ANALYSIS FOR LONDON

• CONTEXT:

  • Babies born to syphilic mothers had painful seeping eyes
  • Though betrothed, women were expected to clean and unspoiled , due to the philandering of men who could not keep the same standards and cheated with harlots caught syphilis from them and gave it to their wives
  • In corrupt military systems leaders refused to own up for the deaths of soldiers
• FUTHER CONTEXT:

  • The Thames used to be heavily contaminated and a hotspot for suicide (especially by harlots) , though it was a source of poetic vision, experienced by poets such as Edmund Spencer and Wordsworth
  • Blake encountered a drunken soldier in his estate in 1803
  • Thomas Paine criticised the royal charters control of trade, deeming it to be oppressive
• “How the youthful harlots curse”

  • Is she swearing (due to gin) or cursing other men or is she herself cursed
  • Women who couldn’t find domestic or factory work were forced into Prostitution
  • The harlots curse attacks the institutions of marriage
• “And mark in every face I meet marks of weakness”

  • Antanaclasis of “mark”
  • Are they metaphorical scars made by the system causing vulnerability
  • Or are they visible marks left by syphilis and a poor monotonous diet
• “But thro the midnight streets I hear”

  • Midnight is associated with death and sinister happenings
  • In part 2 of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Falstaff says “We have heard the chimes at midnight”
  • Showing that death is at hand probably due to a short life expectancy
• “And the hapless soldiers sigh”

  • Sibillance mimics sighing , emphasing the lack of agency over their fate
  • Shows Blake’s want for a peaceful revolution
  • Shows irony in how the returning soldiers who shed blood to protect a country who keeps them in bad conditions
• “The mind-forgd manacles I hear”

  • A compressed compound is used to show that whilst the manacles are a result of institutional conflict
  • We perpetuate them by our own limitations , as in we create these mental prisons ourselves
  • Rousseau says “Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains”