Another requested theme for this month’s workshop. Although we started with the idea of stubbornness, in fact we explored a host of related states and character traits, for example, being resistant, or being full of self-belief. We also thought about when there is a moral obligation to hold a line and when stubbornness might be less helpful or necessary.
A perhaps deceptively simple poem by William Wordsworth from the Lyrical Ballads (1798) kicked us off and held our attention for a long while. Here is the opening, which captures the core issue. Despite repeated questioning from her interlocutor the little child refuses to accept anything other than the answer she gives here.
We Are Seven
———A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?
I met a little cottage Girl:
She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
She had a rustic, woodland air,
And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
—Her beauty made me glad.
“Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?”
“How many? Seven in all,” she said,
And wondering looked at me.
“And where are they? I pray you tell.”
She answered, “Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea.
“Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother.”
“You say that two at Conway dwell,
And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven! I pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be.”
Our next poem was written by the American poet Marge Piercy: ‘To Be Of Use’
Many in the group agreed with the view expressed in the opening of the poem:
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