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영어

Wordsworth's several revisions of “The Ruined Cottage” shows that the pedlar is the most important character in the poem. The structure of the poem's main story depends on what the pedlar narrates about Margaret and the natural environment. Readers' understanding also relies on how the pedlar looks at nature. The pedlar uses the dualistic rhetoric to make the narrator share his sympathy of Margaret's suffering. The pedlar shows a contemplative attitude towards the natural environment. The attitude is based on his rationalistic perspective on life, which opposes reason and the invisible with feeling and visible in the poem. The pedlar also tends to use the natural entities around the ruined cottage to demonstrate Margaret's sadness. What the pedlar's dualism suggests is that he is anthropocentric. But the pedlar's anthropocentricism tends to be positive because it contributes to the construction of a sympathetic community with Margaret, the narrator, and the natural environment. The pedlar's dualistic anthropocentricism results from his emotional affinity with the other Margaret, and his sympathy extends from the human Margaret to the natural environment through a philosophical consolation at the end of poem. According to Wordsworth's “The Ruined Cottage,” current environmentalism needs to be cautious when it advocates an ecocentric worldview, since the poem suggests that we humans cannot avoid a human centered way of thinking.