Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals: Writing the Self, Writing Relationship

Abstract

Fraternal affiliation played a pivotal role in Hartley’s understanding of his identity, his place in the world and the world itself. Dorothy’s letters from 1778 to 1798 likewise show that fraternal affection was instrumental in her early awareness of her developing selfhood. Dorothy was first separated from William at age six (when William was seven) following the death of their mother in March 1778, after which time she endured a peripatetic childhood: she was sent to live first with her mother’s second cousin, Elizabeth Threlkeld, at Halifax until May 1787, during which time her father died (in 1783) leaving the Wordsworth siblings orphans. Dorothy then spent a very unhappy eighteen months with her grandparents at Halifax and Penrith. Finally, in October 1788 she moved to live with her Uncle, William Cookson, at Forncett rectory near Norwich until February 1794. After Dorothy was sent to Halifax in 1778, William and Dorothy did not meet again for nine years, when they were reunited briefly in the summer of 1787. Apart from sporadic meetings during William’s school holidays, they were not reunited properly until 1794: sixteen years after their first separation, they temporarily set up home at Windy Brow, Keswick.¹