SOURCE: Ehnnen, Jill. “Writing Against, Writing Through: Subjectivity, Vocation, and Authorship in the Work of Dorothy Wordsworth.” South Atlantic Review 64, no. 1 (winter 1999): 72-90.

In the following essay, Ehnnen considers Dorothy Wordsworth's authority as a writer within the context of the intricate issues of female subjectivity found in the Romantic movement.

In the past few years I've taught selections from Dorothy Wordsworth's journals to undergraduates several times—both in introductory surveys and in seminars on British Romanticism. This paper is motivated partially by my students' reader responses to Dorothy's work. Each time I assign the texts without introductory statements. And each time, the students' journal entries and class participation invariably present the same thought—a good percentage are convinced, as F. W. Bateson suggested over forty years ago, that an incestuous relationship existed between Dorothy and her brother, William.

Dorothy Wordsworth's Alfoxden and Grasmere journals (1798-1803) pose a problem...