Social Criticism in William Blakes Chimney Sweeper
Social Criticism in William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper”
‘The Chimney Sweeper’ by William Blake criticises child labour and especially society that sees the children’s misery but chooses to look away and it reveals the change of the mental state of those children who were forced to do such cruel work at the age of four to nine years. It shows the change from an innocent child that dreams of its rescue to the child that has accepted its fate. Those lives seem to oppose each other and yet if one reads the poems carefully, one can see that they have a lot in common too. The poem was inspired by the first laws that were supposed to make the chimney sweeper’s life better, but since those laws were loosely enforced Blake wanted to draw attention to their horrible situation and wanted society to be aware of this problem to reinforce the existing and make new laws.
Blake shows the life of two different chimney sweepers, one very naïve child, Tom, that somehow managed to keep some of its childlike innocence and one that he calls ‘experienced’ that sees his life more realistic and shows who is to blame for this situation. One can find many phrases that underline Tom’s innocence throughout the poem but the symbols of the hair that is compared to a lamb’s wool and the ‘white hair’ confirm that first impression one gets when reading the poem. Little Tom’s dream is another symbol of his innocence. He dreams of an angel that comes to rescue him with a ‘bright key’. In Gardner’s book Blake’s Innocence and Experience Retraced he comments on the dream but also has a very interesting theory of the black coffin’s meaning.
The gowned figure of Christ appears in the illustrations to all these poems, and in ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ the same gowned figure releases the boys from the coffin “of black”, which epitomizes the horizontal flues (the size of a child’s coffin) which killed so many infant sweeps (Gardner 66).
His theory is that the black coffins symbolize the small chimneys where
‘The Chimney Sweeper’ by William Blake criticises child labour and especially society that sees the children’s misery but chooses to look away and it reveals the change of the mental state of those children who were forced to do such cruel work at the age of four to nine years. It shows the change from an innocent child that dreams of its rescue to the child that has accepted its fate. Those lives seem to oppose each other and yet if one reads the poems carefully, one can see that they have a lot in common too. The poem was inspired by the first laws that were supposed to make the chimney sweeper’s life better, but since those laws were loosely enforced Blake wanted to draw attention to their horrible situation and wanted society to be aware of this problem to reinforce the existing and make new laws.
Blake shows the life of two different chimney sweepers, one very naïve child, Tom, that somehow managed to keep some of its childlike innocence and one that he calls ‘experienced’ that sees his life more realistic and shows who is to blame for this situation. One can find many phrases that underline Tom’s innocence throughout the poem but the symbols of the hair that is compared to a lamb’s wool and the ‘white hair’ confirm that first impression one gets when reading the poem. Little Tom’s dream is another symbol of his innocence. He dreams of an angel that comes to rescue him with a ‘bright key’. In Gardner’s book Blake’s Innocence and Experience Retraced he comments on the dream but also has a very interesting theory of the black coffin’s meaning.
The gowned figure of Christ appears in the illustrations to all these poems, and in ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ the same gowned figure releases the boys from the coffin “of black”, which epitomizes the horizontal flues (the size of a child’s coffin) which killed so many infant sweeps (Gardner 66).
His theory is that the black coffins symbolize the small chimneys where
Cited: Primary Sources Beer, John. Romanticism, Revolution and Language. The Fate of the Word from Samuel Johnson to George Eliot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Bentley, Gerald Eades, Jr. William Blake. The Critical Heritage. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1975. Secondary Sources Willmott, Richard. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Punter, David. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. London: York Press,1998. Frye, Northrop. “Blake”. A Study of William Blake. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., Englewood Cliffs,1966. Gardner, Stanley. Blake’s Innocence and Experience Retraced. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Essick, Robert N. William Blake: Songs of Innocence and Experience. New York: Oxford University Press USA, 1977. Adams, Hazard. William Blake: A Reading of the Shorter Poems. University of Washington Press, 1963.