Enlightenment v. Romanticism in We Are Seven

The lyrical poem We Are Seven by William Wordsworth was a controversial poem published as part of a collection in 1798.  The poem tells the story of a conversation between an adult and a young girl over the question of the child’s siblings.  The adult is adamant that the child only has four siblings because the other two are dead.  The child is equally adamant that she has six siblings regardless of their earthly status.  While a simple reading of the poem enchants the reader, the deeper complexities of the poem speak to the emergence of the romantic period and the decline of the champions of enlightenment.

The Age of Enlightenment dominated the 18th century.  This era swept through much of Europe from 1650-1800 and propelled discourse based on reason, logic, and structure through the writings of great thinkers like Humes and Rousseau.  In addition, the Enlightenment grew as Europeans began to travel and question both societal norms and the influence of the church.  At the time Wordsworth wrote this piece, Enlightenment thinking dominated the intellectual landscape in Europe.  The Age of the Romantics countered the intellectual dryness of the Enlightenment and brought the emotion and imagination back into the circles of literary discourse.  The themes that permeated writings from this time period addressed nature, mortality, transcendence and the supernatural.  Romanticism is rampant in this work by Wordsworth and evidences many of the Romantic themes.  

The poem begins by posing the question of the child “what should it know of death?” (Greenblatt 278).  The speaker thinks of the child as an innocent, incapable of understanding the permanence of death and not accepting the fate of her siblings.  This theme is consistent with the Romantic theme of mortality and the supernatural.  The poem continues the emotive content as the child describes sitting by the gravesides of her departed brother and sister to eat her porridge and work on her knitting.  She even sings to the children in the graves, keeping the thought of her siblings alive and a place in her heart.  To the child in the poem, her brother and sister are not present but ever alive and part of her family.

Just as the Romantic ideas of mortality and supernatural are evident in the piece, so is the idea of nature and transcendence as major themes.  The line “she had a rustic, woodland air, and she was wildly clad” in the third stanza of the poem draws the reader to envision a simple child of the forest, far away from the clutter and industry of the cities (Greenblatt 278).  “Their graves are green, they may be seen,” says the child, tying in both the natural theme of earth and grass with the supernatural belief of the child that because she can see the graves, her siblings do still exist (Greenblatt 279).  In addition, the child in the poem believes that the lives and spirits of her two siblings continue to live on after the death of the physical bodies which is why she continues to insist on their presence and interact with them at their gravesites. 

While the romantic themes permeate the Woodsworth’s poem, the emergence of this piece as the transition between the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Romanticism is evident in the conversation between the adult and the child.  The adult represents the Enlightenment as he is the older, established figure in the story, much like the Enlightenment was the older, established way of thought at the time the poem was written.  The adult insists, through the Enlightenment ideals of logic and reason, that there are only five children in the family because as he states, “you run about, my little maid, your limbs they are alive; if two are in the churchyard laid, then ye are only five” (Greenblatt 279).  The child in the story represents the Age of the Romantics because, as previously noted, her words and actions embody the ideals of nature, supernatural, transcendence, and mortality.  As a Romantic figure, the child acknowledges the that her siblings are dead as she says, “two of us in the churchyard lie, Beneath the churchyard tree,” but her belief in the power of transcendence keeps the thought of her siblings alive and part of the family long after their physical departure from this earth (Greenblatt 279).  She continues by describing the deaths of both her siblings, how Jane died sick in her bed and John died during the winter months, showing again that she is aware of death but still adamant that even though they are in heaven, they still exist for her.  While the poem begins with the adult thinking the child innocent and unknowing of death, the poem ends with the child displaying a surprising maturity and understanding of death and nature with her acceptance of change and her ability to continue to find happiness.

The Age of Enlightenment was one of logic and reason as people sought answers to questions that only the church had provided answers for in the past.  As the Age of Enlightenment gave way to the Age of Romanticism, literary themes of nature, mortality, transcendence and the supernatural emerged in literary works like this one.  In addition, Wordsworth used this poem to show the decline of the Enlightenment and the awakening of the Romantics as the adult in his poem realizes that the child understands death and transcendence on a far greater scale than previously imagined at the beginning of the poem.  This poem is significant as it symbolizes the decline of the Enlightenment and rise of the Romantics.

Work Cited

Greenblatt, Stephen, gen. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. A, Norton, 2012.