When Disaster Strikes, On the Wordsworth and Clare Poems

All of the poems relate to the themes of nature and culture by using personification of natural objects and processes, and also metaphor and simile, to speak to cultural issues. In particular, “The Thorn” describes the tragedy of a woman who is overcome by disasters of both natural and cultural origins. The Broom, in “The Oak and the Broom,” speaks optimistically of “disasters” as events universal to all. Robert Burns likewise makes a claim on the universality of disaster by likening the fates of a mountain daisy, a maid, and a bard, and John Clare’s speaker says to a weedling, “Come…/My fate shall stand the storm with thine.”
Reminiscent of Spanish folklore’s La Llorona, mystery surrounds the two possible disastrous, tragic fates of the woman of “The Thorn”: After overcoming a brief psychosis and giving birth, either the baby dies of natural causes or, as the townsfolk believe, she kills it. The theory that she killed her baby is supported with supernatural evidence, and since the supernatural is out of place in a poem comprised totally of imagery from natural objects and processes, it seems unlikely that a murder took place. The natural disaster of the loss of a child is then compounded by the culturally constructed tragedy of any unwed mother; the defamation of character merely adds to the suffering. In another poem by Wordsworth, the Broom speaks against “haunting [the] heart with terrors.” If natural disaster is universal to all, why should we allow culture to beat us down even lower, rather than raise each other up?
Is this sense of tragedy what is meant by “feeling” in the title of this first unit?