This essay explores Wordsworth’s life at Dove Cottage in terms of domestic visual culture. It has long been believed that Dove Cottage was an isolated nature poet’s house, cut off from the visual world. However, by paying special attention to primary sources, such as the Wordsworths’ letters and Dorothy’s Grasmere Journal, this essay argues that Dove Cottage was not merely Wordsworth’s isolated home or the natural venue for his poetical inspiration. Yet, the Cottage itself became a spatial aesthetic interface, a domestic art gallery, produced by the interpenetration of public and domestic spheres that allowed Wordsworth’s aesthetic domestic sociability with painters. Frist, this essay examines how Wordsworth absorbed aesthetic influences and formed a domesticated artistic environment in Grasmere through his interactions with painters from the Lake District or from London. Subsequently, it goes on to explore how Wordsworth utilized Dove Cottage as a domestic gallery for his domesticated aesthetic life. Of course, this essay has limitations in understanding the meaning of Wordsworth’s visuality and his Dove Cottage fully and completely based only on Wordsworth’s early visual life at Dove Cottage. However, this essay will allow us to expand the scope of Wordsworthian studies in relation to Wordsworth’s life at Dove Cottage associated with the affluent literary aesthetic culture of the nineteenth century.
1. Introduction
2. Aesthetic domestic sociability at Dove Cottage
3. Conclusion