Hi all, here’s a partial essay I wrote in response to the question:

‘Explore the ways in which society is portrayed in ‘London’ and ‘The Sick Rose’ by William Blake

The essay contains an intro and two subarguments – it is missing a conclusion as that wasn’t required as part of the assignment when it was written. The essay scored an A1 grade (23/30?) and key positive feedback detailed the strength of the contextual elements alongside the robustness of the AO1 (ideas and arguments). For areas to improve, greater depth of analysis and a more frequent use of advanced subject-specific terminology was commented on as a way of accelerating into the A* grade.

Here’s the essay:

Explore the ways in which the society is portrayed in ‘London’ and ‘The Sick Rose’ by William Blake

In both ‘London’ and ‘The Sick Rose’, Blake seeks to make astute critiques of a British contemporary society which he believes to be overly oppressive, civilly authoritative, and constrictive on the human condition through critiques of a ‘chartered society’ dominated by the wealthy aristocracy at the expense of the hapless working class in ‘London’ and, in ‘The Sick Rose’ the prejudicial and disparaging nature of a socially conservative, church-obeying, class of traditionalists who were seen as a type of poison to Blake’s radical anti-establishment beliefs as well as his disbelief in monogamy. It can also be read that ‘The Sick Rose’ is a critique of the human abuse of nature, leading us to develop a common theme in Blake’s poetry of protest against exploitation. In ‘London’, Blake crafts an image of the oppressed working class to demonstrate his hatred for the capitalist, exploitative nature of contemporary while in ‘A Sick Rose’, heavy irony and satire is used to express Blake’s disdain for the sexual and social conservativeness of the contemporary British society as well as the corrupting image of the worm to potentially express disdain for the human corruption of the natural world.

Within ‘London’, Blake seeks to establish a clear dichotomy between the dominant, powerful, and authoritative upper class of Britain, especially in the urban industrialised areas, and the weak, powerful, and slave-like oppressed working classes who were victims of the systematic oppression and entrapment perpetuated by the Industrial Revolution and the heavy urbanisation which came with it. The Industrial Revolution was as damning to the working man as it was to nature and the natural world; it is for these two reasons that Blake, and other Romantic poets, took such a strong stance against it. Blake saw it as a corruption of human existence and Rousseau believed it caused society to ‘walk everywhere in chains’; these ideas of entrapment are perpetuated by Blake as he expresses, in a personal tone, how ‘I wander through each chartered street/Near where the chartered Thames doth flow’. The repetition of ‘chartered’, with its connotations of entrapment and ownership, in combination with the verb ‘wander’ which has implications of aimless free will and movement perfectly encapsulates Rousseau’s idea that mankind is contained within a cage-like society; we are free within the cage yet we cannot dream to escape its confines, enforced by the elite classes, without violent revolution. It is for this reason that Blake was such a staunch supporter of the French Revolution as he saw it as a first step for the alleviation of the oppression of the working classes and the collapse of the social walls in which mankind was contained. In further emphasis of Blake’s ideas around the constricting control of the upper classes, he juxtaposes the overwhelming, dominant, and fundamentally sublime image of the power of nature as the river ‘Thames doth flow’ with the idea of it being ‘chartered’ and controlled by the elite. The Romantic idealisation of nature stemmed from its mitigation of the horrors of contemporary society – nature offered the thinkers of the 18th century a chance to escape and contemplate. Blake intends the image of the ‘chartered Thames’ to be one of deep caution and concern; Blake believes that the unchecked power of the elites would lead to their total domination of both human society and nature, giving humanity almost no escape from the slavery of capitalism which he believed would be an utter disaster for humanity and society. Additionally, the regular structure of the poem restricted into 4 tercets could also be further indicative, in conjunction with verbs such as ‘sigh’ and ‘cry’ which imply passivity and acceptance in the face of exploitation, of the overarching power of the state and the elite classes who exploit the proletariat for their personal gain and benefit. Overall, Blake’s establishment of a dichotomy between the ‘free’ worker who will never truly experience liberty and the exploitative, constrictive, and oppressive state and elite classes within the urban communities and across Britain in the 18th century in ‘London’ aptly and effectively conveys Blake’s desperate view of society in the 1790s and how he believed it to be vastly unjust and unfair on the striving worker slave to the industrial world.

Likewise, in ‘The Sick Rose’, Blake expresses similar ideas around the exploitative nature of humanity in terms of nature as well as the control of institutions over social conscience and beliefs in terms of discouragement of sexual promiscuity and polyamory which Blake was famously fond of. The first line of the poem ‘O Rose, thou art sick!’ has both a declarative tone given the double stressed syllables at the beginning of the line, connoting ideas of certainty and equally despair, and also a double meaning: fear of the corruption of women in society from the perspective of socially conservative institutions such as the church or also fear, from Blake’s perspective, of the corruption and exploitation of the natural world by mankind through industrialisation and pollution. ‘The Sick Rose’ should be approached from a perspective of irony since it was written as a critique of social institutions; ‘rose’ is a natural image both representative of the fragility of the female form and the equal beauty and fragility of nature while ‘sick’ implies that both figures have been harmed by their oppressors, society. From the reading of the ‘rose’ as womanhood, this line could be perceived as ironic since it implies that sexual promiscuity was a corruption of the female soul, an idea which Blake staunchly rebuked on account of his liberalism and, contrarily, from the natural reading this line could be an outward, exclamative expression of fear from Blake about the condition of nature in a changing, industrial world which was heavily anthropocentric. Ideas of irony within ‘The Sick Rose’ are further developed through ‘dark secret love’ and ‘life destroy’; the ‘dark secret love’ is a reference to sexual passions and desires suppressed by humanity on account of society’s social conservatism and church-fearing nature which condemned social liberalism and deviation from the supposed teachings of God of monogamy and chastity – without these values, your life would be ‘destroyed’. The triplet here with the double stressed syllables emphasises the constrictive and oppressive nature of contemporary society as Blake feels as if mankind’s expression of love is trapped by the net of social conformity perpetrated by institutions such as the church. It is significant to note that, on account of the poem’s irony, that this line is supposed to be mocking of this perception of human affection; Blake wants the reader to feel uncomfortable with the idea of restricted emotions on account of conformity as well as a demonisation of genuine passion and affection. Overall, ‘The Sick Rose’ establishes and furthers Blake’s perception of state-sponsored institutions and society as unjust, oppressive, and restrictive to the true nature of human nature through the persistent satirical metaphor of the innocent ‘rose’ being exploited by the phallic and corruptive ‘worm’; Blake is critical throughout the poem of the rampant social conservatism adopted by his contemporary society. Another reading of the poem is through the natural lens and this read adopts a more genuine expression; Blake expresses his disdain for the human exploitation of nature and the human corruption of the natural world which was so dear to the Romantics on account of its undying beauty and unyielding spiritual power.