"The Idiot Boy" is a poem written by William Wordsworth, a representative of the Romantic movement in English literature. The poem was composed in spring 1798 and first published in the same year in Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems written by Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which is considered to be a turning point in the history of English literature and the Romantic movement. The poem investigates such themes as language, intellectual disability, maternity, emotionality (excessive or otherwise), organisation of experience and "transgression of the natural."
"The Idiot Boy" is Wordsworth's longest poem in Lyrical Ballads (with 463 lines), although it is surpassed in length by Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." It was the 16th poem of the collection in the original 1798 edition, and the 21st poem in the 1800 edition, which added Wordsworth's famous Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
The poem tells the story of the titular "Idiot Boy," as well as his mother Betty Foy and their gravely ill neighbour Susan Gale. As Johnny's father, a woodsman, is away from home, Betty decides to send her son to the nearest town on horseback, so that he may bring with him a doctor who could help Susan. However, Johnny gets lost trying to reach the town at night, and his mother is forced to follow him. When she reaches the doctor's house, she realizes Johnny is not there and returns home in a state of agitation, forgetting to bring the doctor with her. Eventually, Johnny is reunited with his mother, and their neighbour rises from her bed, miraculously cured.
The poem uses a five-line stanza of tetrameter lines, with a rhyming scheme of ABCCB, said to be a "variation on the long meter quatrain." It has been described as a realisation of the traditional form of the ballad, chiefly because of its "unobtrusive" narrator, as well as "an extreme example of the naive or rustic style in poetry."
The poem contains allusions to many romantic ballad commonplaces, connected mainly with Gottfried August Bürger's ballads "Lenore" and "The Wild Huntsman." This is exemplified mainly by the mock-heroic section of the poem (lines 322-356), as well as its opening stanza (lines 1-6), where moonlight and the presence of owls take centre stage as the attributes of the ballad:
Johnny has been dubbed "a Quixotic hero," as well as a knight errant, and an allusion to Don Quixote has been found in the narrator's vision of Johnny hunting sheep in line 337 of the poem. He has been connected to "a long tradition of fools," as the poem explores his extraordinary, unorthodox perception of the world. The poem, however, seems to emphasise a defamiliarization of such clichés, rather than emulate them. The poem's connection to the ballad genre has also been described as tenuous, as it is said to exhibit a shift in focus from the exploration of a plot to the exploration of abstract feeling.
The narrator of "The Idiot Boy" is considered to be "comic," as well as "dramatized," "highly limited" and even "incompetent." He is described as a poetic figure "variously affected" by the story he narrates, and thus both "detached" from and "engaged" in the events of the poem. Though he is not directly involved in the story of the poem himself, certain qualities of his "may be inferred from [his] stylistic habits," as well as the parts of the poem in which he addresses his audience.
The narrator's attitude towards Johnny seems benevolent, however he criticises Betty with "a trace of patronizing condescension" in lines 22-26:
Condescension may also be found in the narrator's description of Johnny as a "fierce and dreadful hunter," (338) as well as in his negative response to Betty's imaginings about her son's fate (lines 212-216).
However, he is said to be just as much a source of speculation as she is, as he strives to "fill in the gaps of his story" with "fanciful adventure."
Out of ninety stanzas of the poem, approximately one third of them begin with the conjunctions "and," "but" or "so," which suggests that its narrator is focused chiefly on a simple, sequential retelling of the story. He also seems prone to simplifying the character's experience into simple binary opposites, such as when referring to the life or death of Susan Gale (52-56), in Betty's instructions to Johnny (62-66; "[h]ow to turn left and how to right") or in the description of her search for him (217-221).
Despite this, some evidence of the narrator's skilfulness has been identified in his usage of humour and deliberate poetic structures, such as the recurring theme of the owls.
The mock-heroic fragment of the poem (lines 322-356) may be read as a "self-conscious comment on the narrator's efforts," as he expresses affection towards his muses in a way similar to how Betty's affection towards Johnny is portrayed (compare "Ye muses! Whom I love so well" (356) with "Him whom she loves, her idiot boy" (lines 16 and 376). The narrator's appeal to the muses has also been described as a way to comment on the anxiousness which readers may experience expecting a full account of the titular character's "strange adventures" (351), as they would in more traditional sentimental stories.
In lines 347-348 the narrator claims that he has practised poetry (been "bound" to the muses) for fourteen years, which is a fact true about Wordsworth in the moment of writing the poem. These lines have been read to suggest the narrator's incompetence, as trades would typically be learnt in a period of seven years. However, the narrator has also been dubbed a "deliberately naïve version of [Wordsworth]," not to be confused with the author himself, but rather to be identified with a "narrow-minded" and "excessively genteel" style of poetry criticised by Wordsworth.
"The Idiot Boy's" tone is considered to be comedic. Its humour has been dubbed a "defence against the ominous threats facing Johnny," as well as a "burlesque" of the philosophical discourse of intellectual disability in the Enlightenment, as by "mocking the reader's sense of decorum" the poem seems to challenge literary and social preconceptions.
The sources of humour in the poem have been found in the contrast between the fragments devoted to Johnny and Betty and the elements of the narrator's mock-heroic voice, as well as the comedic force of Betty's failure to ask for the doctor's help joint with Susan's miraculous recovery. Thus, the poem's humour has been classified as "one of happy resolution."
Supernatural elements of the poem are found chiefly in Betty's visions of Johnny's undoing (lines 232-241) and in the narrator's mock-heroic section (322-356):
'Or him that wicked pony's carriedTo the dark cave, the goblin's hall;Or in the castle he's pursuing,Among the ghosts his own undoing;Or playing with the waterfall.'
Betty imagines her son's downfall to be caused by goblins (238) or ghosts (240), but the narrator disregards her concerns, describing them as "unworthy" and "wild":
Betty's superstitious speculation has been described as her way of dealing with her anxiety for Johnny – namely the fear of him dying (suggested by his "playing with the waterfall" in line 241). Her anxious behaviour is also found to contrast with the aura of peaceful "transcendence" evoked by the moonlight. The moon, in turn, is identified with Johnny's "other-worldliness," as he experiences the uncanniness of the night.
Despite its abundance of supernatural elements, the poem has been found to be focused rather on "social commentary" in line with Wordsworth's aim "to give the charm of novelty to things of every day" (as described by Coleridge).
Johnny Foy exhibits non-normative behaviour and atypical verbal expression, which has led critics to interpret his condition as intellectual disability. "The Idiot Boy" is said to explore how such disabilities are mythologized in order to establish them as a proper subject for linguistic and psychologic deliberations, and it has been connected with "an emergent 'humane' understanding of cognitive difference."
The poem's usage of the term "idiot" has been said to carry "connotations of deficiency," and the word itself has been counted amongst those used "to provoke revulsion or to ostracize groups of people."
Johnny's condition is said to transgress "the limits of being," as well as the "binary oppositions of order and disorder, reason and idiocy, [...] purity and disgust." He has also been connected with the poem's subversion of romantic conventions, as he himself is free of any literary and socio-cultural preconceptions.
Although Johnny's and his mother's roles in the poem are discussed at length, his father is notably absent from the poem and only mentioned by his profession in lines 37-39.
Michael Mason claims that Johnny experiences "Wordsworthian joy," a state in which a passive observer perceives natural phenomena "in themselves," with no outside point of reference, as illustrated by Johnny's misclassification of owl cries and the moon in lines 447-463:
Now Johnny all night long had heardThe owls in tuneful concert strive;No doubt too he the moon had seen;For in the moonlight he had beenFrom eight o'clock till five.
And thus, to Betty's question, heMade answer, like a traveller bold(His very words I give to you),'The cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo,And the sun did shine so cold,' –Thus answered Johnny in his glory,And that was all his travel's story.
This sense of joy has also been connected with an escape from the restrained world of rationality into one where language is "subordinate to feeling." Johnny's account of his journey has been said to present him as an "imaginative" and "poetic" figure, as he seems to creatively organise his new experience. However, although this is identified with "poetic insight," Johnny all the same fails to reach the doctor and let him help his neighbour.
This portrayal seems to criticise the popular perception of intellectually disabled people in the Enlightenment, as it would likely lead to Johnny being read as "revolting" or "inhuman" due to his disability, in line with Coleridge's remark that Wordsworth has not "taken sufficient care to preclude from the reader's fancy the disgusting images of ordinary, morbid idiocy."
Furthermore, Johnny's apparent lack of reason, contrasted with the suggestion that his horse is both capable of thought and that he "thinks of [Johnny] as 'what' rather than 'whom'" in lines 121-126, has been connected with John Locke's classification of "changelings" – a species between humans and animals.
Despite his failure, Johnny's experience is said to be "cathartic for [his] entire community," transforming it "into a more integral and caring" one, as he, his mother and their neighbour are once more brought together.
Abuse of language similar to Johnny's is prevalent throughout the poem, as exemplified by Susan's miraculous recovery, made possible when she recovers as she regains "control over her utterance," and by the doctor's ironic lines (262-271), which subvert the expectations one might hold towards a member of his profession and the principles of the Hippocratic Oath.
'He's not so wise as some folks be.''The devil take his wisdom!' saidThe doctor, looking somewhat grim,'What, woman! should I know of him?'And, grumbling, he went back to bed.
Even the narrator may be characterised by a similar linguistic inefficiency, as he is unable to continue his narrative in lines 352-356 due to what Gordon Thomas calls his "aphasia."
Johnny's seemingly rational mother also fails to keep her composure throughout the poem, as signified by line 249 ("Unworthy things she talked and wild").
The word "burr" is often used in the poem (lines 19, 107, 115, 387) to refer to a sound made by Johnny, which has been classified as his "physiological response to the cold," as well as a mimicry of the owls, or his steed. Betty, however, interprets it as "the noise he loves" (line 110). This may be read as faulty, as the "burr" may not have any meaning to him after all, or, conversely, as accurate, as it may signify that Johnny's noises are "perfectly comprehensible" to him and his loved ones.
Johnny's "burring" has been likened to Wordsworth's own – that is, to his Northumberland accent, "characterized by a strong, guttural pronunciation of 'r,'" and to his narrator's stylistic mistakes, which suggest that his "competency as a storyteller is limited." These include overuse of repetition (lines 82-86, 92-96, 177-181), as well as distortion of "syntax for the sake of rhyme" (lines 365-366) and "an exaggerated inversion of normal word order" (in lines 34-36, in which the usage of the verb "ail" is simultaneously transitive and intransitive, and thus logically indecipherable).
[...]
Old Susan lies a-bed in pain,And sorely puzzled are the twain,For what she ails they cannot guess. (34-36)
This abuse of "poetic diction," however, has been characterised as an element of Wordsworth's critique of the use of popular language in poetry, and as "evidence not of Wordsworth's failure as a poet but of his skill" in "defining his dramatized narrator."
In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth expressed his aim to portray human nature by "tracing the maternal passion through many of its more subtle windings." Betty's approach to her son has, however, been dubbed by John Wilson as "almost unnatural" and by Coleridge as "an impersonation of an instinct abandoned by judgement," signifying that Wordsworth's contemporaries found the poem "lacking" in this regard.
Wilson's criticism of Betty's affection towards her son has been said to follow a sense of reciprocal sympathy described by Adam Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, as, in that view, "no self-respecting mother ought to adore a son so indifferent to and incapable of returning love." Betty's inability to understand Johnny's burring has also been said to signify her being "incapable of representing him" in a perception of intellectual disability contemporary to Wordsworth.
Wordsworth's portrayal of Betty has been connected with the exploration of "his ability to love like a mother (totally, vulnerably or irrationally [...])," as even her and Johnny's surname (Foy) has been connected with the French word foi meaning faith.
Betty has also been ascribed the role of the poet due to her accounts of Johnny's adventure. This role, in turn, allows for the narrator to be read as her double, guilty of the same susceptibility to emotions in his reports, which "exposes [his] poetic pretension and lack of self-awareness." The narrator and Betty are therefore jointly described as "[representing] debased popular poets," whereas Johnny stands as "the heroic poet of the [creative] Imagination," as opposed to their superfluous fancy.
"The Idiot Boy" was counted amongst Lyrical Ballads most experimental and controversial poems in the perception of its early reviewers. In the period of 1798-1800 it was reprinted only once, in 80 lines, in the issue of Critical Review for October 1798, in which it was famously criticised by Robert Southey as "[resembling] a Flemish picture in the worthlessness of its design and the excellence of its execution."
The poem was generally negatively described by John Wilson and Coleridge. William Hazlitt wrote that he felt "a chaunt in the recitation" of the poems declaimed to him by Wordsworth and Coleridge, including "The Idiot Boy, which would "[act] as a spell upon the hearer, and [disarm] the judgment". Hazlitt's remarks may suggest that despite any criticism he might have had towards the poems delaimed, they were signified by an effective use of meter (though possibly misleadingly so).
Marilyn Butler writes that "most of the [reviewers of the ''Lyrical Ballads''] praised poems which use an elevated language and subject, like 'Tintern Abbey,' and attacked those using a 'mean' language and subject, like 'The Idiot Boy.'" In line with this, Janina Nordius comments that "great talent wasted on a dubious topic seems to be the dominant critical view" of the poem, and Roger Murray claims that "no one has warmly defended" it. Murray also finds the poem to have "too little grace [...] ever to be ranked alongside Wordsworth's greatest poems," though he sees its portrayal of Betty as its saving grace.
Conversely, Michael Mason remarked that "The Idiot Boy," as one of "the more ballad-like of Wordsworth's contributions [in Lyrical Ballads,] was generally well received," and Albert E. Wilhelm claimed it was "one of Wordsworth's best known but least appreciated" poems.
The "Idiot Boy" been described as "incongruous" and as "a failure" by Geoffrey H. Hartman, as its repetitions "draw too much attention to Wordsworth's own 'burring,'" Joshua King argues, however, that such features are "what make[s] [the poem] interesting," as they suggest "a human community made possible by blind patterns of sensation, pleasure and habit, rather than primarily by rationality and linguistic ability."
Jonathan Wordsworth dubbed the poem a "comic masterpiece" and "an almost faultless work of art," as well as "a creation of exquisite tact, at once humorous and deeply moving." In line with this, John F. Danby comments that the tone of the poem is "beautifully mock-solemn and yet indulgently ready with its sympathy," and Daniel Robinson claims that "the warm comedic tones, which never mock the boy, complement perfectly the affection his mother feels, and the affection [the] reader ought to feel for him," though the poem "subverts the sentimentality readers would have expected from a poem on mental disability in a newspaper or magazine of the time." Although the poem "appears frivolous" with its "feminine rhymes, overblown diction and laughable characters," Karen Guendel argues that it warrants a second, more in-depth look due to its subversion of expectations and metaliterary critique of its own narrator.
Wordsworth's transgressions have, however, been noted by Anne McWhir to "[prevent] us from noticing" his perpetuation of the binary oppositions of what is vulgar and proper, as he strives to select the latter kind of language for his poetry. Zoe Beenstock has also criticised the poem's aims at recontextualising intellectual disability, claiming that Wordsworth "remains focused on the able-bodied interlocutors who learn to value their own freedom by watching the spectacle of disability and dependence."
Responses to Johnny's condition seem to range from condescending dismissal to explorations of his state of being which classify it as serious, "in touch with the divine" or "extra human," as he is found to have access to "other dimensions" of perception, both "natural and divine." Johnny has even been said to represent an ideal Wordsworthian poet, a liminal figure "between childhood and manhood," as well as "the earthly and the divine," due to his disability.
Daniel Robinson argues that "although calling Johnny an 'idiot' seems callous," he is portrayed "without sentimentality or pathos and with great respect." On the negative side, Wordsworth's portrayal of Johnny has also been described as "ludicrous."
Joshua King claims that the author's contemporaries were unable to sympathise with Betty Foy, as her love for Johnny transgressed their "standards of propriety," defined by "rationality and the clear use of language." Conversely, modern criticism has largely found the poem "faithful to [Wordsworth's] objective."
Roger Murray claims that "The Idiot Boy" displays "the evolution" of a mother's mind. He also finds Betty to be the true main character of the poem, instead of Johnny, as it is mainly her search for Johnny that the narrative follows. Similarly, G. H. Durrant claims that "the essential meaning of the poem" is conveyed in how Betty's love "leads [Johnny] safely and serenely through [his] perils," while she "suffers fear and anguish on his behalf." Zachary Leader, however, argues for the opposite, claiming that it is Johnny's "oddity" that "takes centre stage" in the poem.
Karen Guendel has noted that the poem "invites us to question Betty's judgement," and that, in light of her reckless decision to send out her son into the night and her failure to acquire help for her neighbour, it is her fancy that motivates her decision-making, rather than her love for Johnny or her rationality, as she "daydreams idly, casting Johnny and herself as the hero and heroine of various shopworn plots." This, according to Guendel, may be read as Wordsworth's critique of sensationalist popular literature.
Wordsworth commented on the "purpose" of the poem in the 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, saying that it adheres to his goal to "follow the fluxes and refluxes of the mind when agitated by the great and simple affectations of our nature" by "tracing the maternal passion through many of its more subtle windings." In the Fenwick Notes he explained:
Wordsworth's fondness of the poem has been identified "a frustrated desire for his dead mother," Ann Wordsworth, though this claim has also been disputed as too simplistic an assumption. His and his narrator's pleasure in narration have also been connected with the exploration of transgressive maternal love, melancholy and "the originary deviance of poetry."
Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, was similarly "enchanted" with the poem.
Wordsworth defended the poem against John Wilson's critique in his letter from 7 June 1802, claiming that his negative response to "an Idiot" as the subject of the poem was caused by "petty social prejudice" of the higher social strata, enabled by their ability to isolate themselves from intellectually disabled people. He also commented that he wrote the poem with "exceeding delight and pleasure," and claimed that his usage of the word "idiot" was unavoidable, as he knew no better word "to which we had attached passion" to replace it with, mentioning "lack-wit," "half-wit," and "witless" as alternatives. This has been read as a signal of him "[aiming] at the semantic reorientation" of the word.
Wordsworth has been said to exoticize and glorify intellectually disabled people in his letter to Wilson, granting them "visionary privilege."
He also partially conceded to Wilson's concept of repulsion towards intellectual disability as an element of human nature, as what he claimed was the factor distinguishing Johnny from other intellectually disabled people, "usually disgusting in their persons," was his ability to produce speech.