In “Simon Lee,” Wordsworth reacts to the enclosure laws which effectively made the rich landowning classes richer and the poor working classes poorer. These enclosure laws, enacted by Parliament, took common lands-- free lands used mostly by the poor for animals and crops-- and made them private property, mostly of the rich landowners. This created a capitalist relationship of proletariat workers and the bourgeois masters, rather than a peasant class, in that the working classes now had to receive wages from their employers.

Simon Lee was negatively affected by these enclosure laws.  Once enclosure laws took effect, Simon Lee became dependent on his master for his wages, and, after the master’s death became even poorer. At the time of the poem, Simon Lee farmed a “scrap of land,” but he was even poorer than when there were common lands and poorer still because the upper class master on whom he’d relied had died. Enclosure laws, which removed the autonomy of the poor, forced this type of relationship between the working class and the upper class. It also left the poor without many options after their masters died. Shaw-Taylor also says that “squatters’s rights, especially those of less than 20 years standing, were not recognized” in the enclosure system. Simon Lee seems to be a squatter- “But what to them avails the land which he can till no longer?” When Simon and his wife stopped working the land, which could be interpreted as still working for the manor house, they wouldn’t have any legal rights to their property.

Wordsworth also implies the type of capitalism created by enclosure laws forced the necessary “protector” relationship between the moral upper class, like the speaker, and the good and simple-minded poor, of whom the immoral rich could take advantage.  “I struck, and with a single blow, the tangled root I severed, at which the poor old Man so long and vainly had endeavored” says the speaker. The speaker helps the enfeebled Simon Lee to continue to till the land, therefore letting him keep it.  Because the speaker helps Simon Lee work the land he must work, this statement could also work as a metaphor which implies that the upper class could help the poor to get a fairer system for property owning, because the poor would be unable to do so on their own.

Wordsworth seems to believe the poor, illustrated through the characterization of Simon as well as in the preface to Lyrical Ballads, are simple-minded, but also good, so they need protecting. The speaker illustrates how good Simon Lee is saying that “his cheek is red as a ripe cherry” and that “his heart rejoices,” even though he is old, poor, and nearing death. He also illustrates Simon as an extremely simple man. Simon is happy at the sound of the “chiming hounds” and he cries after the speaker comes in and chops the root of the tree for him. Wordsworth’s idea of the working class poor in the preface to Lyrical Ballads also seems to illustrate this idea of the simple, happy working class, saying the poor’s “elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity.” This statement implies, unlike the upper classes, the poor don’t have higher forms of thought which can stop them from reacting so basically.

The speaker seems to want to preserve the simplicity and basic emotions of Simon Lee, but also to protect him, with his lesser intelligence. The speaker is probably upper class and is probably Wordsworth himself, based on the footnote in the anthology, in which Wordsworth recalls his real-life interaction with Simon Lee. The speaker never places himself on the same level as Simon Lee; instead he says things as “O gentle reader! You would find a tale in every thing.” This statement implies that the reader is on the same level as the speaker—which he also implied in Lyrical Ballads of which this poem is a part and that the readers are apart and above from the lower class he writes about in the preface—but even these upper class members could find something to admire in the lower class. Simon Lee is an individual, but also part of a class generalization that the speaker seems to observe. Wordsworth obviously values Simon Lee, saying “I’ve heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds with coldness still returning” and “And thanks and praises seemed to run so fast out of his heart, I though they never would have done,” so he wants to preserve the simple nature of the lower class. This valuing of lower class simplicity also seems to be why Wordsworth feels the “protector” mentality to protect these simple people from threats to their nature.