Songs Of Innocence And Experience Analysis

The roles of childhood is a significant theme within both Charles Dickens’s ‘Hard Times’ and William Blake’s ‘The Songs of Innocence and Experience’. Despite the fact that these texts were written nearly sixty years apart, they both portray similar messages about how children were treated within eighteenth and nineteenth century England. Dickens was highly critical of the Victorian education system, and his views are depicted explicitly within his novel ‘Hard Times’. Dickens believed that children should be taught to use their imagination and to think for themselves as well as being taught facts. Furthermore, Blake’s poems express his concerns about the way in which social institutions destroyed the capacity for imagination vision. He addresses

During this time, Britain was changing dramatically because of the Industrial Revolution and the changes they underwent transformed the lives of its people. Dickens critiques this world in a variety of ways; through utilitarian ideals, divorce laws and the educational system. Memorising information while being deprived of any imaginative and creative activities was an important aspect of the education system within this era. The Victorian educational system dehumanised the children by treating them like mathematical figures. Moreover, this system would have been very common and would have been devised by those who had wealth and power. From the very beginning, we are presented with this terrifying education system through Gradgrind’s lines “Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plan nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the mind of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.” When reading these lines from a Marxist perspective, the emphasis on “facts” and not fancy and the embrace of Utilitarianism becomes a justification for the abuses perpetrated as part of capitalism. Charles Dickens tends to use his novel as a crucial voice of Marxist ideologies Dickens was highly critical of the capitalist society and his novel

The poem reports the narrator’s observations as he walks through the streets of London. We could suggest that speaker is Blake himself as he often wandered through the city to gain inspiration for his work. Written in first person, the speaker has a very negative view of the city. Blake’s use of repetition is significant within this poem as it’s purpose is to emphasise the prevalence of the horrors he describes. Furthermore, he attacks the way in which children are treated within this corrupt society. This is portrayed when Blake tells the reader that “But most thro’ midnight streets I hear, How the youthful Harlot’s curse Blasts the new-born Infant tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.” Children are born into a world where young women have become “harlots”, and their tears are cursed instead of soothed. The poem links the exploitation and vulnerability of innocence with adolescent prostitution and child labour. As a result, Blake presents a world where childhood is lost by