From: blake-d-request@albion.com
Sent: Friday, November 01, 1996 3:18 PM
To: blake-d@albion.com
Subject: blake-d Digest V1996 #123
------------------------------
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blake-d Digest Volume 1996 : Issue 123
Today's Topics:
Bluestockings behind Blake's antifeminist passages
Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply
Blake's Characters
Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply
Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply
Re: Blake's Characters
Re: Blake's Characters
Re: Bluestockings behind Blake's antifeminist passages
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 11:47:10 -0600 (CST)
From: Suzanne Araas Vesely <suzaraa@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu>
To: blake@albion.com
Cc: blake@albion.com
Subject: Bluestockings behind Blake's antifeminist passages
Message-Id: <Pine.A32.3.91.961101103955.23656E-100000@black.weeg.uiowa.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
There have been some postings along the lines of bluestockings and Blake
that tried to "point out" that there were educated women in the eighteenth
century, and that Blake passed such people over for an unlettered woman.
Considering that he once congratulated himself on not getting an education
in rational materialistic views, which is the education that the
Bluestockings had and urged for others, and considering that he believed
his vision to be intact because he was an autodidact, I think that Blake
was seeking out an equal, whom he tried to educate (with some success) in
vision. This is not to say that the rationalists do not have their great
contribution, sometimes underrated by Blake, but Blake is Blake. I can't
imagine him marrying such an "educated" woman, nor can I imagine a Hannah
More, for instance, taking any interest in Blake except of the sort that
his patron and "spiritual enemy" Hayley took in him, or that sort of
interest that Harriet Mathews may have had in him as an interesting
addition to a tea. She was the woman whose gatherings he attended when he
was writing An Island in the Moon (so-called) as a satire on such salons.
Since I'm doing some work on More at this moment, unfinished and without
strong conclusions, I'd like to suggest what these kinds of women meant to
Blake. Other ideas are welcome.
Hannah More inveighs against those who protest poverty (Rousseau):
"...poverty is represented as merely a political evil, and the restraints
which keep the poor honest, are painted as the most flagrant injustice."
("Strictures on the Education of Women," 331 of the _Works of Hannah More_
vol. I (Goodrich: Boston: 1827; originally written in 1799, five years
before Blake dated _Milton_ and _Jerusalem_ title pages, two years after
Blake titled _Vala, or, The Four Zoas_. Probably no influence there, but
More often sounds like Vala, or like Enitharmon at her worst.
Also try this: "Propriety is to a woman what tegreat Roman critic says
action is to an orator: it is the first, the second, the third
requisite...It shows itself by a regular, orderly, undeviating course; and
never starts from its sober orbit into any eccentricities..."(Strictures,
326). Blake's regular orbits are all sinister. Also: "..If I were asked
what quality is most important in an instructor of youth, I should not
hesitate to reply, _such a strong impression of the corruption of our
nature, as should insure a disposition to counteract it; together with
such a deep view and thorough knowledge of the human heart, as should be
necessary for dveloping and controlling its most secrret and complicated
workings._" (Strictures, 336). For More, human nature is basically evil,
and yet--
The news of More is not all dismal. "There is, happily, an active spring
in the mind of youth which bounds with fresh vigour and uninjured
elasticity from any temporary depression" caused by her pedagogy (356).
Belief in the visionary fire, in Woman, yet a fear of it in More. But
perhaps that is preferable to Locke's genteel dismissal of the human
psyche as having a blankness filled with vague tendencies, readily
manipulated in innocent youths.
At the end of _Jerusalem,_ Blake seems to me to unite Vala and Jerusalem
in Britannia. This is another approach to my argument that the later
Blake treats women more symbolically than he does Thel or Oothoon--I
believe that, if anything, Blake is being more realistic, more willing to
reflect the realities of women's contributions as popularizers to
rationalist agendas--that is, willing to acknowledge that the complicity
of women in antivisionary agendas required more than just using them as
foils for the male perpetrators of evil. Oothoon is more of an innocent,
hamstrung victim of the system, vainly resisting it. A Vala or an Ololon
knows what she is doing--so does a Rahab, who stands with Blake in the
bosom of Satan, showing that Blake does not excuse even himself from a
role in the creation of the age insofar as he reasons at women instead of
granting them their own access to vision. Because they have access to
their own guilt, they all, even Vala, can enter the visionary fires of
transformed. It is only the elect, smug in their self-enclosed purity and
blamelessness, who cannot gain the transformation of vision.
It is in this light that I understand Blake's considerable use of Western
negations of the female in his late work. It goes beyond "felix culpa" to
a recognition that freedom, a free will, is the divine spark in
all--opposed to the artifically manufactured "Female Will" of social
mores--or "Mores"--pun intended. Whether Blake knew of Hannah More's work
is not important; he had a taste of More's ideas in Wollstonecraft's _A
Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which accepted the Lockean view of
humanity. Despite More's horrified repudiation of Wollstonecraft'sLockean
democratizing and egalitarian implications, early and late. I think of
Blake as a part of a web of women's concerns, a tangled golden string
that may lead to Jerusalem's wall.
Suzanne Araas Vesely
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 01 Nov 1996 13:30:05 -0500 (EST)
From: WC449298@HOPE.CIT.HOPE.EDU
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply
Message-Id: <01IBC0344G1U8XKVO7@HOPE.CIT.HOPE.EDU>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
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I do remember the post someone wrote in comparing Blake to
Nietzsche, and I replied, saying that I also saw striking
parallels, but striking differences too. I could be totally
misreading Blake's proverbs of Hell, but I always took them as
an excessive rebellion against the moralism of both the Puritans
and the Deists, the two groups who "crucified Christ upside
down", however he put it. The fact is, Blake did not want
anybody to be oppressed by deities that are abstracted from the
self and thus continually demanding actions from us that may be
counterintuitive--Urizen tyrannizing the other Zoas. Of course
the road of excess is self-destructive and possibly destructive
to others, but for another to draw boundaries for another, as
Urizen does, is loveless and tyrannical. Love, not moralism!
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 14:36:18 -0500
From: TomD3456@aol.com
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Blake's Characters
Message-Id: <961101143617_1747043131@emout02.mail.aol.com>
Jennifer's remarks about Blake's characters and their shifting attributes,
encompassing of each other, leads me to ask a basic question about Blake's
characters (Los and Enitharmon, the Zoas and their emanations, the spectres,
etc.): What ARE they?
I have always thought that Blake's characters are archetypes of some kind,
not corporeal men and women (and therefore we shouldn't view their relations
as necessarily indicating misogyny, etc. on Blake's part). If they're
internal figures, like Jung's anima, wise old man, etc., or representations
of mental states and spiritual vs. material principles, as Izak Bouwer
persuasively argues, then they're in each of us, man or woman.
But it's hard to pin down just WHAT they are, and their enigmatic nature is
at the core of Blake's essential difficulty, for me. Sometimes Los and
Enitharmon seem to represent parts of Blake's own psyche, or Everyman's;
sometimes they seem very close to representing William and Catherine Blake
("a vegetated mortal Wife of Los, his Emanation, yet his Wife till the sleep
of Death is past," J 14:13)); sometimes they seem to be forces operating in
history, shaping it for their own ends, as in "Europe". So what are they?
Blake seems to confound any distinction between "inner" and "outer" worlds,
spiritual and corporeal, psychology and history.
Before we go off on another wild chase down the rat hole of Blake's purported
madness, let me say No, I don't think this indicates insanity--I think this
confusion or melding of inner and outer is inherent in Blake's essential view
of existence, which is alchemical in nature (that's as close a term as I can
find, anyway).
In alchemical work, as I understand it, the alchemist's outer, "chemical,"
work is invested with psychological/spiritual meaning, and the inner and
outer work become a single "masa confusa," where transformations begin to
take place. I think an attempt to describe something like that process is at
the core of Blake's project.
I think that sort of process takes place all the time -- working on the inner
by working on the outer. For example: I believe that for many of us who
study literature, our initial choice of an author to study is largely (and
often unconsciously) guided by the problems we experience in our inner lives,
and our sense that THIS author understands the problem we are experiencing
and has some insights into its solution. I know that is true of my own work
with Blake. And I have seen women with family-of-origin issues do
marvelously intense work on King Lear, etc.
While we are doing this kind of work, we often are only vaguely conscious of
its connections with our own issues, but a kind of self-healing or
transformation takes place through our grappling with the subject of our
study. Is this inner or outer work? Are we working on King Lear or on our
problems with our fathers? I think it's both, and it's a mysterious process.
And the problems are seldom "solved" in the way we might have hoped at the
start, but we are transformed in the process of working on them, and "The Eye
altering alters All."
So I believe that what Blake is describing, this merging or melding of inner
and outer worlds, is "for real," and pretty common. But it's damned hard to
understand or write about -- whenever I think I've pinned them down, the
figures keep changing form and wriggling away. And perhaps that's why Blake
doesn't seem clear about it: he's portraying a situation that is inherently
confusing, constantly transgressing the conceptual boundaries that words
create.
What do others think? How would you describe these figures -- the Zoas and
their emanations, etc? What ARE they?
--Tom Devine
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 12:24:27 -0800
From: "Joseph W. Murray" <aeolian@everett.com>
To: <blake@albion.com>
Subject: Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply
Message-Id: <199611012124.NAA02326@post.everett.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Default
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What I think Shattuck is saying(though he is very
articulate and needs no village explainer), whatever
Blake's intention-(which no doubt was a rebellion
against Puitanism and the "sin of the Pharisees"
as Jesus called it)-when writings such as the
PROVERBS OF HELL are taken as maxims
to live by today (with no historical context-How
many readers today are aware of the times Blake
lived in) and applied to life as lived on this earth now,
that the result is many times a path of destruction.
The dicta of the 60's "Do your own thing" which incidentally
sounds much like Aleister Crowley's credo "Do what thou
wilt is the whole of the law" (Crowley who self-destructed
and left a wake of destruction to others in his path)
has for the most part left many broken, destroyed lives.
I don't believe Blake is/was any pied piper to the young
as many of the icons of the 60's were. Blake was
a hard working artist craftsman and poet and certainly
not a self-destructive man. He was an immensly disciplined
man also. In popular culture today sayings from the
PROVERBS OF HELL abound. I've heard the palace
of wisdom saying on television dramas .
Its an easy saying to take out of context and use as
a justification for any reprehensible behavior.
I've done it myself being one who as a youngster was
influenced by PROVERBS OF HELL, Rimbaud's
"systematic derangement of the senses" and other
credo's. Adolesence can be a time of absolute
rebellion against "the way things are', and there
is a hard core of truth to this rebellion. But one must move
on from this. Today we find Rimbauds on every streetcorner,
Wanna-be Blakes fascinated by his visions, and with no
understanding of the man or what Blake was rebelling
against. Rebellion today is a fashion industry. We know
what Blake was rebelling against and we can understand
why. We recognize him as a passionate prophetic voice
intensely involved with his times.Passionate against
injustice and raging against his times. That is what
I find similar between Shattuck and Blake. Shattuck
is also raging against the "spirit of the times" we live in.
The misapplication of writers like Blake to justify reprehensible,
destructive, heartless,loveless behavior. There is positive evil
in this world. When faced with the greater good and the lesser
good men don't necessarily choose the greater good. When faced
with positive Good and positive Evil- Some will deliberatley and conciously
choose the Evil. Many Innocents never realize this and some are
destroyed by the realization.
. And what is evil? I hear the question asked. A most unhip and
"judgemental" word.
Serial killers are evil. Murder is evil. What we have seen in
Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia in the last 20 years is evil.
The systematic destruction of the enviorment is evil.
Deception, slander, betrayal- are all evil. This century is
a roller coaster ride thru a blood bath.Evil.To say that good
and evil are mind-constructs and that we can transcend this
archaic construct and be beyond good and evil, may be
intellectually comforting in a remote study but don't take
it out on the street and don't bring it to my neighborhood.
Because the streets are already full of those who are
"beyond good and evil". They are 14 years old and
carry guns . And using them without regret.Conciously.
When it comes to Love(What is Love?)The Greeks had
anumber of words for love. Storge love-the natural love
one feels for one's children,family.Philia love-the old
brotherly love.Eros-sexual,romantic love. All of these
are essential-but none of them stops one from murdering
necessarily. We love our families-and we would kill those
who try to harm them. We love our fellows(brothers/sisters),
and we would go to war to kill those of another ethnic group/
nation if the trumpet is sounded. We love our lovers with
intense sexuality and romance and in a jealous rage we
may kill our lover. The other love the Greeks talked about
was Agape love which was love based on principle. The kind
of love that prevents us from going to war,taking vengeance
for our family , killing or betraying our lover. Doing your own
thing is selfish.Agape love is selfless,principled-not always
passionate and intense-but real nonetheless. Same love
Jesus talked about I believe. Anyway enough preaching.
If one is in revolt one must ask What am I revolting against?
True revolt has nothing to do with fashion and is often
carried on silently, unnoticed and with principled love.
Joe Murray
ftsm
----------
> From: WC449298@HOPE.CIT.HOPE.EDU
> To: blake@albion.com
> Subject: Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply
> Date: Friday, November 01, 1996 10:30 AM
>
> I do remember the post someone wrote in comparing Blake to
> Nietzsche, and I replied, saying that I also saw striking
> parallels, but striking differences too. I could be totally
> misreading Blake's proverbs of Hell, but I always took them as
> an excessive rebellion against the moralism of both the Puritans
> and the Deists, the two groups who "crucified Christ upside
> down", however he put it. The fact is, Blake did not want
> anybody to be oppressed by deities that are abstracted from the
> self and thus continually demanding actions from us that may be
> counterintuitive--Urizen tyrannizing the other Zoas. Of course
> the road of excess is self-destructive and possibly destructive
> to others, but for another to draw boundaries for another, as
> Urizen does, is loveless and tyrannical. Love, not moralism!
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 12:31:47 -0800
From: "Joseph W. Murray" <aeolian@everett.com>
To: "P Van Schaik" <VSCHAP@ALPHA.UNISA.AC.ZA>, <blake@albion.com>
Subject: Re: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply
Message-Id: <199611012124.NAA02328@post.everett.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Pam,
I read a book a few years back- in fact it bothered
me so much I've read it 3 times and may read it again.
Your comments brought the book to mind. It was by
R.C Zaehner, called OUR SAVAGE GOD. Zaehner,
as you probably know , is a Catholic scholar who
specializes in Comparative Religon-primarily Hinduism,
I believe. Have you ever read the book? Your comments
about the state of flux and no permanent selfhood being
formed brought it to mind.Zaehner also wrote DRUGS,
MYSTICISM AND MAKEBELIEVE which I found not
as interesting.
All the best,
Joe Murray
----------
> From: P Van Schaik <VSCHAP@ALPHA.UNISA.AC.ZA>
> To: blake@albion.com; aeolian@everett.com
> Subject: Forbidden Knowledge and Innocence -Reply
> Date: Friday, November 01, 1996 1:26 AM
>
> Joseph, Being present at the point of focus of the most vital energies
and
> so perpetually in flux that habit does not form, sounds very like Blake's
> vision of Innocence in Eternity - which is, I suppose, why instinctively
> you go on to quote `The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom'.
> For Blake, the continual flux and mingling of one's spiritual essences
with
> that of others sustained spirits in Innocence because it prevented a
> permanent Selfhood from developing - the equivalent of the restraints
> imposed by habit.
>
> On earth, intensity , as you point out, can lead to good or bad. The
> same intensity in a world governed by selfless love, as is Blake's Eden
> and Beulah when spirits are fully expanded into god's light, leads to
> ecstasy. Pam van Schaik
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 16:20:28 -0500
From: albright@world.std.com (R.H. Albright)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Blake's Characters
Message-Id: <v01510106aea017f432a6@[10.0.2.15]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>Jennifer's remarks about Blake's characters and their shifting attributes,
>encompassing of each other, leads me to ask a basic question about Blake's
>characters (Los and Enitharmon, the Zoas and their emanations, the spectres,
>etc.): What ARE they?
Hi, Tom.
Long time, no see. Actually, I've been trying to breathe life into a D.H.
Lawrence group... he deserves as much as good old William Blake. What ARE
they? Well, Lawrence said that his own characters aren't stable... they
move through what he called "allotropic" states.
So maybe when you're first born, like Los, you're a jerk and you tie up
your first-born, Orc, because you're too much under your Father/Emanation's
influence. I truly hate Los in "The Book of Urizen", for example.
And then, I don't see how Jennifer can call Orc "Jesus", except in Blake's
mind recalling the Temple scene where he overthrew the money changers'
table. Orc in "America" and "Europe" is a mere fiery anarchist. Then he
gets kind of sidelined for those final epics, doesn't he? And it's
Los/Blake that is more aligned with Jesus.
So what are they? To me, they are what they are at a certain time. That's
why I always have been baffled by Pam's "all in one" theory-- hi, Pam!
still believe that?-- because Blake doesn't package things that
simplistically. Characters? Well... at one point Hugh Walthall's idea of
them as cartoons sounded about right.
-Randall Albright
http://world.std.com/~albright/
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 13:35:29 -0800
From: "Joseph W. Murray" <aeolian@everett.com>
To: <blake@albion.com>
Subject: Re: Blake's Characters
Message-Id: <199611012227.OAA03029@post.everett.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Tom,
Very insightful comments as to why we choose to study
certain artists,poets,writers. And I agree with your
assessment of Blake's characters.Perhaps the grappling
with our inner issues, and our choosing of blake is
reflected in the sometimes contentious nature of this
mailing group. I've been pretty irate at times at the
way people relate to one another on this list, but in
reading some of their postings (when they aren't
busy putting an individual on the list down) I find that
I'm probably closer in thought and inclinations than I might
have beleived to the individuals who offend me at times.
I find Blake's intense , passionate dislike of injustice,
his dedication to his work in a society that offered him
little encouragement, and his workingclass and craftsman
background and lack of formal academic training or schooling
and how he dealt with his times of the utmost interest to
me. Some of the same issues I've dealt with in my life.
And the question of Madness that surrounds discussions of Blake.
Joe Murray
----------
> From: TomD3456@aol.com
> To: blake@albion.com
> Subject: Blake's Characters
> Date: Friday, November 01, 1996 11:36 AM
>
> Jennifer's remarks about Blake's characters and their shifting
attributes,
> encompassing of each other, leads me to ask a basic question about
Blake's
> characters (Los and Enitharmon, the Zoas and their emanations, the
spectres,
> etc.): What ARE they?
>
> I have always thought that Blake's characters are archetypes of some
kind,
> not corporeal men and women (and therefore we shouldn't view their
relations
> as necessarily indicating misogyny, etc. on Blake's part). If they're
> internal figures, like Jung's anima, wise old man, etc., or
representations
> of mental states and spiritual vs. material principles, as Izak Bouwer
> persuasively argues, then they're in each of us, man or woman.
>
> But it's hard to pin down just WHAT they are, and their enigmatic nature
is
> at the core of Blake's essential difficulty, for me. Sometimes Los and
> Enitharmon seem to represent parts of Blake's own psyche, or Everyman's;
> sometimes they seem very close to representing William and Catherine
Blake
> ("a vegetated mortal Wife of Los, his Emanation, yet his Wife till the
sleep
> of Death is past," J 14:13)); sometimes they seem to be forces operating
in
> history, shaping it for their own ends, as in "Europe". So what are
they?
> Blake seems to confound any distinction between "inner" and "outer"
worlds,
> spiritual and corporeal, psychology and history.
>
> Before we go off on another wild chase down the rat hole of Blake's
purported
> madness, let me say No, I don't think this indicates insanity--I think
this
> confusion or melding of inner and outer is inherent in Blake's essential
view
> of existence, which is alchemical in nature (that's as close a term as I
can
> find, anyway).
>
> In alchemical work, as I understand it, the alchemist's outer,
"chemical,"
> work is invested with psychological/spiritual meaning, and the inner and
> outer work become a single "masa confusa," where transformations begin to
> take place. I think an attempt to describe something like that process
is at
> the core of Blake's project.
>
> I think that sort of process takes place all the time -- working on the
inner
> by working on the outer. For example: I believe that for many of us who
> study literature, our initial choice of an author to study is largely
(and
> often unconsciously) guided by the problems we experience in our inner
lives,
> and our sense that THIS author understands the problem we are
experiencing
> and has some insights into its solution. I know that is true of my own
work
> with Blake. And I have seen women with family-of-origin issues do
> marvelously intense work on King Lear, etc.
>
> While we are doing this kind of work, we often are only vaguely conscious
of
> its connections with our own issues, but a kind of self-healing or
> transformation takes place through our grappling with the subject of our
> study. Is this inner or outer work? Are we working on King Lear or on
our
> problems with our fathers? I think it's both, and it's a mysterious
process.
> And the problems are seldom "solved" in the way we might have hoped at
the
> start, but we are transformed in the process of working on them, and "The
Eye
> altering alters All."
>
> So I believe that what Blake is describing, this merging or melding of
inner
> and outer worlds, is "for real," and pretty common. But it's damned hard
to
> understand or write about -- whenever I think I've pinned them down, the
> figures keep changing form and wriggling away. And perhaps that's why
Blake
> doesn't seem clear about it: he's portraying a situation that is
inherently
> confusing, constantly transgressing the conceptual boundaries that words
> create.
>
> What do others think? How would you describe these figures -- the Zoas
and
> their emanations, etc? What ARE they?
>
> --Tom Devine
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 14:08:44 -0800
From: reillys@ix.netcom.com (susan p. reilly)
To: blake@albion.com
Subject: Re: Bluestockings behind Blake's antifeminist passages
Message-Id: <199611012208.OAA24918@dfw-ix6.ix.netcom.com>
You wrote:
>
>
>There have been some postings along the lines of bluestockings and
Blake
>that tried to "point out" that there were educated women in the
eighteenth
>century, and that Blake passed such people over for an unlettered
woman.
>Considering that he once congratulated himself on not getting an
education
>in rational materialistic views, which is the education that the
>Bluestockings had and urged for others, and considering that he
believed
>his vision to be intact because he was an autodidact, I think that
Blake
>was seeking out an equal, whom he tried to educate (with some success)
in
>vision. This is not to say that the rationalists do not have their
great
>contribution, sometimes underrated by Blake, but Blake is Blake. I
can't
>imagine him marrying such an "educated" woman, nor can I imagine a
Hannah
>More, for instance, taking any interest in Blake except of the sort
that
>his patron and "spiritual enemy" Hayley took in him, or that sort of
>interest that Harriet Mathews may have had in him as an interesting
>addition to a tea. She was the woman whose gatherings he attended
when he
>was writing An Island in the Moon (so-called) as a satire on such
salons.
>
>Since I'm doing some work on More at this moment, unfinished and
without
>strong conclusions, I'd like to suggest what these kinds of women
meant to
>Blake. Other ideas are welcome.
>
>Hannah More inveighs against those who protest poverty (Rousseau):
>"...poverty is represented as merely a political evil, and the
restraints
>which keep the poor honest, are painted as the most flagrant
injustice."
>("Strictures on the Education of Women," 331 of the _Works of Hannah
More_
>vol. I (Goodrich: Boston: 1827; originally written in 1799, five years
>before Blake dated _Milton_ and _Jerusalem_ title pages, two years
after
>Blake titled _Vala, or, The Four Zoas_. Probably no influence there,
but
>More often sounds like Vala, or like Enitharmon at her worst.
>
>Also try this: "Propriety is to a woman what tegreat Roman critic
says
>action is to an orator: it is the first, the second, the third
>requisite...It shows itself by a regular, orderly, undeviating course;
and
>never starts from its sober orbit into any
eccentricities..."(Strictures,
>326). Blake's regular orbits are all sinister. Also: "..If I were
asked
>what quality is most important in an instructor of youth, I should not
>hesitate to reply, _such a strong impression of the corruption of our
>nature, as should insure a disposition to counteract it; together with
>such a deep view and thorough knowledge of the human heart, as should
be
>necessary for dveloping and controlling its most secrret and
complicated
>workings._" (Strictures, 336). For More, human nature is basically
evil,
>and yet--
>
>The news of More is not all dismal. "There is, happily, an active
spring
>in the mind of youth which bounds with fresh vigour and uninjured
>elasticity from any temporary depression" caused by her pedagogy
(356).
>Belief in the visionary fire, in Woman, yet a fear of it in More. But
>perhaps that is preferable to Locke's genteel dismissal of the human
>psyche as having a blankness filled with vague tendencies, readily
>manipulated in innocent youths.
>
>At the end of _Jerusalem,_ Blake seems to me to unite Vala and
Jerusalem
>in Britannia. This is another approach to my argument that the later
>Blake treats women more symbolically than he does Thel or Oothoon--I
>believe that, if anything, Blake is being more realistic, more willing
to
>reflect the realities of women's contributions as popularizers to
>rationalist agendas--that is, willing to acknowledge that the
complicity
>of women in antivisionary agendas required more than just using them
as
>foils for the male perpetrators of evil. Oothoon is more of an
innocent,
>hamstrung victim of the system, vainly resisting it. A Vala or an
Ololon
>knows what she is doing--so does a Rahab, who stands with Blake in the
>bosom of Satan, showing that Blake does not excuse even himself from a
>role in the creation of the age insofar as he reasons at women instead
of
>granting them their own access to vision. Because they have access to
>their own guilt, they all, even Vala, can enter the visionary fires of
>transformed. It is only the elect, smug in their self-enclosed purity
and
>blamelessness, who cannot gain the transformation of vision.
>
>It is in this light that I understand Blake's considerable use of
Western
>negations of the female in his late work. It goes beyond "felix
culpa" to
>a recognition that freedom, a free will, is the divine spark in
>all--opposed to the artifically manufactured "Female Will" of social
>mores--or "Mores"--pun intended. Whether Blake knew of Hannah More's
work
>is not important; he had a taste of More's ideas in Wollstonecraft's
_A
>Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which accepted the Lockean view of
>humanity. Despite More's horrified repudiation of
Wollstonecraft'sLockean
>democratizing and egalitarian implications, early and late. I think
of
>Blake as a part of a web of women's concerns, a tangled golden string
>that may lead to Jerusalem's wall.
>
>Suzanne Araas Vesely
>
>
>
Suzanne---
We've already been around the argument you raise in the beginning of
your note, (for wch I thank you) but perhaps you missed that exchange.
It was never my intention nor anyone else's to suggest that Blake
should or should not have married anyone other than he did---this thing
started when I pointed out that there WERE educated women around in
Blake's day (in response to someone's suggestion [?] that he had no
choice but to married an uneducated one...) and that was all.
But I'm glad the subject has generated some good talk--especially
around the satire in _Island in the Moon_.
Susan
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End of blake-d Digest V1996 Issue #123
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