The Representation of the Female in William Blake Essay examples -- Bi

The Representation of the Female in William Blake If William Blake was, as Northrop Frye described him in his prominent book Fearful Symmetry, "a mystic enraptured with incommunicable visions, standing apart, a lonely and isolated figure, out of touch with his own age and without influence on the following one" (3), time has proved to be the visionary's most celebrated ally, making him one of the most frequently written about poets of the English language. William Blake has become, in a sense, an institution. "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human Existence," wrote Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Perhaps his most famous line, these words are the connecting thread through all of Blake's work, from The Songs of Innocence and Experience to Jerusalem. But what those words mean has been a point of contention throughout the years. What does that mean for the Male and the Female who are at the center of his work? If they are Contraries, then what does the Female in Blake's work represent? Just what did Blake mean? And from where did his ideas and perceptions spring? In 1977 Susan Fox addressed these questions in her well-renowned essay "The Female as Metaphor in William Blake's Poetry." As the first literary critic to comment on Blake's inconsistencies in his treatment of the Female, Fox explores the progression of the extended metaphor throughout the course of his career. She explains that Blake's vision of the Contraries became more clear to him as time went on; therefore, the contradiction lies in his earlier views of the Female, identified with weakness and failure, and his later attempt to rescu... ...cism 34 (1995): 255-270. Ostriker, Alicia. "Desire Gratified and Ungratified: William Blake and Sexuality." Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 16 (1983): 156-165. Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990: 270-299. Pavy, Jeanne Adele. "A Blakean Model of Reading: Gender and Genre in William Blake's Poetry." DAI 53 (1993):Emory University. Storch, Margeret. Sons and Adversaries: Women in William Blake and D. H. Lawrence. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990. Webster, Brenda. "Blake, Women, and Sexuality." Critical Paths: Blake and the Argument of Method. Eds. Donald Ault, Mark Bracher, and Dan Miller. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1987: 204-224. Wilkie, Brian. Blake's Thel and Oothoon. B. C. Canada: University of Victoria Press, 1990.