Konzen 1
Abbey Konzen Mary Vermillion EN 215: Major English Writers May 11, 2016 Impoverished Children and Childhood: The Complexities of Swift and Blake In the history of major English literature, there were no significant mentions of children until the mid-eighteenth century, with Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” After his jolting introduction of children as a topic in literature, the Romantic Period ushered in William Blake, who embraced the idea of childhood for many of the poems in his collection, Songs of Innocence and Experience. Blake touches on two clashing views of childhood specifically in “Holy Thursday,” the title of two poems found in both Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Why are these authors writing about poor children in ways that have never previously been attempted? What effect does this leave on the pieces in terms of overall theme and tone? What opinion of children might a reader form, based on each essay or poem? The answers to these questions and more are waiting to be explored in Swift and Blake’s works. Jonathan Swift burst open the door for using children in literature by jumping right into one of the most well-known and disturbing satires ever written. In “A Modest Proposal,” the speaker is calmly suggesting a solution to England’s landowners by way of killing and eating poor, Irish babies. Obviously, this suggestion, although satirical, is very gruesome and views children in an animalistic light, unworthy of respect:
Konzen 2
… it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands. (1200) This passage shows the speaker’s initial proposal – and his disregard for the human dignity of children in poverty. He is addressing (and mocking through satire) the English landowners oppressing Ireland and contributing to their poverty. These men would actually feel somewhat in agreement with the speaker, even though what he is saying isn’t to be taken seriously. Thus, the view of children in this essay is a view that may have existed with the help of Swift’s guiding hand. To further understand the horrifying qualities of children’s role in “A Modest Proposal,” one need only read a little further. Swift describes a oneyear-old as a “most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled” (1201). This entirely dehumanizes babies to any reader who takes it seriously, along with his next suggestion to “flay the carcass; the skin of which will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen” (1202). Once those Englishmen are busy thinking about how they will instruct their wives to flawlessly prepare the delicacy of Irish ‘tots,’ there is no going back to the time in their lives when they’d never had a fleeting thought about killing and eating small children. For emphasis on the speaker’s apparent view toward children, he describes a number of reasons justifying his proposal. The second of these
Konzen 3
motives is: “the poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own” (1203). This simple phrase cuts deep into the dignity of the children being sacrificed. It suggests that, without the sealed fate of being slaughtered for money, the children were never intrinsically valuable on their own. With Swift’s dark introduction of children as a topic in literature, it seems the view could only get more positive from here. Fast forward sixty years – William Blake’s Songs of Innocence paints a much more uplifting view of children and childhood. Many of his poems in this collection are a heartening, cheery peek into childhood, particularly the one titled, “Holy Thursday,” ‘Twas on a Holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean, The children walking two & two, in red & blue & green; Grey headed beadles walked before with wands as white as snow, Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thame’s waters flow. Oh what a multitude they seemd, these flowers of London town! Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own. The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands. Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song, Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among. Beneath them sit the aged men, wise guardians of the poor; Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door. (52-53) In this short piece, the tone exudes the innocence, gentleness, and purity of the children it describes. There are no negative feelings toward these poor
Konzen 4
children, as there are in Swift’s satire. Instead, the children themselves are seen as a blessing, valuable, something worth guarding. In order to emphasize the purity of childhood, Blake employs ample nature imagery in his descriptions of the children. In the first quatrain, to suggest that the lines of children walking into the cathedral are like the flow of the river Thame’s, Blake places a serene, whimsical filter over the scene. The individual children blend together like the pure water droplets that form a flowing river, and they stream into the church as if it is their natural destination – just as water will flow where it may. In the second quatrain, Blake uses both flower and lamb metaphors for the children. To call them a multitude of radiant flowers directly takes the overpopulation issue from “A Modest Proposal” and flips it around, showing the beauty of their number, like florae spread across a hillside. Similarly, with the lamb imagery that directly follows, Blake is depicting the children through a naturally beautiful scene to anyone living in that area: bright green fields spanning for miles, dotted with lambs, those distant specks of brilliant, pure white. The poor, orphaned children aren’t the disease-ridden rodents plaguing the streets; they’re the sweetest symbol of purity in living form. The third, and last, quatrain contains even more divinely-based nature imagery than the second. Now the children are described as wind, carrying up their song to heaven, or even as those sitting in heaven with thunderous
Konzen 5
power. This comparison clearly depicts the level of importance that should be placed on children. Childhood, in this piece, is to be pure and close to God, not to be used as a gruesome and careless economical gain. If lines nine and ten weren’t clear enough, Blake directly suggests that these children are angels at one’s door, making a strong connection to religious purity and power, but this time giving the power to those least commonly granted any. Even with Blake’s uplifting poems about children in his Songs of Innocence, he takes on a different perspective with Songs of Experience, transitioning from a gentle, positive childhood to a more mature, pessimistic view of the matter: Is this a holy thing to see, In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduced to misery, Fed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine, And their fields are bleak & bare, And their ways are fill’d with thorns; It is eternal winter there. For where-e’er the sun does shine, And where-e’er the rain does fall, Babe can never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appall. (56-57)
Konzen 6
In this version of “Holy Thursday,” Blake places the speaker in a position of maturity and realism that the Songs of Innocence did not have. This speaker sees the whole picture – the children living in poverty with nothing to eat, while the adults with all of the money see them and look away – in contrast to the other “Holy Thursday,” where the speaker was so focused in on the innocent children themselves that he did not notice what he would have seen if he had used a broader lens. Even when coming from a negative perspective, Blake doesn’t use the kind of attitude present in Swift. The message behind “Holy Thursday” is one to shed light on an issue and place blame on those who could be solving it in realistic ways, in contrast to “A Modest Proposal,” where the speaker is attacking those same people in a severely humorous way. Rather than offering up an idea involving the murder and consumption of the small children, Blake again uses nature imagery to describe the desolate landscape of the poor children’s lives. Most of the imagery involving elements of nature exist in the last two quatrains. The speaker is commenting on the children’s hopelessness through their sun that never shines and their pastures that have no life within them. That vividly contrasts the other “Holy Thursday,” where it described the children as a multitude of lambs. In that poem, the children served as that source of joy for the speaker, but in this poem, the speaker realizes that the children themselves
Konzen 7
have no similar source of joy – only emptiness, and pain caused by thorns in their paths and the “eternal winter” they face (line 12). The last quatrain uses positive nature imagery to contrast what reality is for the children. It expresses that in a place with sunshine and healing waters flowing from the sky, there could never be such poverty! But the way it is for the children, as the speaker explains beforehand, there is no sun and no rain, only hunger. They will never experience the beauty of nature as long as those men in positions of power are controlling what the children receive. From three different perspectives one can find a message about children and their worth in Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” and both versions of Blake’s “Holy Thursday.” While the style, tone, and imagery differ greatly between them, all three can serve the same message to the reader. Swift uses satire to strongly attack a negative view and therefore enforce the positive view, while Blake explores an innocent and matured way of looking at the same issue. In the end, both writers present the reader with this sentiment: Children in poverty are a gift and must be protected and given justice – a message that transcends the time and setting in which these pieces were originally written to reach our own lives today, anywhere in the world.
Konzen 8
Works Cited Blake, William. “Holy Thursday.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Vol. 2. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. 52-53, 56-57. Swift, Jonathan. “A Modest Proposal.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Major Authors. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013. 11991205.