The Songs of Innocence and A Vindication of the Rights of Women - Essay Example

Compare one of William Blake’s political poems in the Songs of Innocence and Experience and compare it to a text by Mary Wollstonecraft in a vindication of the rights of women. Is one more politically relevant than the other? Why? Comparing Blake’s political poems in the Songs of Innocence and Experience to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of the rights of women particularly when he spoke of innocence and experience in the metaphors of the Lamb and Tiger made Blake politically irrelevant despite of his stature as a great thinker of the Romantic Period. Mary Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of the rights of women was and still is directly relevant to the plight and struggle of women to have the same rights as men when it comes education, political participation, economic opportunity etch. In fact, the struggle of women that Wollstonecraft is espousing is not yet fully realized today and such made it more relevant than Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience has its own literary merit only that its relevance is diminished when it is compared to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of the rights of women. His poems only spoke about how the harsh realities of adulthood destroy the innocence of a child. That as a child grows older, he or she becomes more acquainted with the world and found out that it is not as pleasant as it used to. Or it could be interpreted as the figurative duality or ambivalence of life between two contesting forces on earth which are the good and bad represented by the Lamb as the good, and the Tiger as the bad. The arguments presented by Blake in Songs of Innocence and Experience of innocence are basically clichés and can be credited more for their literary value than the insightfulness of their arguments. We can lift this quotation about the lamb in his work; For he calls himself a Lamb:  He is meek & he is mild,  He became a little child:  I a child & thou a lamb,  We are called by his name.  Little Lamb God bless thee.  Then he compared it with the Tiger which reads as; And what shoulder, & what art,  Could twist the sinews of thy heart?  And when thy heart began to beat,  What dread hand? & what dread feet?  This was beautifully written in stylistic prose but the arguments in this prose do not astound us because it only speaks of innocence lost in adulthood of which every adult already knows. The rest of the work sounds political of Blake’s lamentation and protest against despotic authority, repression and enforced religion. To a certain extent, these issues are still present today but the way that Blake presented and argued them through a poem made his position more of an academic musing and thus, less relevant when compared to Mary Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of the rights of women. To appreciate Mary Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of the rights of women, it is important that the context of the work must be cited. It is in fact a direct response to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgords utterance about women in the French Assembly in 1791 whereby he recommended that girls do not have much need of an education other than the necessity required of building a home. The treatise was dedicated to Talleyrand so that he would rethink and reevaluate his position regarding the education of women. Mary Wollstonecraft may have written more than 200 years ago but the issue and struggle that she is asserting is as relevant today as it was during her time. We even need not go farther to stress this with the recent news that hit the headline with a young girl named Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban when she insisted that she wanted to be in school and educate herself (Malm). This may be a little extreme but this only illustrates that the struggle of women for equal education, equal political participation and equal opportunity is still as difficult when Wollstonecraft articulated it in early 1800s. The men during her time who practices double standard and prohibit girls from being educated are still present today be it among the Talibans or highly patriarchal society. It may be argued that Blake also mentioned his position against autocratic regimes, tyranny and meddling of religion in state affairs in his work Songs of Innocence and Experience. Yes he did mentioned it in his work but it has to be pointed out also that the poem was not a treatise, compared to Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of the rights of women that was intended to address the inequity of women but rather a literary excursion where the literary value was more esteemed more than its content or advocacy. Comparing to Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of the rights of women, it was not intended to impress the reader with the literary skill of Wollstonecraft but rather, for Talleyrand and the like minded men to rethink his and their position about women’s education to be subservient to men. Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of the rights of women words were not also rendered in poetic prose just like Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience where the nuance of the language appeals to the reader’s finer sensibilities but rather, was written in vitriolic diatribe of a pointed pen of her protest against this treatment of women. To cite an example, Wollstonecraft harshly wrote this ill state of women as being low and primitive in the A vindication of the rights of women as; women, in general, as well as the rich of both sexes, have acquired all the follies and vices of civilization and have missed the useful fruit...Their sense are inflamed, and their understanding neglected, consequently they become the prey of gust of feeling. Civilized women are, therefore, so weakened by false refinement, that, respecting morals, their condition is much below what it would be were they left in a state nearer to nature. Ever restless and anxious, their over exercised sensibility not only renders them uncomfortable themselves, but troublesome, to use a soft phrase, to others. (Wollstonecraft) Clearly, Wollstonecraft’s A vindication of the rights of women mattered more than Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience in terms of political relevance. Works Cited Blake William. Songs of Innocence: The Lamb. 1789. Retrieved fromhttp://www.theotherpages.org/poems/blake03.html#lamb Blake William. Songs of Experience: The Tyger. 1789. Retrieved from http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/blake04.html#tyger Mary. Wollstonecraft. A vindication of the rights of women. 1929. Retrieved from http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/wollstonecraft/woman-a.html SARA MALM. An icon of courage: Shooting of Pakistani girl, 14, who championed female education, prompts anti-Taliban protests across the country. Daily Mail. 9 October 2012 | UPDATED: 17:28 GMT, 10 October 2012. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2215132/Taliban-attack-teenage-Pakistani-girl-Malala-Yousafzai-way-school.html Read More