London by William BlakeContext:

Welcome back, Year 10. Thanks for reading my previous poetry commentaries, Ozymandias ‘King of Kings’ and Tissue – hope you didn’t need a tissue after reading it! We are fragile, aren’t we? Today, we’re going to look at William Blake’s poem, London, written in 1794 amidst the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution.

‘Sir, isn’t that when Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, containing that miserly caricature, Scrooge?’

‘More or less, my friend, try 1843. But, the world which Blake wrote about was very similar to the one Dickens wrote about, too.

So, who was William Blake?

William Blake was a one of seven children, born in London in 1757. He was a poet, painter, engraver, a print maker, a supporter of the French Revolution, a radical, and a progenitor of Romanticism (which means he was one of the first Romantics – remember, that doesn’t mean he was one of the first people to have a snog under a sunset!)

Some of his most famous poems are two collections called Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. The Songs of Innocence came first. Now, literature at this time – heaven forbid –wasn’t just about the joy of reading and understanding the world around us: no, hitherto, stories were designed to educate people morally, making them better people. It was a way that people in power were able to maintain social order. There were very strict rules about how people should behave and stories were a good way of reminding people of them. For example, women were expected to dress up to receive the morning post; they were also expected to be chaperoned at all times (this meant that single women had to be supervised in public and not doing so could ruin their reputation, forever); at balls – you know, posh dances - men and women were only allowed a maximum of two dances together and, even then, their every move would be scrutinised to ensure that they were abiding by rules – certainly, no slut dropping, flossing and, yes, definitely no grinding was allowed!

Well, being the rebel that he was, Blake did something radical with the front page of this wonderful book of poetry. It contained a picture of two children, a book and an adult…wait for it…but rather than the adult reading to the children, the children were reading to the adult. This sent the message – as did the poems within the book as they were all written the perspective of a child – that adult readers could learn from children. They could see the way they experienced the world. This was ground-breaking. It even supported the notion of an actual childhood because up until now children were treated similarly to adults and their innocence was never really protected. Consider how much running around and playing hide-and-seek those Victorian children got up to whilst cleaning chimneys and working 14 hours a day in workhouses…Yes, not much.

Songs of Experience, the sister collection of poems to Songs of Experience – published 5 years later - presented a much harsher view of a world corrupted by humans. Blake was, to put it mildly, a bit annoyed about the world in which he lived and showed how it stole children of a childhood.

The Industrial Revolution and other stuff:

The world was changing, rapidly. When Blake was born the population was around 750,000. But, just in three years, this had grown exponentially to 3 million, yes – 3 million! To put it simply, the Industrial Revolution changed the landscape of England. It transformed from a sleepy clockless country of rural farms and women who knitted for their neighbours to sprawling cities with big tower clocks and chimneys which released billowing clouds of smoke. The cause: machines. The invention of machinery meant that jobs could be upscaled. Rather than one lady knitting 1 jumper a week to sell to her neighbour, machines meant that thousands could be mass produced. And so huge sums of money were to be made – well, by the factory owners and ambitious capitalists, of course, not so much for those who slaved away to help them make their profits. Now, this is what irked Blake. Blake disliked those in power because he thought that they abused their power; they didn’t share it to help those around him, but rather, they ignored the suffering of the poor, who did not receive a compulsory education, who were exploited at the hands of capitalists, who were housed in terrible conditions with appalling sanitary, who were, in many cases turned to drink, vice and crime. Take a look at Hogarth’s painting above – Gin Lane. Go on, enlarge it if you can. How many things can you see which are wrong with society? Notice the moral depravity of the poor? Drunkenness, not looking after their children, murder etc. But the poor are perhaps not being blamed here. Rather they are the victims of neglect, driven to drinking gin (did you know that gin – also known as ‘mother’s ruin’ - was such a problem in Victorian society that the Victorians invented beer, a less strong drink, to try and get people off it?).

Now, over the English channel something BIG was happening at this time which caught Blake’s eye: The French Revolution (1789). Blake was initially an avid supporter. He donned his red ‘bonnet rouge’ – a red beret – to show his support of the revolutionaries, who he saw as likeminded individuals who wished to overthrow those in power. The increasingly educated peasantry in France wanted to prevent the bourgeois – the rich elite – from gaining more political power, which would suppress their own power to become landowners of their own property. However, later once the revolutionary became violent, Blake became disillusioned with it.

Another problem Blake had was organised religion, the church, but we’ll come to that in session 2.

How does this poem relate to power and conflict?

London can be seen as a critique of human power. Those who have power – the aristocracy (rich landowners), the church and the monarchy – are causing those who don’t have power to an endless cycle of inescapable misery. They are neglecting the poor, allowing them to degenerate and, even die – all so those in power can maintain their control. Perhaps then, Blake is trying to inspire a revolution, just like the one he had seen in France so he can help to overthrow the oppressors.

Glossary:

Hitherto: up until nowScrutinised: inspect closely and thoroughly, examine.Radical: something extremeNotion: ideaExponentially: rapidlyCompulsory: you have to do it (so, in this case, they didn’t)Sanitary: conditions which effect health and hygiene.Depravity: moral corruption, wickednessSuppress: forcibly restrain or silence.Disillusioned: disappointed or let down by somethingCritique: criticismMonarchy: king or queenDegenerate: lose morals

Oppressors: bullies, tyrants

The power of ten

Now answer the following questions in your own words

1) Who was William Blake? What kind of jobs did he do?2) What did he writer?3) When did he write?4) Why can his works be considered to be ‘ground-breaking?’5) Name two famous collections of poems that Blake wrote.6) Explain the main differences between the two collections.7) What was the Industrial revolution?8) What were some of the changes that it caused?9) What did Blake support initially? Why did he stop supporting it?10) How does this poem relate to the theme of power?

Bonus: Tell me one or more interesting fact/s that you learned from this section.

Questions in red are slightly more challenging questions – go on, have a go!