The Solitary Reaper

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1807

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“The Solitary Reaper” is, aptly, a lyrical ballad: It has a rhyme scheme and melodic rhythm that would make it relatively easy to set to music. Its rhyme scheme is ABCBDDEE for the first and fourth stanzas, and ABABCCDD for stanzas two and three. Since stanzas two and three contain one more rhyme than the first and last stanzas (as the first and third lines rhyme, as well as the second and fourth lines, within the verse’s first four lines), they are even more “musical” than the poem’s opening and closing stanzas. This elevated musicality is an intentional element of craft, as it is those two stanzas that focus directly on the beauty and subject matter of the maiden’s song. With this relatively straightforward ballad form, Wordsworth evokes a traditional song, such as the one the maiden is singing when the speaker finds her in the field.

Setting

Setting is where a poem (or any story) takes place. The speaker encounters the singing maiden because he is out for a walk in a natural landscape, and the maiden herself is busily reaping, or harvesting, the grain of a field. This idyllic rural setting typifies much of Wordsworth’s poetry, which frequently thematically centers the powers of nature and the agrarian life. In celebrating natural beauty, the dignity of the maiden’s labor, and the enchanting power of her song, Wordsworth’s poem embodies one of Romanticism’s key preoccupations: a rejection of rapid urbanization and industrialization in favor of the older, simpler ways of living that the maiden and her singing represent.

In addition to place, setting includes time, and “The Solitary Reaper,” by virtue of its subject matter, foregrounds this element as well. Traditionally, harvesting and reaping in Britain begins in August—late summer, on the cusp of autumn. As such, the harvest symbolizes the temporal element of transition, which is part of the paradoxical dynamic of time’s symbolism within the poem; the maiden’s song, while paced through time and presumably about a specific event in time. is also timeless.

Personification

Personification often refers to the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman entities, but it can also be the embodiment, in human form, of abstract qualities or ideas. The latter sense is present in this poem, as the maiden represents rural life. The speaker emphasizes throughout the poem that the maiden is a solitary figure, and the reader’s first clue into this solitude’s importance is right in the poem’s title: “The Solitary Reaper” (italics added). The speaker describes her as “single in the field” (Line 1, italics added), a “solitary Highland Lass” (Line 2, italics added), “[r]eaping and singing by herself” (Line 3, italics added), and, in the poem’s first stanza, as “[a]lone she cuts and binds the grain” (Line 5, italics added). The maiden’s solitude allows her to function as a personification of the rural lifestyle and the timeless beauty of nature and song: Freed from all other distractions, the speaker can focus upon her and what she represents. The fact that her solitude mirrors the solitude of the speaker—who is presumably out walking by himself—binds both the maiden and speaker together, suggesting their commonality even if the speaker is of a different class or occupation than the rural maiden. As the speaker becomes enchanted by her song and the apparently effortless efficiency of her harvesting work, he is also enchanted by the countryside and the rural Highland lifestyle she embodies.