London Flashcards
(12 cards)
1
Q
Context
A
“London” is among the best known writings by visionary English poet William Blake. The poem describes a walk through London, which is presented as a pained, oppressive, and impoverished city in which all the speaker can find is misery. It places particular emphasis on the sounds of London, with cries coming from men, women, and children throughout the poem. The poem is in part a response to the Industrial Revolution, but more than anything is a fierce critique of humankind’s failure to build a society based on love, joy, freedom, and communion with God.
2
Q
The oppression of urban life
A
- In “London,” the speaker takes a walk through the titular city and finds only misery. The dirty and dangerous city is an intense expression of human life—not at its fullest, but at its most depraved and impoverished. Blake was notably writing at a time when the Industrial Revolution was at full pace, restructuring society in a way that he believed made people lose sight of what it means to be human. Blake uses “London” to argue that this urban environment is inherently oppressive and denies people the freedom to live happy, joyful lives.
- To emphasize the point that the city environment itself oppresses its inhabitants, the speaker gestures towards some of the desperate measures people take in order to survive. The chimney-sweepers, who are only children, put their health at great risk to earn a living; both the soldiers and the harlots (female prostitutes), in different ways, must sell their bodies in order to survive. In other words, everyone is trapped by their situation, forced to exchange the only things they have—their bodies—in order to, paradoxically, keep those bodies alive.
- What’s more, the poem offers no real hope that society may find a way to cast off its “mind-forg’d manacles.” Note that the poem emphasizes the next generation in closing on the “youthful Harlots” and the “new-born infants.” This image turns what should be a joyous celebration of new life into an initiation into poverty, pain, and hopelessness; it implies the cyclical nature of London’s poverty, and suggests people don’t have the freedom to escape their urban woes.
3
Q
The corruption of childhood
A
- Blake believed that people are born with everything they need for a joyful, loving, and happy life—but that the adult world corrupts this innocent state. In this poem, the speaker describes how children are essentially crushed by the adult world, thus building a vivid argument supporting Blake’s broader belief.
- The speaker of “London” presents urban children as being in distress from the moment they are born. For example, line 15 describes how newborn babies are “blasted” by the curses of their impoverished prostitute mothers. With this image, the speaker gestures towards an ongoing cycle of misery—miserable mothers lead to miserable children, who may themselves create more miserable children later on—that is integral to the urban environment. Similarly, in line 6, infants are characterized as consistently crying, and these cries are specifically related to the fear they feel. It is as though they can sense the misery around them, before they’ve even developed their ability to meaningfully perceive and make sense of the world.
- Like the prostitutes and the soldiers mentioned elsewhere in the poem, the impoverished children of London are forced to exchange their one possession—their bodies—for money, food, and/or lodging. In other words, they give up their childhood—when they should be playing and learning about the world—in order to merely survive. And doing so, of course, actually diminishes their chances of survival, because chimney sweeping places them in toxic and physically dangerous environments.
- Through the images of childhood suffering that the speaker observes and recreates for readers, Blake seems to suggest that the oppression of children is one of the worst examples of how the “mind-forg’d manacles” of urban life and industrialization corrupt society.
4
Q
I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow.
A
- The opening of the poem sets up its premise: the reader will accompany the speaker on a walk through London, seeing and hearing what the speaker perceives. The verb “wander” makes the walk seem almost casual or aimless. This helps make the misery that follows seem like an everyday kind of misery—this world of poverty and pain is just what people will find in London whenever they walk through it.
- Of course, we don’t know yet that the city is such a dismal place; instead, these first two lines merely hint at its oppressiveness. To “wander” also suggests a kind of freedom, an idea which is put under strain by the word “charter’d.” A charter is a legal document, granting or denying powers or access (to a particular plot of land, for example). In this one word, the speaker suggests what he or she hates most about modern society: the way it restricts and devalues human life. The “charter’d streets” specifically hint at the way London is a kind of cage, keeping its inhabitants within the confines of their pain. The diacope created by the word’s repetition in line 2 reflects the way that this cage is inescapable. The streets, then, represent physical city limits that, in turn, hint at the mental limitations of the “mind-forg’d manacles” introduced in line 8.
- It’s quite possible that the use of “charter’d” is an allusion to Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. Paine’s book was a strong expression of support for the principles of the French Revolution (1789), and in this book he makes a remark that quite possibly informs this poem: “Every chartered town is an aristocratical monopoly of itself.” In other words, the layout and organization of a city reflect its imbalance of power, power which is concentrated in the hands of a small ruling class.
- Of London specifically, Paine makes another remark whose echo can be found in Blake’s poem: “It is a market where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic.” Worth noting here is that in the poem’s first draft, both instances of “charter’d” read “dirty” instead. “Charter’d” must have seemed to better reflect the specific points about London’s oppression that Blake wanted the poem to make.
5
Q
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
A
- Lines 3 and 4 start to introduce the speaker’s perceptions as he or she walks through London. In essence, the speaker finds a city overflowing with misery and pain—”weakness” and “woe.” The speaker doesn’t just find this in some faces, but in “every face.” There is something about London itself, then, that must impose these conditions on its people—and London is too strong and powerful a beast for any one individual to resist (apart from those in positions of wealth and power, perhaps).
- The use of “mark” is important in these lines. In line 3, it functions as a verb that means “notice.” But in line 4, the word becomes a noun, as the speaker describes the way the faces of the people of London visually display their pain and impoverishment. This use of antanaclasis helps develop the sense that everyone is marked by London’s oppression—all the regular folk that live there have to suffer under the city’s conditions. The repetition of “mark” also subtly separates the speaker from those he or she is passing by. The speaker stands apart in order to notice their misery—or, if we understand that first “mark” in the sense of “mark” as “to label” or “leave a mark” on something, the speaker is in part responsible for these city dwellers’ misery. This all suggests the speaker is not actually one of the impoverished people whom he or she pities.
- The metrical shift of line 4 makes this “marking” more dramatic. Up until now, the meter has been a regular iambic tetrameter, creating the sense of somebody walking with a regular pace. This rhythm is broken in line 4, which begins with a trochee to make the “marks” sudden and imposing and is also missing a syllable (it has seven as opposed to eight). This reflects the way that the pained faces of the Londoners have impeded upon the speaker’s steady pace, causing the speaker to stumble:
6
Q
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear
A
- Stanza two is the thematic heart of the poem, showing that the speaker perceives in London a battle between freedom and oppression. It also shifts the poem from its initial focus on sight to its overall emphasis on sound.
- Just as every face showed marks of “weakness” and “woe” in the first stanza, the speaker hears pain and misery in every voice. The anaphora of the repeated “in every” shows just how wide-spread the problems are, and also helps widen the poem to be about the condition of humankind more generally.
- It’s clear that the speaker feels something is fundamentally wrong about every aspect of life in this city, from the cradle to the grave. The capitalization of “Man” and “Infants” again emphasizes the way in which everyone is oppressed by London—these are stand-ins for every man, every infant—and each sound they make is evidence of this oppression. Every individual lives in misery, and they are born into this misery. The conditions of London (which the following stanza expands upon) make misery a cyclical, self-fulfilling prophecy. The first stanza evoked the sense of London as a cage, and this stanza begins to reveal the consequences: a cycle of pain that traps people from infancy to manhood.
- Having established the way in which pain is so widespread in London (and modern society by extension), the caesura in line 7 shows that these “cries” are linked to “every ban.” That is, there is a direct link between the way society oppresses people (implied by the word “ban”) by limiting their potential and the widespread misery that they feel. Line 8, meanwhile, shows that these restrictions on human potential are “forged”—made—in the mind. These “manacles” (metal bands used to chain people’s hands or ankles) are not literal, but rather the product of a collective failure of the imagination about how society could and should be.
7
Q
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
A
- The third stanza is a kind of catalogue of misery and pain, providing the concrete evidence to back up the claim made in the second stanza: that London is shackled by “mind-forged manacles.” In a touch of poetic mastery, the last word of the previous stanza, “hear,” provides the form for this stanza. The third stanza is an acrostic, with the first letters of each line spelling out that very same word: “HEAR.” This imperative verb, concealed in the poem’s form, is a kind of imprisoned plea for help that asks the reader to acknowledge the level of suffering in London and to respond accordingly.
- Lines 9 and 10 talk about the specifics of the oppression that happens in London, both in the way it plays out in people’s daily lives and which authorities might be responsible for it being there in the first place. “Chimney-sweepers” were people employed to clean the soot from chimneys, and because those chimneys were small and narrow it was often children that were forced into cleaning them. This is an economic oppression that robs children of their childhood, forcing them into the adult world of work and the terrible health problems that came with this particular job. Blake believed that people are born with everything they need to live a happy, joyful, and spiritually-fulfilled life, but that the adult world as it is corrupts them from an early age. That idea is definitely at play in these lines.
- The official Church (Church of England) played a big role in society at the time Blake was writing, supposedly tasked with administering care and accommodation to those forgotten by society (such as orphans). But the clear implication here is that the Church has failed its society—it imposes economic, legal, and social restrictions on people and fails to empower them to live full, free, and healthy lives. Furthermore, economic hardship often forced families to sell children into the chimneysweep profession.
- The poem, then, is taking aim at the collective failure to cherish life, showing that this failure is part of the reason why children are put in such a perilous condition. The church is supposed to act as a moral and spiritual guide, but all the evidence here points to its inadequacy and ignorance.
8
Q
3
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
A
- Lines 11 and 12 continue to consider the conditions and sources of oppression put forth in lines 9 and 10. Like the chimney-sweeper, the soldier is an oppressed figure. His oppression, however, stems from the “Palace,” which metonymically represents the authority of the State (that is, the British monarchy). Facing the difficult economic circumstances of London, the soldier is forced to exchange the value of his life for a wage. In essence, he has to sell his body in order to survive—just as the chimney-sweep, and, in a more explicitly obvious way, the prostitutes of London have to.
- And just as the chimney-sweepers of London make a crying sound, the soldiers have their own vocalization of misery: they “sigh.” The sibilance in “hapless Soldiers sigh” actually sounds like someone exhaling, bringing these lines to sonic life. But it’s not immediately obvious what the source of this sigh actually is. It could be sheer exasperation, the soldier tired of the conditions that London life imposes on him. Or it might the sound of his last breath when he dies in some remote battle, sent there by the distant kingly authorities.
- Furthermore, the metaphorical presence of soldiers’ blood on the palace walls suggests that the palace owes its existence to the soldiers’ bodily sacrifice—the building is literally constructed by their deaths. This critique of warfare strongly suggests that human conflict is nothing more than a waste of human life. The soldier is, of course, a violent figure himself, but the strong suggestion here is that this violence is a kind of cycle brought about by the way society organizes and conceives of itself—the result of those “mind-forg’d manacles.”
9
Q
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
A
- The final stanza takes the poem towards its bleak conclusion. Now the speaker relates what he or she hears at midnight on the streets of London. “Midnight” carries with it the suggestion of the witching hour—the most supernatural time of night—which implies that London’s oppression is a kind of spell. This ties in with the “mind-forg’d manacles” being a form of psychological control.
- The speaker now hears the “curse” (another supernatural reference) of “youthful Harlots.” These are young women forced into prostitution by the difficult circumstances of the urban environment. In order to survive, they have to sell their bodies. In doing so, they are like the chimney-sweepers and “soldiers,” who must also exchange their bodies for a chance of survival. The emphasis on the youthfulness of the prostitutes doubles down on the idea that the oppression of London is a cyclical trap, one that it is impossible to escape from the cradle to the grave.
- This cycle of misery is then foregrounded by the second mention of infants. These are the children of the “youthful Harlots,” who by no fault of their own are born into the heart of London’s pain and impoverishment. Before they even develop faculties for understanding and perceiving the world, they are deeply affected by the pained cries of their mothers. The assonance of /a/ sounds between “harlots,” “blasts,” and “infants,” which links the three together conceptually, has a violent loudness to it that calls to mind shrieks of psychological and physical pain. There is no hope for these infants, who are entrapped from the first moment of life.
- The poem then ends on a stunningly bleak image that reiterates the cyclical nature of London’s misery. Blake uses an oxymoronic image, “the Marriage hearse,” which ties together two very different things. Marriage is supposed to be an expression of love—which is so notable for its absence in the poem—but here is intimately linked with death, represented by the hearse. In the oppressive environment of London, then, the usual places where love would appear—between two people getting married, or between a mother and child—are corrupted by death.
10
Q
Form
A
- As with many of Blake’s poems, “London” has a simple form that furthers a discussion of complicated ideas. There are four quatrain stanzas. Taking a zoomed-out look at these stanzas, the first can be said to deal with the sights of London, while the following three focus instead on the sounds of the city.
- Of these, the only one with a particularly inventive form is stanza three. Here, Blake takes the final word of stanza two and uses it to create an acrostic. The first letter of each line in stanza three spells out HEAR, which helps the poem emphasize the sense of sound that the speaker experiences in London. But this formal feature is not immediately noticeable, which reflects the poem’s idea that to truly understand the pain and impoverishment of London (and cities like it) takes a deliberate effort.
11
Q
Speaker
A
The speaker is, like Blake, a kind of visionary. He or she deliberately delves into the heart of London, seeking to understand the city and its people. The speaker is a visionary not just in a visual sense, but in an auditory one too. It is as though the speaker can see and hear all of London’s pain and impoverishment at once. The speaker also has a theory as to the source of London’s misery: “the mind-forg’d manacles.” To the speaker, London represents a collective failure of the human mind—a better society based on love, freedom and joy is, or perhaps only was, possible, but has been replaced by the miserable beast that is modern-day London.
12
Q
Historical context
A
- The England of Blake’s time was just getting caught up in the Industrial Revolution, a period during which the economy shifted from farming to manufacturing. The countryside began to empty out, and the cities began to swell. And English class divisions, always intense, began to seem even more pronounced as impoverished workers lived cheek-by-jowl with the fashionable and wealthy in newly crowded towns.
- Workers during the early Industrial Revolution got a pretty raw deal. Even young children were forced to work in factories, dig in mines, and sweep chimneys (an absurdly dangerous job, contrary to the cheery Mary Poppins image many are familiar with: chimney-sweeps as young as three or four years old regularly suffocated in narrow flues). Adults didn’t have it much easier. With few regulations to keep factory owners in check, bosses could impose impossible working hours, or withhold pay for any number of trifling offenses.
