Child Labour

The industrial revolution has brought many changes, often positive, but also negative as child labor. The Industrial Revolution led to an extensive use of labor of women and children. They could be paid cheaply and quickly learned and being exiles worked with more ease than men. They worked the unhealthy places, 12-18 hours a day. Insufficient nutrition, lack of rest influenced on the health of these children. Hygienic conditions were scarce or absent and disease were the order of the day, even a fever, it could be deadly. Also their education was bad : living away from their families for years and often in contact with rude people, ignorant and they grew without moral principles.

William Blake

William Blake was born in London in 1757 and died there in 1827. He was an engraver, a magician, a free thinker, he speaks of individual freedom. He belongs to the early Romantic period, he refused the neoclassicists, he doesn't inspired from nature but from the soul, inner visions. He was convinced that the role of the artist was to become the guardian of the spirit and the imagination. He was influenced by the bible because it presented a complete view of the world. He had very few intimate friends: one was his wife Catherine who helped him and his younger brother Robert , who died very soon. Initially, he attended a drawing school. He knew the works of Michelangelo and Raphael. Michelangelo influenced the works of Blake, especially in representation of body forms very detailed. Later he attended the Royal Academy of Art. He refused the standard norms of realism and he created a new kind of art based on imagination. He created a method that combined pictures and poetry. He wrote Songs of Innocence and Songs of experience.

These poems are mirror images, linked to each other. Blake talks about the world of innocence previous to advancement and that of experience (industrialisation) corrupted by evil. The language is simple and musical, like a child. In the first lyrical verse the narrator is a shepherd inspired to a child. Childhood is view as the symbol of innocence, a state of the soul connected with happiness, freedom and imagination. Songs of experience: was produced during the period of the Terror and represent a more pessimistic view of life linked to the Napoleonic wars and the age of maturity. Blake created its contrary in the form of the bard. Between the two poems is the confrontation between good and evil. Blake published also prophetic books in which he created a complex personal mythology and invented his own symbolic characters . The marriage of Heaven and Hell is a mixture of aphorisms, anecdotes, proverbs . Heaven is the place of lawgiving while Hell is the place of freedom. They are two places in contrast. They represent the opposite of our conventions.

Blake believed in the spiritual world, but it was against Christianity because the Church has fragmented the human spirit. The confrontation between good and evil gives meaning to life. Both are important to acquire knowledge. "complementary opposites": good and evil, male and female, reason and imagination, love and hate, cruelty and kindness . The progress comes from the comparison, the tension between two opposing elements. He had a dualistic view of nature.

The man knows the world through the imagination and not through the perception. Imagination or "the divine vision" means to see more into the life of things. God, the child and the poet have this power of vision. The poet is able to see beyond the surface of things and evils of society. The Poet therefore becomes a sort of prophet .

Blake was concerned with the political and social problems of his time. He supported the abolition of slavery . He was not linked to Napoleon but to the ideals, the principles of the French Revolution such as equality and freedom. The revolution is purifying violence, a means to redeem man .

His poems have a very simple structure, his verse is linear and rhythmical and is characterized by frequent use of repetition. There is a highly use of symbols. For example the child, the father and Christ represent the states of innocence, experience, and a higher innocence.

Analysis of The Chimney Sweeper from “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience”

- Songs of Innocence (is written in pastoral mode with simply imagery. It deals with childhood as the symbol of innocence. The world of innocence is full of joy and happiness)The speaker of this poem is a small child who was sold by his father at a very young age into the chimney sweeping business when his mother died. This is described by the lines “And my father sold me while my tongue could scarsely cry weep weep weep weep!” He tells about a fellow chimney sweeper, Tom Dacre who cried when his hair was shaved to prevent soot (he doesn’t have more his blonde hair). The phrase “in soot/sleep” refers to the living conditions of the sweeps. The speaker comforts Tom, who falls asleep and has a dream or vision of many chimney sweepers all locked in black coffins. Wooden coffins symbolically represents the narrow chimneys that children have to cross (psychological oppression of labor). An angel arrives with a special key that opens the locks on the coffins and sets the children free from death. When the angel tells Tom that “if he’d be a good boy, / He’d have God for his father and never want joy”(19-20), he gives Tom hope that if he is good and does his job, God will be his father and bless him in the next life.Just freed children run through a green field and was themselves in a river. Swimming in the water symbolically represents a baptism , purification by dirt. The last verse expresses innocence, humility and forbearance and he is a victim. This poem comprises six quatrains, each following the AABB rhyme scheme, with two rhyming couplets for quatrain. In this poem there is a lot of divine and religious references. The child sees his situation through the eyes of innocence and does not understands the social injustice. Children were used for this job because they were small enough to be forced up chimneys to clean them and remove blockages. Devices - Symbols of Innocence (lamb, happy , dance, sing).

- Songs of Experience (is more complex , very dark and pessimistic. The world of experience is full of cruelty and injustice)In this poem the poetry puts a satirical subtle message against the kind of false religion that brings comfort to children who are victims of abuse. The child understands that he is a victim and tells the observer who sees the “little black thing” in the snow weeping. Clothing him “in the clothes of death” (7) refers to his life as a social outcast and his being destined to an early death because of the working and living conditions of his profession. However, his parents believe that they have done no harm and have “gone to praise God and his priest and king”(11). This is not only a criticism of the parents but of the Church of England and the government for condoning the ill treatment of these chimney sweeps. As Tom Dacre the previous poem, the chimney sweep is crying. This poem is the counterpart of Songs of Innocence in fact is more short. This poem starts with the AABB rhyme scheme characteristic of innocence and childhood but as it delves deeper into the experience of the chimney sweeper, it switches to CDCD EFEF for the last two stanzas. The final stanzas, in fact, expresses injury (line 10) and misery (line 12). His parents have gone to pray in the Church. The child fully understands the complexity and hopelessness of his situation. He sees life through the eyes of a mature adult. His parents are directly abusing and exploiting him. The parents are aware of his situation . Themes: Topics covered in Songs of Experience face the effects of the process of industrialization in London at the time of Blake, the cruelty

of family institutions, the exploitation of the innocent, the selfishness of religious institutions. Is enhanced the innocence of the child is not yet corrupted by society.