17 pages • 34 minutes read
The Solitary Reaper
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Symbols & Motifs
The Maiden and Her Song
The rural maiden and her song are the poem’s central and supreme symbol. She is the eponymous “Solitary Reaper” who “cuts and binds the grain” (Line 5) out in the field. The maiden represents the traditional agrarian way of the life out in the countryside, and the beauty of her song suggests that there is dignity—and even something transcendent—in her common, lower-class lifestyle.
The song itself, on its most overt level, symbolizes the power of art to transport and inspire the audience, thereby emphasizing the worth of such forms of expression. However, the song is an unusually dynamic symbol that seamlessly flows into the poem’s other symbolic elements. For example, the song leads to the speaker’s comparison of birds (nightingale and cuckoo); birds are a prevalent symbol in poetry, especially Romantic poetry, where they broadly represent nature, freedom, and even the poet themselves (birdsong is analogous to poetry).
Time
As a motif, time functions on two levels. First, time appears as something cyclical in nature, as the maiden’s reaping calls to mind seasonal cycles and the way nature can renew itself every year with new growth and new harvests. Second, the maiden’s song is at once enchanting and elusive in terms of subject matter: It could be about something historical and rather grandiose, such as “battles long ago” (Line 20), or it could be about something contemporary and “[f]amiliar” (Line 22)—“[s]ome natural sorrow, loss, or pain” (Line 23) that is nevertheless inherent to the human experience whether past, present, or future, “[t]hat has been, and may be again” (Line 24). In the poem’s final stanza, time once again appears as the speaker remarks upon how “the Maiden sang / As if her song could have no ending” (Lines 25-26, italics added)—once more suggesting that there is something timeless about the maiden’s music as well as the beauty and simplicity of her simple Highland lifestyle.
Rural Labor
While the maiden is noted for her singing, the speaker frequently mentions that she is also busy working. She is “single in the field” (Line 1, italics added), “[r]eaping and singing by herself” (Line 3, italics added), and he also describes how “[a]lone she cuts and binds the grain” (Line 5, italics added). The imagery of the maiden simultaneously singing and working also appears in the poem’s final stanza, when the speaker once again emphasizes her “singing at her work / And o’er the sickle bending” (Lines 27-28, italics added), thus creating a kind of imagery that functions as bookends for the poem: It begins and ends with an emphasis on the maiden’s rural labor as well as her song. The maiden’s singing and her rural labor go hand-in-hand, and both imbue her actions with a timeless quality: The melancholy of her song could be about either past events or present sorrows, large or small, and the nature of her work is in keeping with the annual cycles of planting, growing, and harvesting out in the countryside. Her rural labor is also a motif for the dignity of the everyman (or in this case, everywoman), which Wordsworth’s other major poetic works frequently emphasized.
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By William Wordsworth
