Blake's View on Oppression of Children by Adults

Blake's View on Oppression of Children by Adults

Blake was a poet who wrote in the Romantic period. He had idealistic

views about life, and believed that the traditional country way of

life was the best way to live. He despised the industry that was

establishing itself in England because it was the opposite of the

ideal country lifestyle that Blake idealised. The idea that Blake

believed that children were oppressed is an interesting one, because,

there are a number of poems which suggest different ideas about this

topic. The poems that I will be using to address this issue are ‘The

Echoing Green,’ ‘Nurses Song,’ from innocence and the ‘Nurses Song,’

from experience.

‘The Echoing green,’ is quite a positive poem. The image of the sun

rising: ‘The sun does rise,’ on the first line symbolises new life

beginning and immediately establishes a positive tone to the poem. In

the second stanza Blake writes,

‘Such, such were the joys

When we were all, girls and boys,

In our youth time were seen

On the echoing green.’

This image shows that the memories of the old people when they were

children are of the ‘joys…On the echoing green.’ This doesn’t suggest

that they as children were oppressed. The use of the word ‘joy,’ shows

that people were happy to see them playing, and that they were happy

too.

Blake uses an image of children sitting about their mother’s knee, he

writes,

‘Round the laps of their mothers

Many sisters and brothers.’

This image of children around their mother’s knee is an image of

security and safety. The fact that they feel they can sit about the

knee of their mother, in this stereotypical image of a happy family

doesn’t suggest that the children in this poem are oppressed...

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...y has a negative view of the childish desire for

play which clearly has an effect on the children. The fact that they

the are whispering shows that they are afraid of the nurse, and that

they cannot express their true thoughts and desires freely, which is

why they whisper, and therefore shows that Blake feels that children

are oppressed.

I feel that the two poems from innocence which are ‘The Echoing

Green,’ and ‘The Nurses Song,’ display Blake’s ideological view of

country life which I referred to in my introduction, and show his

desire for childhood to be enjoyed. But the ‘Nurses Song,’ form

experience shows the reality of life: that it is hard, and people,

like the nurse in the song aren’t happy and full of joy, like the

memories of the old people in ‘The Echoing Green,’ and therefore,

Blake’s poetry confirms the view that children are oppressed by