Monday, December 27, 2010

Analysis of "Perfect Woman"

http://www.poetry-archive.com/w/perfect_woman.html

What I think Wordsworth is trying to convey here is: every woman that you may have an attraction to at first sight will seem utterly perfect in every way and will perhaps be a gift to your eyes, for the time being at least. At first glimpse everything seen on her is like "twilight," something beautiful to behold, down to her hair and eyes and she is a present of the moment. After someone so great has been described, he goes on to say that she is a happy image drawn from the month before summer where all nature is in its prime that is to scare and stay with you, as if she is waiting for the right time to ambush with her beauty. He then starts to have the woman in a "closer" view in her household motions, as if she is a housewife taking pride in her role or even as his wife. She is a woman who is "not too bright or good for human nature's daily food," meaning she really is a human who has faults and isn't the perfect being he first thought as her virginal steps in things show themselves to him. As he concludes his description of her, he sees the "pulse of the machine," as if she is a worker come alive. She has good reasoning, endurance, foresight, who is not very rough (in a mentality sense,) but can also command people and be stern. As she is a spirit in "angelic light," I think he is starting to think of her as a guardian angel or something that is always with him as he looks at her with a very unclouded look, as if she has become clear to him and he now understands her. This poem left me with a really different view about Wordsworth thinking about everything this way, and if so, how everything could have been written about.

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