to his poetry through their daily contact with nature.

Themes

Nature
Throughout his poetic career, Wordsworth displayed a typically Romantic preoccupation with nature and
the way that the exterior natural world reflects the emotional and subconscious human interior. "The
Thorn" exemplifies this Romantic trope, as the first five stanzas of the poem are completely dedicated to
vivid descriptions of the thorn, lichen, moss, pond and mountain. The thorn is shown to be "so old and
grey" that the speaker can hardly imagine it young, but then describes its likeness to the height of a two-
year-old child. Following this description, the narrator deems it a "wretched thing." These descriptions are
then mirrored in the character of Martha Ray, who is introduced with the same adjective used to describe
the thorn: "wretched woman." The alliteration highlights the significance of this adjective choice. Through
these associations we can interpret Martha Ray as a personification of the thorn. Her mystique,
impenetrable "woe," and confusing, twisted back story are similar to the "mass of knotted joints" and
"melancholy crop" that is the thorn.
(Or)
The Beneficial Influence of Nature
Throughout Wordsworth’s work, nature provides the ultimate good influence on the human mind. All
manifestations of the natural world—from the highest mountain to the simplest flower—elicit noble,
elevated thoughts and passionate emotions in the people who observe these manifestations. Wordsworth
repeatedly emphasizes the importance of nature to an individual’s intellectual and spiritual development.
A good relationship with nature helps individuals connect to both the spiritual and the social worlds. As
Wordsworth explains in The Prelude, a love of nature can lead to a love of humankind. In such poems as
“The World Is Too Much with Us” (1807) and “London, 1802” (1807) people become selfish and immoral
when they distance themselves from nature by living in cities. Humanity’s innate empathy and nobility of
spirit becomes corrupted by artificial social conventions as well as by the squalor of city life. In contrast,
people who spend a lot of time in nature, such as laborers and farmers, retain the purity and nobility of
their souls.
The Gothic
Wordsworth's known disdain for the gothic genre manifests in the unreliability of the poem's speaker. The
speaker is fascinated by the local superstitions and gossip about Martha Ray, which twist the tragic
suffering and clear mental illness of the character into a thrilling macabre folk tale. Wordsworth was
revolutionary in his poetic voice through his repeated incorporation and empathetic illustration of poor
and dispossessed characters. The speaker in "The Thorn," as Wordsworth explains in his note to the poem,
is a "sufficiently common" man subject to belief in superstition, and therefore he allows his imagination to
run wild, clouding more informed perception and empathy. We see how the superstition of the speaker
affects his judgment and treatment of Martha Ray; in stanzas 13 and 14, he finds her crouching in
horrendous weather and does not console the crying woman. Instead, he regards her like a grisly curiosity.
The speaker's first descriptions of Martha are almost supernatural and draw heavily from witch imagery.
Near the poem's end, he reflects that local tales of infanticide are likely untrue, but the lack of sympathy
he shows during his encounter and the sensationalist manner in which he and Wilfred discuss the sick
woman heavily suggest unreliability and Wordsworth's criticism of what he felt to be the emotionally
vacuous thrill of the Gothic genre.
Children
Children and infants are used as similes to describe the strange nature of the thorn and its accompanying
heap of moss—the latter functioning as a supposed burial ground for Martha Ray's dead child in the local
tales. The "scarlet moss" is said to be colored with the infant's blood, the "beauteous heap" is the size of
an "infant's grave," the thorn stands at the height of a two-year-old child, and the mountain is even said to
shake when disturbed by the locals, as if haunted and possessed by the ghost of the infant. Wordsworth
held the romantic notion that the child was the purest and freest form of the human being: a state that is
sadly lost in adulthood. He is quoted as saying, "Child is the father of man." The impenetrability of the
thorn can be seen as the adult inability to reclaim jovial youth. As the speaker says, you could hardly
imagine the thorn to be so young. The woeful Martha Ray symbolizes the adult separated from childlike
innocence, stranded in a perpetually harsh, barren, and stormy environment. The rough nature throughout
the poem suggests that the season is possibly autumn or winter, again referring to the latter years of a
human's life as spring and summer are common metaphors for youth.
(Or)
The Splendor of Childhood
In Wordsworth’s poetry, childhood is a magical, magnificent time of innocence. Children form an intense
bond with nature, so much so that they appear to be a part of the natural world, rather than a part of the
human, social world. Their relationship to nature is passionate and extreme: children feel joy at seeing a
rainbow but great terror at seeing desolation or decay. In 1799, Wordsworth wrote several poems about a
girl named Lucy who died at a young age. These poems, including “She dwelt among the untrodden ways”
(1800) and “Strange fits of passion have I known” (1800), praise her beauty and lament her untimely death.
In death, Lucy retains the innocence and splendor of childhood, unlike the children who grow up, lose their
connection to nature, and lead unfulfilling lives. The speaker in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” believes
that children delight in nature because they have access to a divine, immortal world. As children age and
reach maturity, they lose this connection but gain an ability to feel emotions, both good and bad. Through
the power of the human mind, particularly memory, adults can recollect the devoted connection to nature
of their youth.
Weather
The pathetic fallacy—ascribing emotion to non-human nature—is abundant throughout this poem. The
stormy weather provides a clear mirror to Martha Ray's mystery, chaotic life, and emotional anguish. She is
shown to be deeply connected to the weather, as lines describing the "whirlwinds on the hill" or "the little
breezes" that shake the pond are immediately followed with Martha's cries of "Oh misery! Oh misery!"
This suggests a sense that the weather is powered by her woe or vice versa, as each powerful rush of wind
and rain occurs simultaneously with a rush of emotion from the character. The treacherous weather also
assists in setting the Gothic-influenced and deeply melancholic tone of the poem.
Death
Death is a prominent theme in the poem. It is explored through the bare winter landscape, where the only
life to be seen is the rugged and gray lichen, thorns, and moss. The references to potential miscarriage,
stillborn state, or infanticide also provide a grisly focus on death. The poem seeks to illustrate death with
the forlorn beauty of the thorn and Martha Ray's descriptions. It is something that is watched upon by the
villagers from afar—similar to how we as humans are unable to properly comprehend death until we are
face to face with it. In the end, the speaker suggests that the local tales are mere superstitions, creating
some distance from this morbid fascination and respecting the melancholy reality of Martha Ray's story.

The Power of the Human Mind

Wordsworth praised the power of the human mind. Using memory and imagination, individuals could
overcome difficulty and pain. For instance, the Speaker in “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern
Abbey” (1798) relieves his loneliness with memories of nature, while the leech gatherer in “Resolution and
Independence” (1807) perseveres cheerfully in the face of poverty by the exertion of his own will. The
transformative powers of the mind are available to all, regardless of an individual’s class or background.
This democratic view emphasizes individuality and uniqueness. Throughout his work, Wordsworth showed
strong support for the political, religious, and artistic rights of the individual, including the power of his or
her mind. In the 1802 preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth explained the relationship between the mind
and poetry. Poetry is “emotion recollected in tranquility”—that is, the mind transforms the raw emotion of
experience into poetry capable of giving pleasure. Later poems, such as “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”
(1807), imagine nature as the source of the inspiring material that nourishes the active, creative mind.

Motifs

Wandering and Wanderers

The speakers of Wordsworth’s poems are inveterate wanderers: they roam solitarily, they travel over the
moors, they take private walks through the highlands of Scotland. Active wandering allows the characters
to experience and participate in the vastness and beauty of the natural world. Moving from place to place
also allows the wanderer to make discoveries about himself. In “I travelled among unknown men” ( 1807),
the speaker discovers his patriotism only after he has traveled far from England. While wandering,
speakers uncover the visionary powers of the mind and understand the influence of nature, as in “I
wandered lonely as a cloud” (1807). The speaker of this poem takes comfort in a walk he once took after
he has returned to the grit and desolation of city life. Recollecting his wanderings allows him to transcend
his present circumstances. Wordsworth’s poetry itself often wanders, roaming from one subject or
experience to another, as in The Prelude. In this long poem, the speaker moves from idea to idea through
digressions and distractions that mimic the natural progression of thought within the mind.
Memory
Memory allows Wordsworth’s speakers to overcome the harshness of the contemporary world.
Recollecting their childhoods gives adults a chance to reconnect with the visionary power and intense
relationship they had with nature as children. In turn, these memories encourage adults to re-cultivate as
close a relationship with nature as possible as an antidote to sadness, loneliness, and despair. The act of
remembering also allows the poet to write: Wordsworth argued in the 1802preface to Lyrical Ballads that
poetry sprang from the calm remembrance of passionate emotional experiences. Poems cannot be
composed at the moment when emotion is first experienced. Instead, the initial emotion must be
combined with other thoughts and feelings from the poet’s past experiences using memory and
imagination. The poem produced by this time-consuming process will allow the poet to convey the essence
of his emotional memory to his readers and will permit the readers to remember similar emotional
experiences of their own.
Vision and Sight
Throughout his poems, Wordsworth fixates on vision and sight as the vehicles through which individuals
are transformed. As speakers move through the world, they see visions of great natural loveliness, which
they capture in their memories. Later, in moments of darkness, the speakers recollect these visions, as in “I
wandered lonely as a cloud.” Here, the speaker daydreams of former jaunts through nature, which “flash
upon that inward eye / which is the bliss of solitude” (21–22). The power of sight captured by our mind’s
eye enables us to find comfort even in our darkest, loneliest moments. Elsewhere, Wordsworth describes
the connection between seeing and experiencing emotion, as in “My heart leaps up” (1807), in which the
speaker feels joy as a result of spying a rainbow across the sky. Detailed images of natural beauty abound
in Wordsworth’s poems, including descriptions of daffodils and clouds, which focus on what can be seen,
rather than touched, heard, or felt. In Book Fourteenth of The Prelude, climbing to the top of a mountain in
Wales allows the speaker to have a prophetic vision of the workings of the mind as it thinks, reasons, and
feels.
Characters
The speaker
William Wordsworth himself described the speaker in subsequent published editions of the poem. In fact,
he explicitly stated that the person speaking the verse is an actual character, distinct from the poet, and
not merely a representative of the poet himself. According to Wordsworth, the speaker is the captain of a
small commercial boat who is now past middle-age and firmly set into a life of a pensioner retired to a
small country village. It is important, Wordsworth stated, that this old captain lives in a part of the country
to which he is not a native. In the wake of no longer having a purpose to get up for every day, the captain
reveals a propensity toward talkativeness which in turn reveals a quasi-superstitious nature.
Martha Ray
The poem centers on a mystery surrounding a woman named Martha Ray. In her youth, Ray had fallen in
love with a man named Stephen Hill—only to discover on the very day they were to wed that he was on his
way to church to marry another. To make matters worse, she was also pregnant with Stephen’s child.
Overcome with grief at the loss of the life she expected to have, she seeks a sanctuary high atop a
mountain. There she remains for the subsequent twenty years, until the speaker relates her tale. In all that
time, nobody ever saw the child she was supposedly carrying. Speculation ranges from a stillborn infant to
infanticide, and the child's fate remains uncertain. Martha is now destitute and insane, and she is often
heard wailing for her lost child.
Stephen Hill
Very little information is provided about Stephen Hill. All that can be known for sure—if the narrator can
even be trusted—is that he is an insensitive and selfish man who took Martha Ray's virginity, convinced her
that he loved her, and ultimately betrayed her by marrying another woman and leaving Martha Ray
destitute and pregnant. In a sense, the character of Stephen Hill symbolizes the loss of innocence that
comes with growing up. The innocent promises of love made in youth may turn into selfish lies when the
passage into adulthood begins.
The Child
As the tale unfolds from a narrator who proves increasingly unreliable, doubt begins to creep in not only as
to the fate of the unborn child, but whether Martha Ray was even pregnant. It is possible that she lost the
child naturally through a stillbirth or miscarriage, or perhaps she is guilty of infanticide. The villagers claim
to know the location of the burial site of the baby. However, they also claim that when an attempt was
made to bring Martha to justice for killing the infant, the buried bones were somehow capable of creating
an earthquake around the alleged burial site—thereby preventing them from confirming their suspicions.
The fate of the child is therefore left ambiguous, with the only certainty being that the alleged child's
mother leads a tortured existence as she mourns the loss of this child she claims to have had.

The Thorn Symbols, Allegory and Motifs

The symbol of the thorn
That Wordsworth's poem is about more than a simple thorn on a simple hill is easily enough discerned in
the text. The tale of Martha Ray and her woeful cries on the hill that may hold the body of her infant child
is one of betrayal, anguish, and love lost. It is a tale of a thorn. The thorn becomes a symbol for her whole
ordeal. It is the prick of her lovers betrayal. It is the stab of finding herself alone and with child. The thorn,
overgrown, is the child she may have killed. Just as the story of betrayal is an old tale, so is the thorn itself.
This is not the thorn of a rose, balanced with the sweet smell of the flower. This is the thorn of bitter
anguish, without redeeming grace. The scarlet of Martha's cloak echoes the blood this thorn draws. Just as
the thorn is bound with moss to the hill, so is Martha bound to the hill. This is something that transcends
the mortal realm. The hill itself has become a symbol, something wholly "other". The hill itself rebuffed the
townspeople's intent to find the bones of the infant, it rebuffed mortal intrusion into its otherworldly
realm. We can but look upon the hill, we can but mark this sad tale, unable to change it. We are observers,
who may, if we are fortunate, glean some lesson from the hill, the moss, the thorn, the pond, and the
woman. While Martha may have once been mortal, she is now wholly symbol, undying, unchanging, like
the hill itself. And the thorn, which never lives, yet never really dies, like her pain, and the death of her
child.

The Thorn (Symbol)

The thorn is a symbol of the joy and sadness that one experiences in life simultaneously—especially as one
grows older and joins society. Within the context of Romantic literature, the thorn may represent how
even in the most beautiful natural setting, ugliness can be found. Even something as beautiful as the moss
can exist as a foe in nature, dragging the thornbush down. Beauty has the power to destroy, just as the
beauty of Martha's relationship is lost when her lover abandons her. Her beautiful child is also lost,
changing from a source of joy to one of utter pain. The thorn may also symbolize grief and affliction.
Growing up is a kind of affliction of the human experience, as love, innocence, and truthfulness are lost.

Beauteous Heap (Symbol)

The hill of moss, referred to as a "beauteous heap," could symbolize the dead baby's grave, hence why
Martha Ray visits and cries "Oh Misery." The grave is hidden out of sight in a remote location, thereby
suggesting that only she knows of its existence. This distance from the locals implies isolation caused by
social stigma, as an unwed mother would be shunned in society.

The moss-hill also symbolizes the body of the infant itself. For example, the "tufts of moss" represent the
hair, the shaking movement of the grass suggests the baby's movement, and the reflection in the pond
symbolizes the baby's face.
Scarlet Cloak (Symbol)
The scarlet cloak that Martha wears can signify her affair outside of marriage, which resulted in a child.
Similarities can be drawn with The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (written years later, but also part
of Romantic literature), where the color red is a prevalent symbol for a seductress and adulterer. The
scarlet may also symbolize blood, such as the blood of the dead child that appears to also cover the moss
in drops.
Storm (Symbol)
The weather is a symbol of the despair that Martha is experiencing. Rain, frost, and snow are all cold
elements and are juxtaposed with Martha's strong feelings of obvious love and adoration for the child.
They also represent the storms of her life—from falling in love to losing her lover and then her child.
Martha bravely faces the storms, whereas others try to escape them. She fully embraces her pain and is
haunted by it, often becoming one with nature when these storms arise.