Significance of the colour blue in Poor Miss Finch

 

Poor Miss Finch is a domestic story written by Wilkie Collins, published in London in 1872. The novel is sensational and adapts a distinctive style of storytelling, with love triangles, disability, secrets, identity deception, cure of disabilities (blindness in this novel), marriage, etc. The novel brings the transformation of identities even in the character's colour, i.e, blue colour.

 

The protagonist of the novel is a young lady named Lucilla Finch who is in her early twenties. She lost her eyesight in childhood, as a toddler. Collins brings a burning question to the readers regarding her disability of sight whether she can marry? However, one of the abilities of Lucilla's disability is to recognize colours by just touching, further loathing dark colours which will bring a change in the plot. Lucilla's hatred for all the dark colours will bring difficulties in the lives of the characters in the novel.

 

The narrative portrays the romantic relationship of Lucilla Finch with an intelligent and soft-spoken guy named Oscar Dubourg. The cause of Miss Finch's blindness is an operation for removal of her cataract, but it ruie her vision and she became blindness. When she was engaged to her Fiance, Oscar, she became a prey of facing identity issues when Oscar's twin brother Nugent arrives and competes for Lucilla's affections. In her blind state, Lucilla started hating dark colours, it can be symbolic of her blindness (darkness) which is hated. The situation became problematic when Oscar fell ill of epilepsy and he started receiving its treatment containing silver nitrate which stained his skin a dark blue colour (a colour that Lucilla hated). It was due to a skin discoloration called agryria. Oscar refers to Lucilla's this queerness as her 'strongest antipathy', that is, a purely imaginary antipathy to dark people and dark shades of colours of all kinds." Because of the silver nitrate treatment and getting the dark blue colour, Oscar was afraid that Lucilla would reject him if she saw his skin colour. His secrets get darker than his dark skin which will set the problems, difficulties and confusion in all the character's lives in the text.

 

The central struggle of the novel begins when Oscar takes help from Lucilla's friend and companion Madame Pratolungo. The motive of her help was just to hide his dark blue skin colour from Lucilla as she was scared of dark colours. However, the love becomes a triangle with the entry of Oscar's twin brother, Nugent. Nugent was identical to Oscar in everything  including his tone of voice but what differentiate him is moral character. Oscar had inner goodness in his dark blue coloured skin while Nugent had inner evilness and self-motives in his white skin. The evil twin schemes to take away Lucilla by eloping her impersonating his good brother, Oscar. Due to Lucilla's fear of dark colour, Oscar tells her that his twin brother is blue, referred to by his neighbours and not him.

 

The colour blue has a significance in the novel. It further highlights the aim of the story: whether a blind should marry a blue person? That's impossible because no person has blue skin, it's a strategy of Collins to revolve the colour theory in the 19th century adapting technological change. Moreover, Wilkie Collins could use the character of Oscar and his blue skin to focus on the irrelevant relationship of race and colour in the world. Collins also used Lucilla's blindness portraying the reaction of the world towards colours. Colour has cultural significance in society among race, sexuality and gender which was prevalent too in the Victorian period. Although Oscar's colour transformation seems sensational, it is grounded in the Victorian time of medical practices. Till the mid-nineteenth century, the physicians continued to prescribe the silver nitrates to treat certain ailments, whether it's blindness, gonorrhoea, epilepsy, etc even after knowing its side effects in skin discoloration as seen in Oscar's life.

 

To cure Lucilla's blindness and marry her, Nugent arranges two German surgeons which helps Lucilla to gain vision though gradually. This is the situation when confusion arrives as she finds out that Nugent is white and it's Oscar who is prey of skin discoloration and has dark blue skin. Nugent impersonates Oscar and convinces Lucilla to marry. But Lucilla realised that she no longer loved Oscar (Nugent impersonating as Oscar). At the end of the novel, Lucilla again loses her vision and becomes blind but she is apprised of Nugent's plot and Oscar's fatal condition, agreeing to the marriage as planned. Conclusively, it was clear that the medical surgery didn't treat Lucilla Finch but it deteriorated her life's inner peace, happiness and thrusted her in danger to marry the wrong man. It was her blindness which allowed a happy domestic situation full of romance. The blueness in the novel signifies, 'otherness'.

 

 

 

Familial structures in Jane Austen’s Persuasion

    Persuasion is a novel of manners written by Jane Austen in the year 1816 and published in 1818. Austen's novel revolves around a family in a small setting, either it's Pride and Prejudice, or Persuasion. The protagonist is known in her novels, however an absence of an antagonist appears.

 

     Anne Elliot is the protagonist of the novel Persuasion and the daughter of Sir Walter Elliot. She is a gentle, sensible and middle daughter in the Elliot family. As the novel processes, the only resistance in Anne's life is societal expectations comprising her family and friends.

 

     It is a novel of extended mourning and renewed hope. The dead mother has an impact in the novel. The story begins with the living father, Sir Walter Elliot- the baronetage- then shifts to Lady Elliot, suggesting the mother's role, the character and the implications of her death. Described as an autumnal novel, it gives a sense of season change, that is, awareness of change.

 

     The exceptional character in Persuasion is Anne who has a strong attachment to her mother (to the memories of her dead mother). She is gentle and kind to marry but even this gentleness can't get her an adequate life partner. The only reason is class rigidity and social status. Austen fails to address the differences in siblings in her novels.

 

     However, Austen gives a brief about the difference between siblings. The difference between a sibling is monitored based on the position in the family, gentleness, resemblance to the mother rather than her father, etc. In the current theory of family structure, siblings differ according to the principle of divergence by Darwin. In simple words, siblings find their niche within the family which makes them different. This is the same with Anne.

 

     Anne Elliot is the only family member who cares for everyone in anything. She is helpful and affectionate as her father is self-indulgent and cold. The relation between Sir Walter Elliot's narcissism and Anne's responsiveness is incorporated in their attitude which is contrary to personal appearance.

 

     Instead of becoming a revolutionary, Austen defends the traditional structure of respect and family values. But she is supportive of better social mobility of members of a family. Austen's portrayal of family reflects the phenomena of social reform that happened in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Authors gave special efforts in writing about the value of family life rather than individual happiness. It is not limited to children to respect their parents but for parents too in raising their children, with an ultimate aim of growth of society as a whole.

 

     One of the continuous themes in the novel is the presence of silly parents. Parents are the head of the family, however, Sir Walter is self-involved and his ignorance can be seen which breaks the family. He couldn't make good decisions for the family. His insensible extravagance brings a conflict that leads Elliots to leave the home and he fails to guide his daughters. His selfishness could be seen in Elizabeth and Mary who believe in self-importance like their father. Anne is different from the qualities of her dead mother. She looks after other things than focusing on herself.

 

     John Locke theories regarding the parent's attitude toward children produced impactful changes in mindsets. Another important aspect is the marriage relationship which was required to be adhered to. The social status and class in marriage played a crucial role in the early eighteenth century. These fundamental changes in writing played a significant role in declining patriarchal family structure and gave birth to individuality and companionate marriages.

 

     This gradual change in family structure resulted in creating a more balanced relationship between husband-wife and parent-children. To better understand the family structure, one needs to compare the siblings in the same house.

 

     Anne in Persuasion suffers emotionally as she has no authority or power and most of the time, her usefulness is rejected. While Emma suffers morally as she has authority and is useless in real life. At the end of the Persuasion, Anne's sense of responsibility goes beyond the immediate domestic environment to a much wider community. At the end of the novel, there is a fulfilment of love that was awaited for a long, between Anne and Captain Wentworth. It became possible after her release from a family in which her usefulness, emotional and domestic support was wasted. After her mother's death, her practical abilities were frustrating and were of no use to others.

 

 

About the Character of Mak in The Second Shepherd's Play

 

The Second Shepherd's Play is a mystery text, contrasting spirituality and the materialistic world. Written at Wakefield at the end of the fifteenth century, it highlighted political, religious and economic differences.

 

     Through the play, the anonymous author shifted the essence of earthly life into Christianity, that is, morality. The poor shepherds' Coll, Gyb and Daw represent the socially backward class who were used by the wealthy landowners. They had to face harsh winters, wind, family issues, hunger, etc.

 

     The objective of the play was to bring out the role of charity on earth through the shepherds. However, the play wouldn't be successful without the role of Mak.

 

     Mak is the antagonist in the play who lived with his wife, Gill and several children. He was a thief and he stole one of the sheep from those Shepherds. With the character of Mak, selfishness, pride and deceitfulness have been shown in men.

 

     Mak knows that the act of stealing is a sin and a death punishment, yet he turns away from God to fulfil his self-serving will. In contrast, the three shepherds showed mercy on Mak when the act of stealing unfolded. The shepherds had faith in God and this led them to forgive Mak's sin, ultimately redeemed by Christ. Whereas, Mak lives with tumult throughout.

 

     The thief (Mak) represents the pride, selfishness and immortality that exist in humans. At night, The Shepherds asked Mak to sleep in between them, symbolically, pride and immortality were between them without their knowledge.

 

     As Coll, Gyb and Daw's economic status was somehow similar to Mak, the Biblical songs connected them between Earth and the spiritual world. They complain about their lives after the song (or hymns) ended, showing a break from the biblical world makes humans worry about their problems, lives, etc. In simple words, a connection with God (through songs in the play) removes all materialistic problems, but a slight pause may recollect the traumas and difficulties in earthly life.

 

     Mak was poor like the shepherds. He had no food to feed his family, therefore he started stealing and became a thief. There is a contrast that Mak could also do a job like shepherds to earn a living (as mentioned in the play that the landowners wanted more shepherds to work for them), but stealing shows an act of turning away from God and becoming a sinner.

 

     The theme of forgiveness runs in both subplots of the play. At first, The shepherds forgive Mak for stealing their sheep. The main reason for forgiveness was Mak's deteriorated condition of no food and money. The shepherds didn't give him the death penalty for stealing which is forgiveness and charity for well-being. This very act of forgiveness leads the shepherds to another plot in Bethlehem where they meet Christ.

 

     All of Shepherd's pain, complaints go away when they get to know about the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. They didn't even care about the harsh weather or the miles of distance to walk and in the end, they attain the heavenly bliss where they were forgiven by Christ. It showed how the earthly sufferings of the shepherds ended with the power of Christ's birth.

 

     Mak doesn't believe in God or his goodness but he is very well aware of others who believe in God. Therefore he uses his name to escape from danger or to show his loyalty.

 

     When the shepherds came to his cottage, he swore that he didn't take their sheep. Moreover, he uses God as a sign of goodness in his lies.

 

     Mak:

 

No sheep have I brought,

Neither heifer nor goat,

And Gill, my wife, rose not,

Here since she laid her.

As I am true and loyal, to God, here I pray

That this be the first meal I shall eat this day. (Scene - 5)

 

     Mak is a selfish character who uses ill tactics and fails to accept goodness to attain God in the nativity. Both Mak and the shepherds were aware of the punishment of stealing sheep (death punishment). The shepherds who were crumpled with landlords and had to live in cold weather never sinned. In contrast, Mak knew about his wrongdoings, yet he committed them. Further, he used God's name to escape the danger. In this play, it has been shown that the better we do will bring goodness though in this life or later.

 

     Mak failed to recognize the value of goodness, charity, Christian values and goodwill (forgiveness). The main theme of the play is redemption through charity and forgiveness which has brightened with the presence of Mak.

 

     First Mak was offered friendship by those shepherds which he rejected. When he was caught stealing, he was given forgiveness by the shepherds which is a kind of charity. Moreover, they don't give him death punishment but forgive him with humiliation. These acts of charity led to the redemption of shepherds with the blessings of the angel. Mak failed to get any such blessings because of his deceitfulness, pride and selfishness.

 

 

Works Cited

 

Introduction, Joseph Gonzalez, THE WAKEFIELD SECOND SHEPHERD’S PLAY.

https://earlybritishlit.pressbooks.com/chapter/the-wakefield-second-shepherds-play/. Accessed 27 March 2022.

 

“The Second Shepherds’ Play.” THE WAKEFIELD SECOND SHEPHERD'S PLAY, text.

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/mobile/folders/1OcyuEUtPXzkefzFbnntSOlMWXDFzr8HT/1QroWnOlJ8egDPELnJRC4euNNdAAnm1yB/1fBeiq3IWW4yLmPcmZlR5a2341EbQG-CG?sort=13&direction=a

 

Weeks, Rachel. “The Second Shepherd’s Play Themes.” LitCharts.

https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-second-shepherd-s-play/  Accessed 27 March

Banned books due to Censorship

CREATIVITY & CENSORSHIP

People believe that writers and authors have the freedom to write and express their emotions and present to the world. But is it true? There are true examples of some banned books in the world which chained censorship and creativity together. 

One of the banned books is Lajja (Shame) by Taslima Nasrin.

She is an uncompromising critic of patriarchal religious traditions that she is seen as oppressive to women and an outspoken advocate of women’s social, political, and sexual liberation. In her crusading syndicated newspaper columns, collected and published in two books, she protested religious intolerance and increasing incidents of violence against women by local salish, or Islamic village councils in Bangladesh, also because the failure of the govt to require adequate measures to prevent them. consistent with Amnesty International, salish has sentenced women to death by stoning, burning, or flogging for violating the councils’ interpretation of shariah . Nasrin’s newspaper columns, her bold use of sexual imagery in her poetry, her self-declared atheism, and her iconoclastic lifestyle aroused the fury of fundamentalist clerics. By early 1992, angry mobs began attacking bookstores that sold her works. They also assaulted Nasrin at a book fair and destroyed a stall displaying her books. That year, on the way to a literary conference in India, her passport was confiscated by the Bangladeshi government, ostensibly because she listed her employment as a journalist instead of a doctor. 

Lajja (Shame) was published in Bangladesh within the Bengali language in February 1993, three months after the razing of the Babri mosque in India that touched off a wave of violence against Hindus in Bangladesh. Nasrin states during a preface to the English-language edition of the novel that she wrote the book seven days soon after the demolition of the mosque because “I detest fundamentalism and communalism. . . . The riots that happened in 1992 in Bangladesh is that the responsibility folks all, and that we are responsible . Lajja may be a document of our collective defeat.”

During the primary six months after its publication, the novel sold 60,000 copies in Bangladesh. Though panned by some critics as a didactic political tract, it had been a billboard success in both Bangladesh and neighboring Bengali speaking Calcutta, India. Pirated copies of the novel were widely circulated in India by militant Hindus. In 1994, the novel was published in English in New Delhi . (It was published within the US in October 1997.)

CENSORSHIP 

After protests by Muslim fundamentalists in Bangladesh, in July 1993 the Bangladeshi government banned Lajja on the grounds that it had “created misunderstanding among communities.” On September 24, 1993, Nasrin opened the daily newspaper and saw a prominently displayed notice calling for her death. A fatwa, or death decree, had been issued by a mullah, or Muslim cleric,of the Council of Soldiers of Islam, a militant group based in Sylhet, Bangladesh. It involved her execution for blasphemy and conspiracy against Islam.

The group offered a $1,250 bounty for her death. within the following weeks, additional bounties were promised. Thousands of Muslim fundamentalists attended mass rallies and marched through the streets of Dhaka, hanging and burning Nasrin in effigy. Nasrin was ready to obtain police protection only after suing the government , which, in response to international pressure, posted two cops outside her home.

The International PEN Women Writers’ Committee organized a campaign on Nasrin’s behalf, enlisting the support of human rights and women’s organizations round the world. It called on Bangladesh’s government to guard Nasrin, prosecute those that sought her death, lift the ban on her book, and restore her passport. The governments of Sweden, Norway, the US , France, and Germany lodged official protests. Sweden and Norway ultimately threatened to chop off all economic assistance.

Almost overnight, Nasrin, who was unknown outside Bangladesh and India, became a logo within the Western world of freedom of expression and women’s rights. The government of Bangladesh returned Nasrin’s passport, but no arrests were made, albeit making a death threat and offering a gift for it's criminal offense in Bangladesh.

At the time, Bangladesh was governed by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party under Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, the widow of President Ziaur Rahman, a military general assassinated in 1981. Prime Minister Zia was elected with the support of the Muslim party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which held 20 seats in Parliament. Critics of the govt contended that she capitulated to fundamentalist demands within the Nasrin case to preserve her electoral coalition.

In April 1994, after the return of her passport, Nasrin traveled to France, where she spoke at a gathering marking International Press Freedom Day. Returning to Bangladesh through India, she gave an interview to the English-language daily the Calcutta Statesman, which quoted her as saying, “The Koran should be revised thoroughly.” In a letter to the Bangladeshi and Indian press, Nasrin denied making the reported remarks, but in her denial she wrote that “the Koran, the Vedas, the Bible and every one such religious texts” were “out of place and out of your time .”

In Bangladesh, fundamentalists took to the streets by the tens of thousands in daily demonstrations calling for her death. Mobs attacked the offices of newspapers that showed sympathy for her and ransacked bookstores carrying her books. Religious groups pressed the government for her arrest. On June 4, 1994, the Bangladeshi government brought charges against her under a rarely used 19th-century statute dating from the age of British colonialism that proscribes statements or writings “intended to outrage the religious feeling of any class by insulting its religion or religious believers.” The crime carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison.When a warrant was issued for her arrest, Nasrin left her apartment and went underground.

In an interview given just before going into hiding, Nasrin explained, “So many injustices are administered here within the name of Allah. I cannot stop writing against these simply to save lots of my very own skin. The Koran can not function with the idea of our law. It stands within the way of progress and within the way of women’s emancipation. The matter is the intolerance of the fundamentalists. I fight with my pen, and that they want to fight with a sword. I say what I feel and that they want to kill me. I will never allow them to intimidate me.”

On August 3, after protracted negotiations among her legal advisers, Western ambassadors, and therefore the government of Bangladesh, Nasrin was granted bail and ordered to appear for trial at a later, unspecified date. She fled to Stockholm, Sweden, and remained in exile in Europe and therefore the us . (In 1998, she returned to Bangladesh to worry for her critically ill mother and was again forced to travel into hiding due to threats and demonstrations against her.) In 2005, Nasrin moved to Kolkata, India, where she hoped to get permanent residency. The Indian government, instead, granted her a series of temporary visas. After violent protests by Muslim groups in Kolkata in 2007, the govt moved her to Jaipur, then to a secure house in Delhi, and restricted her movements. In March 2008, Nasrin, protesting her confinement in Delhi, left India for Europe and therefore the US .

“The mullahs who would murder me will kill everything progressive in Bangladesh if they're allowed to prevail,” Nasrin wrote in her preface to 

Lajja. “It is my duty to undertake to guard my beautiful country from them, and I turn all those that share my values to assist me defend my rights. I am convinced that the sole way the fundamentalist forces are often stopped is that if all folks who are secular and humanistic join together and fight their malignant influence. I, for one, won't be silenced.” More than 16 years after the primary efforts to censor Nasrin, she still faced bans of her writing and threats against her life.

All four volumes of her autobiography published in 1999–2004, including Meyebela: My Bengali Girl-hood (1999), were banned in Bangladesh.

Summary Of Lajja Novel by Taslima Nasrin

 LAJJA (SHAME)

Author: Taslima Nasrin

Original dates and places of publication: 1993, Bangladesh; 1994, India

Publishers: Ananda Publishers; Penguin Books

Literary form: Novel

SUMMARY

Taslima Nasrin, a former physician from Bangladesh, is a poet, novelist, and journalist and an outspoken feminist. 

Lajja (Shame) 

may be a documentary novel about the plight of a Hindu family in Bangladesh persecuted by Muslim fundamentalists during an epidemic of anti-Hindu violence in 1992. On December 6, 1992, Hindu extremists demolished the Babri Masjid, a 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya, India. The incident began weeks of mob violence in India during which quite 1,200 people were killed. In Bangladesh, Muslims terrorized Hindus and ransacked and burned Hindu temples, shops, and houses in retaliation. Hindus are a minority in Bangladesh, which has an Islamic constitution.

The novel traces the events of 13 days within the lifetime of a fictional family, the Duttas—Sudhamoy Dutta, a physician, his wife Kironmoyee and their grown children Suranjan and Maya—in the aftermath of the razing of the Babri mosque. It also reflects Hindu complaints of persistent violation of their rights.

Many Hindu friends of the Dutta family crossed the border into India to settle with relatives, particularly after a 1990 wave of anti-Hindu violence. 

But Sudhamoy, an invalid, had to move back from the countryside to the capital, Dhaka, after being forced from his house and land. He chooses to remain , though his wife wants to escape to India.

Sudhamoy, an atheist who fought for the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan, believes with a naive mixture of optimism and idealism that his country won't let him down. His son, Suranjan, rebels against the prospect of getting to escape his home as that they had in 1990, when the family took shelter within the home of Muslim friends.

“After independence the reactionaries who had been against the very spirit of independence had gained power,” Suranjan thinks, “changed the face of the constitution and revived the evils of communalism and unbending fundamentalism that had been rejected during the war of independence.” Unlawfully and unconstitutionally, Suranjan recalls, Islam became the national religion of Bangladesh.

Suranjan catalogs the many violent incidents representing the heavy toll that communalism—chauvinism and prejudice supported religious identity—and religious fundamentalism have taken in Bangladesh over the years. He remembers the looting and burning by Muslims in Hindu communities in October 1990. Women were abducted and raped, people were beaten and thrown out of their houses, and property was confiscated. 

Suranjan is critical of the failure of the government to guard Hindus. “Why don’t we work to free all State policies, social norms and education policies from the infiltration of religion?” he asks. “If we would like the introduction of secularism, it doesn't necessarily mean that the Gita must be recited as often because the Quran is on radio and television . What we must enforce is that the banning of faith from all State activities. In schools, colleges and universities all religious functions, prayers, the teachings of spiritual texts and therefore the glory dying of lives of spiritual personae, should be banned.”

The terror finally reaches the Dutta family when a gaggle of seven young men invade the house and abduct 21-year-old Maya. Suranjan and his Muslim friend, Haider, search the streets of Dhaka for Maya but can find no sign of her. Maya isn't found and is presumed dead. Within the end Suranjan and his family plan to flee to India, their lives and their hopes for his or her country in ruins. “There was absolutely nobody to depend on,” 

Nasrin writes, “He was an alien in his own country.”

William Wordsworth’s Poetic Mind 

William Wordsworth is the father of English Romanticism. Named as Lake poet because of his magnificent love for nature and collection of poetic ideas while walking aside a lake. Wordsworth defines poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and emotions, recollected in tranquility. He believes poetry as a collection of memories, emotional expression and observation which should be recollected in a calm state. One essential idea according to him is that emotions have to overflow in an uncontrollable manner but should be recollected in tranquility, that is, in a calm state.

Like other Romantics, Wordsworth was also driven by Pathetic Fallacy which means human sentiments towards non-human things, here it is to the nature.

In Wordsworth’s poems, there are emotions of romanticism. In his two poems, "Ode- Intimations of immortality and Few miles above the Tintern abbey”, he picturized his poetic ideas. The major ideas are.

 Idea of Loss of spirituality-

 Wordsworth finds himself a mile away from the sense of spirituality, which is removed like clothes from this materialistic world. He is stuck in a civilized industrial world which chained him in social norms and conventions. As per his poetic mind, he is talking about the loss of spirituality in nature. With reference to both poems, he is talking about the loss of his childhood when he was near natural world. With adulthood and industrialization, nature has been wiped out from his life. It’s his reminiscence of past or the best days of his memory. In ‘Tintern abbey’, Wordsworth is talking about nature at rural area and not in city, among the woods which he revisits after a gap of five years, symbolically reminiscence of the past loss of spirituality.

 Nature which is now missing in cities, is still present in rural areas. Though attainment of nature is available to him yet the innocence, spirituality; childhood, when he was aware of the supernatural beings around him has been lost after getting adulthood in this modern chained materialistic civilization where he can’t observe nature around him.

Idea of Memory –

Mind being the collection storage of memories enhances poetic ideas of Wordsworth. The most important use of memory is to make connections between the past and the present. In both of his poems, Wordsworth is memorizing his past. For instance, in poem ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ is in nature, rural area or his favorite place to exist on earth. But what will he do after leaving this Tintern Abbey? He visited this place five years ago too before shifting in the city. So, what kept him near nature there?

Memory. Once he has returned to the daily gloom of the city, he will be capable to remember the best time of his life and can get a feeling of heart fulfilment again. Memory of Tintern Abbey will elevate his tiredness of civilization.

Philosopher John Locke in his words, ‘we are born with a Blank State of mind. Whatever experiences we go through, they imprint in our brains’, so memory with always keep him connected with everything he passes by.

While in ‘Intimations of immortality ode’, memory keeps an infant (innocence) connected with celestial lights, that is, knowledge of our pre-existence. In fifth stanza of poem, “Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness”, his idea is that taking a birth is escaping from something (reality). Its not an idea of forgetting but coming with idea of another existence, we still have the memories of pre-existence as an infant. In stanza 6 of this poem, he meets six years old who seems to him as an ‘endless intimation’ that is, he reminisces his childhood through him somewhere. He remembers his childhood and glory of nature in his memories.

Idea of Transcendentalism-

Transcendence simply supremacy or world without boundaries. In both of Wordsworth’s poems, its emphasis a strong connection of oneself to the nature. In Tintern Abbey, “Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms” depicts a rural area where small plants seem to run in a line, running wild(unrestricted). Nature can’t be restricted in rural areas. 

Romanticism is not only about beauty but its sublimity or aesthetic ugliness, a sense of supernatural. Poet dreams of sublimity thinking of nature that is elevated to a higher level of our reaches, that is, presence of spirituality around surroundings to transport into a divine(transcendental)place.

Thus, Wordsworth in his collection of poems fragmented the nature with his expressions of emotions, glory and joy, loss of innocence and a divinity for a transcendental world where nature is at the supremacy, that is, beyond normal.