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Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz - KFU

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2011

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Nadja R. ©
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11088648 Spring 2012













Essay on



Romantic Literature

Blake and Wollstonecraft







By

St. Nr.: 11088648



  1. William Blake

Section 1, Question 1:

For Blake, In Songs of Innocence and Experience, the relationship between nature, human nature and the supernatural is a core theme.



William Blake is probably one of the most significant writers dated to the English Romantic period. His extraordinary paintings and drawings which often underlined his poems and written works also gained huge success. In his poems he critically observes the problems of his age; England as a massive colonial Empire which had to be culturally and politically powerful in order to maintain. In order to preserve this state not only politicians or military forces had to follow certain rules, writers used Greek gods and old Roman heroes in their works. This principle followed an exclusionary strategy: literature was available for a higher, elite class audience only and this made it impossible for the more dominant working class to be read. Romantic writers wanted to set an end to this high cultural elitism of literature with using simpler language and motives. They wanted literature, as being part of everybody´s culture, to be available for everyone, which was easier said than done, because the majority of the underclass population was illiterate. But how to educate a Great Britain which was full of slavery, prostitution and had a growing working class? Blake started drawing his poems because he wanted those people who couldn´t read or write to understand his poetry and to get what he is saying. He used unusual colours and fancy motives to underline his statements, because he wanted art to be available for everyone in its full beauty. As many other Romantic poets Blake didn´t believe in a dumb working class who is not able to be taught or to think. He saw knowledge as a source of power with reading as its origin. Ideas are rested with people who have power and therefore art should be available for everyone. That is Blake´s reason for keeping his poems as simple as possible with a sense of encapsulating a certain picture of the world within them. His major goal was to share his ideas with every audience and looks for a common ground, which are the problems of a poor London. In his two most famous works Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience he wrote about exactly these problems. One might argue that writers saw themselves as elite as well, because they were educated and therefore lived like a noble person in a rich area. However this was not true for William Blake. He lived in the poor suburbs of London and therefore only had to look outside his window to see the social injustices of his time. So he saw everything; the whole cruelty of a materialised world which was filled with child labour and other slaveries of all kind. Blake was not a pessimist. He wasn´t an optimist either, but many of his poems deal with utopian ideas about a world filled with harmony and suggestions of how the world should be. Through his works he wanted people to know that there is hope for a better live and that when we work together we can change things for the better.

In Blake´s opinion this state can only be gained when the whole world is in total balance, i.e. when there is harmony between animal nature, human nature and super nature. The poems to be found in ‘Songs of Innocence’ dominantly deal with an image of the perfect world. It makes the reader think that he looks at somebody who tries to imagine a good world although he knows that this is not the case. For example in ‘The Ecchoing Green’ Blake uses the word ‘echoing’ as a symbol for harmony. Nature reflects human sounds and gives back what was put into it. Only when we live in total harmony with nature life is in balance. Blake gives a marvellous version of a world which did not exist: he describes a harmonic image of young an old living peacefully together and gives an ideal version on how good parenting should be. The world should be a place where young and old can live together in peace. He knows quite well what life is like and that his idealised version of it might never come true or even close but he wishes that society does it. This idea is supported by the corresponding poem of ‘Songs of Experience’ where the ‘green’ turned to grey in ‘The Earth´s Answer’. Blake suggests that humans are too selfish and too vain to make a significant change and nature responds to that as being grey, chained and without light. Furthermore he writes that nothing comes without a price and that there are limits and boundaries we can never get across, i.e. even love which should be free isn´t.

Another good example is to compare the two poems ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ from each book of collection of poems with each other. The one from ‘Songs of Innocence’ is written out of a child´s sight in an innocent, hopeful tone which wishes for a better future. The poem only depicts reality in its first four lines, but then continues with the child´s optimistic description. It can be suggested that this poem takes society in harsh critics, because it shows in a subtle way how an ideology works: when we all fulfil our duty we are happy and alright. The little chimney sweeper from this poem never questions his work. He was born a chimney sweeper and is going to die as one as well. The corresponding version in ‘Songs of Experience’ is radically darker and not optimistic anymore. It only depicts reality: child chimney sweepers are destined to death at early age, have no rights at all, are suppressed by higher forces and are not happy at all. There is no harmony at all but there should be.

In the ‘Songs of Innocence version’ the poem ‘The Divine Image’ Blake writes about the four cardinal virtues that make us humans divine: Mercy, pity, peace and love. He suggests that we transform all good things into one being which we know as ‘God’, but however, mercy is only found in humans. For Blake ‘God’ is us. There is God in us if we are willing to let him out. In the matching poem from ‘Songs of Experience’ Blake states that these four cardinal values are a result of selfishness, cruelty and the fact that humans don´t live in harmony with nature.

From all of Blake´s poems the reader sees that he appreciated the human role in nature and that harmony, although it isn’t always there, is temporary when the world is in balance.



  1. Wollstonecraft

Section 2, Question 2:

How radical were Mary Wollstonecraft’s ideas on education and social matters for their time?



Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the rare famous female Romantic writers and is hardly known amongst a lot of people. She was way ahead of her time and got famous for her text ‘Vindication About the Rights of Women’, a very radical document which she wrote for a male audience arguing for a group of people which had no status in their own culture or society those times: women.

Wollstonecraft was one of the first feminist writers known in history, but her works were too radical to be accepted by a society which followed masculine rules. As a matter of fact in the time Mary Wollstonecraft lived, women hardly had any rights: they were not allowed to go to court, had no right to vote and were not educated, which created gender prejudices against them. At that time marring a rich woman, then declaring her as being ‘mad’ or ‘insane’, was a very common strategy to get a lot of money, because women couldn´t make a court case. By the law of men, women shouldn´t think. Society didn´t want women to be educated: they were better at raising children and looking fair and pretty. Mary Wollstonecraft tried to change this overwhelming masculine society with arguing against this prejudices. In her ‘Vindication’ she agrees that women might be physically weaker, but that doesn´t involve the brain. They should be educated equally to men otherwise it will make them look silly, mad or stupid. Beauty is not linked to intelligence. Women are not made to follow men only, but to think themselves. As a matter of fact Mary Wollstonecraft´s text is dedicated to a male audience because at that time only men were able to make a significant change. This was a very clever strategy although risky at the same time. Wollstonecraft suggested that women should also be treated as human creatures and therefore God wanted them to be treated equally. But as a matter of fact women were educated to achieve different skills: They had to be able to cook, to look decent and to raise children. In Mary Wollstonecraft´s eyes education is a powerful thing on which the ideology of her time is based. Women are not the problem, as many men thought, but the way they are presented. To underline her statement she uses the typical male philosophies, also known as master signifiers of her age and turns them around i.e.: she uses the Turks and the Islam, which were a big fear factor, Rousseau’s philosophies and the enlightenment theory against men´s attitude by stating: how can we, when we are all human abandon our own race by not giving women the same rights? This argumentative style was as clever as it was dodgy. Many people saw her as mad and insane because she was educated and had made up her own mind. For saying that women are educated as a babyish figure just to please their husband, she earned a lot of disagreement. Furthermore she appeals to men that when women are not educated or treated as a rational being they won´t develop their own sense of self and are therefore unable to handle their own life and even their marriage. Women, through ignorant male behaviour are culturally weaker and this has to change. Otherwise you get creatures which are smiling on the outside but broken inside. Women were educated to be a friend, support and attraction only to please men. With that strategy only pets are created, not equals. Supporting this argument Wollstonecraft refers to Ottoman’s theory about the East Empire where men were superior. For women to be loved they had to be ‘lesser’. Wollstonecraft wanted society to proof that women are stupid by simply giving them education and wait for the results. She also wanted women to make their own choices about their ruler. To underline this statement Wollstonecraft stated that everybody is against tyrants, but that was exactly what society did to women, when men were walking inside their house and treated women like that. She also asked herself the question: who is morally weaker? A man who is by gender prepared for profession and fun or a woman who spends her life preparing herself to be the perfect wife for her husband and a slave.

Wollstonecraft also refers to religion in a sense that she asks the audience if the sex is linked to a person´s soul. She goes back to the audiences’ knowledge and repeats this question over and over again.
As a matter of fact her text was seen as very shocking at her time and might not have got the attention it deserved, but the topic got picked up by several women shortly after. Even whole feminist movements followed. Mary Wollstonecraft might never have been as famous as she could have been if she had lived in another decade, but as being way ahead of her time she proved that even within a male society some women were still able to think and trough their actions tried to make the world a better place.


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