Who is the solitary reaper and how does Wordsworth describe her?

Wordsworth's speaker is wandering in the Scottish highlands one day when he a spots a "Highland Lass" working all alone, reaping grain in a field. He is riveted by the beautiful and melancholy song she sings as she works. He describes the valley where she reaps as "overflowing with the sound."

The speaker describes her song as more beautiful that the "chaunt" of a nightingale or the notes of the cuckoo bird. He romanticizes these birds by imagining them in exotic locales, the nightingale "among Arabian sands," the cuckoo even farther north than the highlands, in the Hebrides. By romanticizing these creatures, Wordsworth also romanticizes the Highland lass. She, too, is a beautiful, wild creature of nature.

This is a paradigmatic or model Wordsworth poem that exemplifies some of the main traits of the Romantic movement as well as the hallmarks of Wordsworth's poetry. First, in a reversal of centuries of literature depicting poor rural figures as clowns or using them simply as scenic background, he treats this laboring woman with great respect and foregrounds her. Rather than ridicule her, he exalts her for her sublime song.

Second, the poem celebrates nature by comparing the song of this young woman to the song of birds, and does so in a way that elevates both nature and the woman. Finally, the poem ends with the idea that this simple scene can live on in memory, providing joy and solace.

At the most basic level, William Wordsworth's solitary reaper is a nameless young woman singing to herself as she works in a field. The narrator of the poem refers to her as "Yon solitary Highland Lass!" (2), and she appears to be a normal, relatively uninteresting commoner. However, the narrator describes the reaper's song with such vivid detail that, although she might be a common laborer, she is ultimately elevated to a level of significant importance by the end of the poem. 

Wordsworth focuses most of his description on the sound of the reaper's song, and he describes it in great detail. First, he compares it to a "Nightingale" (9), which then causes him to imagine "weary bands / Of travellers in some shady haunt, / Among Arabian sands" (10-12). Then, however, Wordsworth imagines that the song refers to "old, unhappy, far-off things, / And battles long ago" (20), suggesting that her song is less of an exotic tale and more of a sorrowful narrative. In any case, Wordsworth describes the reaper's song in rich, complex, and even conflicting detail. The fact that he does so is central to the poem, as the rich description of the reaper's song shows that a vital complexity can be found in even the most "common" sources. Thus, though she is simply a normal, anonymous person working in a field, the solitary reaper becomes an individual of great importance. It is fitting, therefore, that Wordsworth concludes that "her song could have no ending" (26).

Who is the solitary reaper and what is she doing?

In William Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper," the narrator observes a young woman (the poem's "solitary reaper") singing while she works in the fields.

The key to the poem is the narrator's struggle to define exactly what the young woman's song "means," and most of the poem revolves around the narrator's efforts to parse out the meaning of the solitary reaper's song. He compares it to the songs of the nightingale (9) and the cuckoo bird (14), and he claims that the musical beauty of the song evokes exotic locales such as "Arabian sands" (12) and "the farthest Hebrides" (16). However, despite his best efforts, the narrator is unable to ascertain what the solitary reaper's song "means." Even so, the beautiful song remains imprinted on the speaker's consciousness. As such, the unknowable beauty of the song asserts itself as meaningful while simultaneously avoiding any definite, concrete "meaning."