William Blake’s Treatment of Innocent Children in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience: Social Problems Context

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate how William Blake’s Songs of Innocence (1789) can be connected to Songs of Experience (1794) regarding innocent children. It aims to illustrate how, from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century, Blake has written poetry to present some important aspects, such as class, child labor, slavery, and education during the French Industrial Revolutions. It can be said here that children are exposed to the social and economic shifts of the eighteenth century. A child’s inherent qualities are described in Songs of Innocence as a symbol of divinity and innocence. Children gradually absorb biases, and their innocence turns to their mothers and other adults for comfort and security. Blake’s poems uphold a majority of children whose childhoods are presented by forced labor, slavery, and poverty in order to satisfy the needs of the eighteenth-century and the nineteenth-century capitalist economy; on the other hand, the poems in Songs of Experience foster how children encounter resulting of formal education and religious doctrine. Social customs and norms of the than time was against deprived, acquitted and defenseless children. The holy child, once a representation of divinity and purity, no longer embodies noble qualities. Children’s difficult upbringing shapes them into a feeble and occasionally disobedient adult. Blake lets his readers behold the transformation of a little child who, because of life experiences, develops universal themes that are not understood at an early stage of life. An examination of Blake’s poetry with an emphasis on experience and innocence is prompted by the lyrical portrayal of the disparity.