Write a critical appreciation of London, relating your discussion to your knowledge of Romanticism.

You should include detailed reference to language, form and tone.

Blakes London charts the progress of the narrator as he passes through the streets of the city, experiencing and commenting on the problems of mankind that he encounters. The narrator is acutely aware of the problems that he sees, and is critical of them, but is also in many ways a part of the problem that Blake is trying to criticise, as shown, perhaps, by the ambiguity of And mark in every face, which could mean observe or actively blemish. The simple language conveys complex ideas with these ambiguous words such as these. Thus this poem bears some similarities in style and content to Wordsworth, who set out his aims in the preface to Lyrical Ballads to write in a selection of language really used by men, and who too was critical of the materialism of Londoners who believe that The wealthiest man among us in the best.1 Blakes philosophy strongly rejects generalisations, believing that it is the individual elements and ideas that are important, here, however, the narrator applies the problems he encounters equally to every Man, for these reasons, we suspect that the narrator isnt Blake. The description of the streets of London and the Thames as charterd is also nicely ambiguous. It could mean officially sanctioned or registered, but could alternatively be a criticism of capitalism where even streets, and the naturally flowing river have been turned into commodities. It reflects the language employed by Tom Paine, admired by Blake, who wrote It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates to a contrary effect that of taking rights away in The Rights of Man Blakes strong rejection of capitalism is apparent in his approach to his writing, he rejects the division of labour and ideas of mass production and instead produced entire books by himself, from the writing of the poetry, engraving the prints, colouring the pages and binding the book. Such book production ensured individuality in his work that is quite different from the dehumanising image of the swarms of faces with, Marks of weakness, marks of woe. The dehumanisation is ensured by the use of the faces as a synecdoche for the body as a whole. Engels suggests a reason for the state of these people, a hundred

Wordsworth, Written in London, September, 1802 - 1802

creative faculties that lay dormant within them remained inactive and were suppressed.2 For a creative person, such as Black, this would be an extremely depressing prospect The sadness of the state of the people in the final two lines in this stanza is emphasised by the change from lines of iambic pentameter to trochaic cataleic tetrameter, which sounds more downbeat. The use of grammar in the second stanza is distinctly unusual. The lines are end stopped without verbs, whilst the final line is left to resonate, possibly to allow the I hear to also relate to the Chimney-sweepers cry below. This particularly individualistic approach to grammar is typical of Blakes work and he uses it to resist the capitalist pressures towards regulation and standardisation, for example in the first stanza of The Tyger. What immortal hand or eye. is a single sentence, containing no verb. Even more radically, Blake goes on to question the notion of what direction people read poetry. The vertical arrangement of letters at the start of lines in the third stanza reads hear, echoing the I hear that ends the preceding stanza. The loose use of grammar also means different interpretations of lines remain open, without the poet imposing his interpretation through grammar. This makes the reading experience even more individual, for example, in the third stanza, the word cry could be a noun or a verb depending on whether or not Chimney-sweepers has an apostrophe or not. The word every is used five times in the second stanza, emphasising how far the problems of the mind-forgd manacles have spread, but also generalising about the problem to the point that there are no exceptions. Blake presents a distressing and widespread problem of how mind-forgd social and political restraints have caused great distress. The word forgd suggests an industrial influence, perhaps blaming the industrial revolution and capitalism for these constraints. The fact that the narrator hears the mind-forgd manacles is unusual, it is possibly synaesthesiac as it challenges perception with the unusual notion of hearing a restraint. It presents the conflict between the tangible and the intangible. The results of concepts and ideas have physical qualities, the streets and river in stanza one and the blood stanza three for example are tangible, whereas the second and fourth stanzas are more concerned with the intangible nature of concepts, ideas, complaints and sounds. The poem alternated between the stimulation of sight and sound.

F. Engels, The Condition of the Working Classes in Britain, 1845

One such example of restraints is the bans mentioned on line seven, this slightly ambiguous word could refer generally to anything that is prohibited by law or convention, or more specifically to marriage bans, marriage being a concept of which Blake particularly disapproved or to military conscription. In the third stanza, Blake is able to perceive the guilt for the sufferings of chimney sweeps and soldiers being ascribed to its true bearers, Church and Palace.3 Blake was particularly concerned with the horrific treatment of young chimney sweepers at the time, and wrote poems entitled The Chimney Sweeper for both his Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. The first two lines could be interpreted as church sympathy for the treatment of chimney-sweeps, or perhaps, the chimney sweepers cry that Every blackning church appals. So in two lines, Blake is able to either show the church as sympathetic or as involved with the suffering of the chimney sweeps. The second interpretation is probably intended as a consideration as Blake disapproved of the church. The blackening church has a sinister quality and may suggest that industry is polluting Christian values, or that the Church is embracing industry and cruelty to children and this responsibility is tainting it. The deathly scene to come is perhaps implied by the word pall in appall. In one word Blake is able to address the tangible object of a burial shroud with the intangible sense of disapproval, this depth of interest in one word alone shows how Blake stressed the importance of Minute Particulars. The sigh of the soldiers on line 11 is emphasised by the alliteration of the s sound whilst the plosive effect of b d and p sounds emphasises the sense of death and the movement of the blood. The first interpretation is of soldiers being sacrificed by the Monarchy to protect the palace with the sigh being one of death as the soldiers last breath escapes. Alternatively, the soldiers may be sighing with relief as a result of a successful revolution, having executed the monarchy. In context, this seems a likely interpretation as Blake was writing after the French Revolution, of which he strongly disapproved, where members of the Royal Family were executed. The resources that were diverted towards the army in England, to prepare to retaliate against the French army who had invaded the British ally, the Netherlands, caused great suffering amongst the poor in London especially. In an increasingly capitalist society, Blake sees the prevalence of everything as a commodity, including sex. Youthful Harlots are forced into prostitution and end up
3

Edward Larrissy, William Blake, Basil Blackwell, 1985

pregnant, they are young themselves and have new-born babies, prostitution is damaging two young generations in one go. The Harlots may curse because of their status in society, the stress of being a young mother or because of the discomfort they experience as a result of the syphilis that they have caught. This disease was rife amongst prostitutes and those that used them in London at this time, it could be passed on to unborn children and cause blindness, Blasts the new-born Infants tear. This line seems to have come from Shakespeare, where Macbeth feels that Duncan deserves pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, The tears shall drown the wind. [Macbeth: I.VII.21-5] Marriage is blamed for this suffering and suffers as a result, marriage bans sex with other partners (something Blake disapproved of), thus forcing men into seedy commercial sexual relationships where they caught diseases which plagues the Marriage hearse. Marriage is seen to legitimise procreation, but leads to suffering and death in what might seem an oxymoronic statement. Through the use of what initially seems simple language and subject matter, Black is able to present what he thinks are the main problems of society, namely social and politics restraints and pressures, such as marriage, commerciality and revolution. The loose use of grammar and the ambiguities that this causes allows a very individual experience for the reader, which was a central aim of Blake in his writing. The perspective is interesting, the narrator can identify the problems, but is also as much a part of them as all of the other groups of people mentioned. The only person that has any chance of improvement and is in the best position to tackle some of the illustrated problems is the reader.