William Blake as an illustrator of cultural identity and myths

In the days of the Industrial Revolution in England, conditions for the poorer 'members' of society were extremely bad. They suffered in squalid conditions, worked long hours for little gain, and had no representation for better conditions. Many authors of the time decided to comment on the issue, such as Oscar Wilde who chose to depict members of the upper classes, and people such as Charles Dickens and William Blake who used the lower classes as their subjects. William Blake was the first English Romantic poet, and used his skill with literature to disagree and rebel against almost every institution at the time, and to cast attention to issues which he saw as robbing humans of their natural freedoms, such as the example given above. In his works the representation of various cultural myths and identities illustrates this condemnation of situations that he felt strongly about.

Other than the evils of the Industrial Revolution, perhaps the most common theme that occurs in Blake's poetry is that organised religion in incorrect: it not only leads to stifle its members through the requirement of absolute acceptance of doctrine, but also acts as a source of considerable evil by doing things that may not be right. In the poem Holy Thursday from the Songs of Innocence, Blake shows his argument with the Church. In the poem, the street kids of London are taken in by the Church on the holiday of Holy Thursday (Ascension Day), and in an act of 'charity' they are given a meal if they sing hymns for the celebrations. They are even made presentable and given clothes, which is a huge contrast to their normal existence of being dirty and ugly; like "the flow of the Thames" polluted waters. But when the day's festivities are over, they have their clean clothes taken back and are thrown onto the streets again. It seems that the Church only cares for them on one day of the year, and even then they must work for basic needs!

From the point of view of the piper the children are drafted, disciplined and marched in formation to the cathedral, where they act only as an advertisement or testament to how kind and charitable the clergy are. The wand as a disciplinary tool suggests the forced actions and way of life as imposed by the Church and the color of 'white as snow' suggests and contrasts frigidity and coldness of this inflicted restraint rather than youthful exuberance and innocence. True innocence is actually playing aimlessly on the green (another of Blake's poems, The Garden of Love, tells of a child's distress when his favorite glen upon which he played was covered over with a dark and forbidding church), and singing naturally as opposed to forced singing for food. According to the piper, the children are actually better humans than the people of the church, in the heavily ironic statement "Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor." In fact, one opinion states that Blake is horrified that charity should be necessary altogether, in a balanced society 'all would have what they needed to exist in a happy and peaceful life, and no man should be ranked higher than his brother.' In this poem we have the cultural identity of the modern and industrial England challenged by William Blake, who says that the conglomeration of people in industrial cities means that conditions have suffered greatly, and now many people, including children, are forced to live on what they can find in the dark and dirty streets. It also contrasts the actions of the Church to the Christian legend of Christ telling his Apostles " who shall receive one little child in my name receiveth me."
During the time of Blake's career as a poet, the French Revolution occurred and the monarchy was overthrown by the people, also, Britain and France were having various battles with each other. As a result, a fierce nationalism among the English existed, the product of which was the 'misguided' belief that Britain was the New Jerusalem, a center of God not far removed from Heaven. As a supporter of the French Revolution and an outspoken critic of the Church and the British monarchy, Blake attacked this notion and the legend that Christ visited Britain after the resurrection in his book Milton, and in particular the Preface to this book. Primarily a critique of the industrial cities which ruined the natural paradise of fields and hills, this poem also ties together Blake's dislike of religion, and represents this particular cultural legend as a 'myth' in the sense that it is not true.

From the poem we can construct the meaning that Christ could not possibly have come to Britain, because surely a place that God visited would not turn out as evil as this? Massive factories have taken the place of the countryside, and smoke and soot cloud the hills and air around the cities. "... was the Holy Lamb of God/On England's pleasant pastures seen." The first stanza of the poem not only brings up the images of a lush and beautiful landscape, but also spreads doubt onto the notion of Christ's landing upon England's shores. The first image becomes contrasted greatly to the current look of the industrial cities: "And did his Countenance Divine/Shine forth upon the clouded hills/And was Jerusalem builded here/Among these dark Satanic Mills." Not only does he cast further doubt onto the travels of Christ, etc. but he even goes so far as to say that the factories of industrialised England are actually the work of the Devil. We also see these images of pollution: the dark cities are practically black due to soot deposits, and the surrounding hills sit in smog. Thus the cultural myth represented is explained by Blake to be totally incorrect. In addition to this, the identity of Britain as an industrial giant is shown to be a bad thing, since it comes at the cost of destroying the environment.

Another way in which cultural myths and identities are represented is for the author to show the ways in which they are used to legitimise the activities of the dominant institutions in society. A poem of William Blake which does this is London, from his book Songs of Experience. The poem is in two parts each of two stanzas: the first two stanzas deal with the general and the last two with the particular. In the first stanza, the recurring theme that occurs is the notion that London has become a giant commercial empire, where money making is the key aim; this is presented as being a bad thing as opposed to the common identity of profit being a good thing. Even "the charter'd Thames" has been harnessed for material ends, and the lives of people have become extremely monotonous as all they do now is work. This notion is continued into the second stanza, where repetition of the word 'every' is used to stress the routine lives people now endure. The words "every cry of every Man" and "every Infant's cry of fear" illustrate the type of world that exists now: even men cry and the babies don't like the ways of the world that they have been born into.

The second half of the poem continues the tirade against the world and London in particular, with three images being presented: the chimney sweeper, the prostitute and the soldier. The chimney sweeper was illustrated by Blake in some of his other poems and here is seen as the token form of child labour: very young children were stuffed down into small chimneys to clean out the soot deposits; they became deformed and perpetually coal-black as a result. Here the institution of the Church is attacked: they should not be indifferent to human suffering, but they are and thus become tainted by these evils. The soldier suffers misery, pain and death only to preserve the massive commercial empire that Britain has become. In the poem, the image is presented of blood running down the Palace walls; which indicates the soldier's death for King and country, when the barrier between them shows in fact the uncaring attitude of royalty. Here the institution shown as being tainted is the state, with both the Church and the state act together to hold the people back behind the barriers of rigid discipline. In this society, even sexual relationships become a matter of commerce, as portrayed by the "youthful Harlot". The prostitute in this poem is as much a victim as the soldier and the chimney sweeper. Blake believed in both free love and true sexual relationships and thus this poem challenges the common identity of the prostitute being evil, saying that commercial sex should not be necessary, which also eliminates killer STDs, the "Harlot's curse".

The cultural identities of a society are often taken for granted in the times that various texts which use them were written, but like many things, they change with time. In this respect, it is important to use context to look at a text from a historically accurate perspective in order to fully understand it. William Blake, a 'mental' dissident of the highest order, often used these identities and myths to add meaning sand greater significance to his poems, which is one of the reasons why he is such a great artist of words: a true master. After all, 'if the poet can communicate what is seen, thought and felt about a situation, then the work of a poet is complete.'