William Wordsworth was a prolific poet of the Romantic movement, perhaps best known for publishing lyrical ballads with his friend and fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798. These poems were written in what Wordsworth described as a "common tongue" with a focus on themes often found in Romantic poetry, such as the pastoral, the mythical, fragmentation, heroism, and satire. In the Lyrical Ballads a recurring topic, almost unique to Wordsworth in his passion and tenacity, is that of motherhood. The connection between femininity and nature makes it a theme often explored by many poets, such as Blake in his Songs of Innocence. However, I chose to focus on Wordsworth because motherhood is not only examined at length in his poetry, but also because the biographical details of his life make analyzing his works on the topic even more significant, since he had lost own life. mother at the age of eight. For a topic like motherhood, a school of critical thought that can provide interesting observations is that of psychoanalysis. I have chosen to focus on Jacques Lacan for this essay as his theories place a greater emphasis on the use and formation of language in the individual than other key figures in his field, such as Jung or Freud. Lacan believed that when we examine literature, we do not simply analyze the characters of a text, but also the text itself as an effect of the linguistic puns of the unconscious. For this reason I believe that Lacan is particularly suited to the discussion of poetry. In this essay I will refer to Lacan's analysis of The Three Orders and his description of the Mirror Stage in relation to the ego. For Lacan, the Mirror Stage is not ... middle of paper ... .stressful or painful situations, even if we may have forgotten the origin of the compulsion. In the symbolic realm we also begin our incessant search for the Objet (petit) a, the lost object that must be constantly sought in order, in our opinion, to complete us: an unattainable other. For Wordsworth, this Objet (petit) a appears to be the mother figure and his compulsion is to write about her from every perspective. Works Cited Bennett, Andrew and Nicholas Royle. An introduction to literature, criticism and theory 4. ed. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2009.Leitch, Vincent B. “Jacques Lacan.” In Norton's Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001. Wilden, Anthony. System and structure: essays on communication and exchange. 2nd ed. London: Tavistock, 1980. Wu, Duncan. "Lyrical ballads". In Romanticism: an anthology. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994.