WILLIAM BLAKE

Born in London in 1757. He began writing in his 30s, he was most appreciated as an artist:
he was a painter and an engraver (he would draw on tombs and monuments). Illuminated
printing: he engraved and then coloured the metal plate. The illustrations were integral parts
of the poems, creating a strong link between words and images. After the Industrial
Revolution broke out, he started writing about the social problems that it caused, such as the
exploitation of poor children. He wrote “Songs of Innocence” in 1789 and “Songs of
experience” in 1794. He was a harsh critic of his contemporary society: he exposed the
failure of civic and religious institutions to protect the weak. The child is a symbol of the
oppressed and it also embodies the blessed state of innocence and purity of those who
haven’t yet experienced the evils of the world. He believed that man could know the world
fully only through imagination. Only the child and the poet were endowed with imagination,
allowing them to see beyond physical reality and deeply and truly understand our reality. His
works were addressed to a wide reading number, so his style was simple and direct. His
ideas are expressed through symbolism, hiding highly metaphorical meanings behind the
simple language.

INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

The industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural to an industrial society.

During the 18th century, there was a shifting of the population from the country to the cities.
The enclosure acts (fields were no longer available for everyone) and the application of new
technologies to farming methods (less need for human labour) forced agricultural workers to
move to the cities in search of a job. Landowners became wealthier and invested in new
factories. The industrial revolution led to: . - the
development of the factory system (steam engine), but it only benefited the upper/middle
class - an increase of inequality; society was strictly divided into social classes: poor
(working class) and rich (middle and upper class, factory owners, aristocrats…)

- extreme poverty: the working class lived in dreadful conditions. They lived in slums (small
and overcrowded houses) with poor sanitation, so diseases often broke out (cholera,
infective diseases). The life expectancy of poor people was below 20 years, due to incessant
toil (hard work), diseases, and heavy drinking (to bear their sufferance). – exploitation of
marginalised people, especially women and children. They had no rights so they could be
paid less and work long shifts.

Romantic poets despised the industrial revolution and the negative effects of technology.
They valued imagination and emotion over reason.

CHIMNEY SWEEPERS

After the age of industrialization set (early 19th century), the service of chimney sweepers
became highly requested. Few people were willing to accept the job, so taskmasters bought
children from poor families (4-7 y/o). They were small enough to be forced to climb up the
chimneys, cramped and dark places, to clear soot and ash. They were considered
apprentices, but they were just young slaves. They lead a miserable/dreadful life and their
working conditions were appalling. They were not paid, they weren’t given enough food or
clothes, and they slept on the floor. During the day, they collected soot and debris and put it
in a blanket, which would usually double as bedding. Some of them were jammed (got
stuck), some of them got lost in the flues, some died of suffocation, some were burned to
death (masters would light fires to encourage them to climb more quickly, or they went down
the wrong flue). If a sweep got lost in the flues, another one would climb to rescue him, but
most of the time they both died. Those who didn’t die on the job would develop cancer
(testicular) and lung diseases (asthma) caused by the soot, which resulted in a painful and
early death. The ones who didn’t die, grew up stunted and deformed/crippled, due to the
unnatural positions they had to take: they were always crouched in the narrow chimneys, so
their bones couldn’t develop properly. They also spent very few hours under the sun, so
many of them developed rickets, due to the vitamin D deficiency.

Society found it perfectly normal to exploit children, because of the need to have their
chimneys clear. Children were marginalised: they had no rights. Society didn’t respect their
purity and innocence (they had lost it in the adult world). Blake believes that children belong
in contact with nature.

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER - SONGS OF INNOCENCE

The speaker is a child (the language is simple and direct), who’s telling his story to the
reader. His mother died when he was very young, his father sold him when he was so young
that he couldn’t properly pronounce the word “sweep” it’s the word that children used to cry
out on the streets to offer their service as sweepers. The anastrophe of the letter “s”
highlights the child’s misery (weep=cry). The repetition of the word “weep” makes the child
sound like a bird, emphasising his vulnerability. The following line (“so your chimneys I
sweep and in soot I sleep”) points an accusing finger at the reader, who is complicit in the
child’s cruel exploitation. Blake wants the reader to sympathise with the children and make
him feel guilty and responsible for their plight. It also shows the impossibility of any escape
from their condition. The sibilance (alliteration of the letter “s”) draws the reader’s attention to
their appalling living conditions. The tale of “little Tom Dacre” personalises the story, giving
an identity to the chimney sweepers. He cries when his head is shaved, so the speaker is
comforting him (imitating an adult), saying that his white (pure) hair cannot be ruined by the
black (evil) soot. The angelic nature of the child is in contrast with the evil of those who
exploit him. His head is compared with a lamb’s back: both the child and the lamb are pure
and innocent, and they’re sacrificed by adults (also like Jesus). Tom sees a thousand
sweeps in his dream; he’s saying their names to give them individuality. His dream
symbolises the position they’re locked in (“little coffins of black”). He compares the chimneys
to coffins: they’re both narrow, dark, and associated with death; they are places of
constriction and symbolise their enslavement. An angel (“heavenly messenger”) arrives, and
he sets them all free with a bright key. They find themselves in an earthly paradise: they’re
now able to reconnect with Nature (and God). They run on green planes and wash in a river
(they are no more enslaved, so they can get rid of their sufferance), in complete harmony
with the natural world. The children are naked and white they are pure in their natural state:
clothes are a constriction of society. They left the bags that contained their work tools
behind: they were a symbol of their miserable work.

Blake uses dark imagery to represent their misery caused by their condition of enslavement
(“soot”, “coffins of black”). In contrast, he uses bright imagery to symbolise the purity of the
world of imagination (“white hair”, “bright key”, “shine”, “sun”, “naked and white”).

His dream is the expression of the power of imagination that only the child and the poet are
endowed with. The angel promised Tom that if he behaved well, God would love him and
he’d be happy. The child takes the angel's words at face value, but from the author’s point of
view, they are ironic. He attacks/condemns the church and the government. The church
promised happiness in the afterlife so that children would be docile, obedient and compliant.
They did the same thing with the poor, to make them accept their conditions and not rebel
against the status quo because that was their destiny. In the last stanza, we move back to
reality as Tom awakens from his dream, and the children get up in the dark (=their real and
miserable condition). They grab their tools and go to work. Despite this woeful prospect,
Tom is happy, because of his false hope of future happiness. The last line “so if all do their
duty they do not need fear harm” is reassuring from the child’s point of view because if he’s
good at work, he won’t be hurt. In the poet’s perspective though, it’s ironic.

THE CHIMNEY SWEEPER – SONGS OF EXPERIENCE

This poem has a much more sombre/gloomy/bleak atmosphere than the one with the same
title in “songs of innocence”, where children could escape from reality through the power of
imagination. This poem is from an adult point of view: the onlooker describes his meeting
with a child covered in soot. The first line “a little black thing among the snow” points out the
contrast between the black sooty figure of the child (the evil of what has happened to him)
and the white snow (purity and innocence). The word “thing” is used to convey the idea of
the dehumanization/objectification that children suffered. His cry “weep, weep” shows the
misery of his condition, as they are “notes of woe” (sufferance). The child is asked where his
parents are, and he becomes the narrator for the rest of the poem. He explains that they had
left him alone to go praying at the church. This shows their hypocrisy: after selling their child
into slavery, they went to pray. In the second stanza, Blake condemns the jealous adults,
who cannot bear to see their child in the innocent world of imagination that they no longer
inhabit, so they’re trying to destroy it. It is made clear by the first word: “because I was
happy”. It is because of the child’s innocent happiness that his parents decided to sell him.
He used to smile and play in contact with nature; he lived in the world of imagination and his
parents were jealous of him. For this reason, they clothed him in “the clothes of death”
(representing his miserable condition that will lead to his death) and taught him to cry out in
the streets to offer his service as a chimney sweeper. The repetition of the phrase “notes of
woe” emphasises the sadness that his act of demanding work entailed. The child says that
now he’s happy, dancing and singing (because children are resilient), so his parents are not
aware of the harm they have caused. They’re praising “God and hid Priest and King”: Blake
is attacking the government, the church and the adults, blaming them for sentencing the
child to a miserable life (they are complicit/responsible/implicated). In the last line, the
paradox/oxymoron “a heaven of our misery” points out the sorrow that poor children suffer,
which the church and the government benefit from.

In this poem, we can no longer feel the naivety and pureness of heart in the speaker’s
words. Unlike the child, the poet is aware of the world that they have to live in. This
consciousness gives us a more pessimistic and realistic perspective of the world. God is
shown in a completely different light: in the first poem, he’s the child’s only hope of freedom,
whereas, in this one, he’s portrayed as a conspirator against the child’s innocence and
responsible for all of his sufferance.