Essay
on
Romantic
Literature
Blake
and Wollstonecraft
By
St.
Nr.: 11088648
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.
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.