Contents - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

I cannot tell how she pronounced my name 20With fervent love and with a face of griefUnutterably helpless, and a lookThat seemed to cling upon me, she inquiredIf I had seen her husband. As she spakeA strange surprise and fear came to my heartAnd I could make no answer ( 508-513)Margaret’s searching eyes are felt to ‘cling’ to him for support, but her strong feelings ofgrief are too intense for the Pedlar who, in his feelings of ‘strange surprise and fear’ ishimself rendered speechless. Even after she has told of her husband’s departure he had:little powerTo give her comfort and was glad to takeSuch words of hope from her own mouth as servedTo chear us both’ (530-533).Although he did not contribute many of his own words to the conversation, the exchange‘built up a pile of better thoughts’, and when he left she sent a blessing after him ‘With tenderchearfulness, and with a voice / That seemed the very sound of happy thoughts’ (542-3). What isstriking about the Pedlar’s narrative is his unease at Margaret’s feelings, and his candour in admittingthat he had little power to give her comfort. She found her own ‘words of hope,’ once she feltsupported by his presence. He gives sympathetic support – but does not ‘console’ her. It is she whogives voice to ‘chearfulness’; he does not attempt to cheer her up. He is ‘stoic’ in his attitude andneither shows excessive emotion nor allows himself to be overcome by her feelings of despair. Nordoes he offer any false hope about a situation that he is not competent to judge; he has no ideawhether her husband will return.His subsequent visit finds Margaret absent from the cottage (and her baby) as she wandersthe countryside aimlessly and fails to attend to her domestic duties. When she finally arrives, herappearance is so distressing, that the Pedlar twice tells Wordsworth that the sight of her would havemade his soul/heart grieve. She tells the Pedlar that she is ‘changed’; her eyes are ‘downwardcast’,her voice ‘low’, her body ‘subdued’, and as she sighs, there is ‘no motion of the breast…No heavingof the heart’ (634-5). Her spirit is practically gone from her. And as the Pedlar relates his memory ofthis visit he feels, in the present moment, that his ‘spirit’ now ‘clings to that poor woman’. His visionof her manner, look, presence, and goodness, is so strong that he feels ‘a momentary trance’ comeover him. She exists in his memory so vividly, that it seems to him she is not dead but only sleeping,and might wake again ‘when he shall come again / For whom she suffered’(624-5). The Pedlar ismomentarily overcome with emotion, reveals his sensitivity, and then regains his composure andconstancy of mind.20 The ‘I cannot tell’ construction is used for similar effect in Lines Written Above Tintern Abbey as Wordsworthdistances himself from his former powerful feelings.260