The Country and the City: A Socio-Historical Reading of “Michael”

This article proposes to stay away from contemporary critical arguments concerning Michael’s value system, which is construed mainly from his choice between his patrimonial lands and his son Luke. Presuming that Michael’s value system as have been argued so far could never be the poet Wordsworth’s own concern at the time of the composition of the poem “Michael,” this article proposes to get back to the all too real socio-historical situation of the early nineteenth-century England. Mere consideration of the socio-historical situation, when combined with a close reading of the poetic text (a close reading of both the poetic story and the poetic history from which the story may be said to have been constructed), directs us to the poet working on the simple paradigm of ‘the country and the city at war with each other’ but the victory having been given to the city already. The guarantee contract for a supposedly prospering nephew’s debt and the letter from another prospering relative in London are undoubtedly the key elements that lead us to the war paradigm. Michael’s family members, each and all including Michael himself, and all of their village people, have been imbued with the city’s commercial values, which renders them all the more easier victims within the war context. Luke’s defeat in the city is viewed as being really the consequence, rather than the cause, of Michael’s defeat, which became apparent as soon as the news of the latter’s financial disaster reached his ear. Michael should therefore be regarded as one of the typical English countryfolk of the time, with whom Wordsworth often, but not always, identifies himself. Insofar as the economic view or attitude is concerned, there certainly is a distance between Michael and Wordsworth, this article argues.