In William Wordsworth’s poem, “Nuns Fret Not,” Wordsworth’s main motif is his wish to feel free and not bound to an everyday day routine like others tend to do. In the first half of the sonnet Wordsworth describes the physical places some people are bound to. The Nuns are bound to “their convent’s narrow room,” the hermits to their cells and the students at the citadels. What all of these characters have in common is that the places that they are all confined to are physical places that are all narrow and small. The maids, weaver and bees are not confined to a physical place but are confined to their jobs. All of these places with exception to the foxglove bells that the bees go to have a negative connotation to them. The places are described as being “narrow” and “cells.” When he describes these places he cannot understand why the people trapped within them seem so satisfied with their lives. When he realizes that the bees are satisfied because they go to the “foxglove bells” he realizes that sometimes it is fine to be confined because it gives life meaning.

After analyzing the life of others and the places they are confined to, Wordsworth begins to analyze his own life and the place he is confined to as a writer. He talks about the prison “unto which we doom ourselves, no prison is.” The so called prison that we put ourselves in to, he realizes that it is actually a place where he, as well as others, can feel comfort and find happiness. In these lines he also mentions “the sonnets scanty plot of ground.” Here he was able to find “solace” when he “felt the weight of the too much liberty.” He enjoyed feeling confined for just a moment and realized why the others where contempt and happy with their own form of confinement. The poet also wishes for other writers, poets or even readers to feel the solace of “the sonnet’s scanty plot of ground.”