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Wordsworth’s “Two Consciousnesses”: On the Construction of Subjectivity in The Prelude

ABSTRACT Many critics claim that Wordsworth’s The Prelude employs linguistic figurations that ironically undercut his efforts to construct a self-unified, self-present individual. In this article, I argue for a more radical, unstable self-construction, in which Wordsworth articulates a present characterized primarily by lack. Such lack derives from Wordsworth’s sense of a doubled consciousness, of a gulf that separates his current self from past selves. In turn, this self-division implies an over-arching model of subjectivity in which selfhood appears constitutively fractured, a structural disunity that works to generate an anxiety regarding origins and self-identity. Wordsworth’s efforts thus seem problematic from the start, for by taking himself as the theme of his poem, he enacts a mirroring process that undercuts the self-unity he desires. What remains is a splintered consciousness, which becomes ironically the very basis of his self-identity.