Nature of Innocence

In our class discussion of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, we discussed innocence being about observation versus cynicism, thereby making perspective the defining element in differentiating innocence from experience. We also said that Blake’s poems about experience are a call to action, whereas the poems about experience center around higher concepts and philosophical discussions. The very nature of innocence as a trait is a philosophical discussion in that there are multiple arguable ideas about what innocence is, how to define it in characters, and how it can be lost. Many of our texts from this semester raise questions of innocence, and in this essay I will trace connections between these texts in relation to this discussion.



Innocence by Alexei Harlamov (1840-1925)
Innocence portrayed by both purity and youth



Both Walpole’s Castle of Otranto and Rossetti’s Goblin Market suggest that innocence is defined by sexual morality and can be taken away by compromise of moral standards. Innocence is illustrated in Castle of Otranto through the character of Isabella and her resistance of Manfred’s “tyrannical and illegitimate rule” (Frank 419). Isabella’s moral integrity is emphasized by juxtaposing it with Manfred’s “poor impulse control,” which creates an image of innocence for her (Frank 419). She manages to maintain her purity, so her innocence is never lost. In Goblin Market, readers see what happens to a character when she compromises and loses innocence. Laura succumbs to temptation, giving part of herself for the taste of forbidden fruit. Allegorically, this is akin to sexual immorality, as the fruit’s “association with nuptial pleasures suggest that Laura’s transgression is a sexual one,” (Poetry Foundation). In contrast with her sister, Lizzie restrains herself from tasting the goblins’ fruit though a fleet of them taunted her, “mad to tug her standard down,” (Rossetti 815). She is proved innocent not only by her selfless sacrifice for her sister, but mainly by her refusal to partake in fleshly pleasures. In both of these texts, innocence and sexual purity are closely connected. However, another popular literary definition of innocence relates it to childhood.

There are a few child-like aspects found in some of our texts that imply innocence, including lack of experience and exhibition of dependence. In Browning’s Cry of the Children, the children who work in factories are on the verge of losing their innocence because they are forced to work in harsh conditions. This suggests that innocence itself is something that one can only possess when one lacks difficult experiences. Browning describes in detail the way of the youthful birds and fawns, which are animals generally associated with innocence, and their freedom to enjoy time without worries. She then mentions the children who “are weeping in the playtime of the others,” (Browning 623). Browning herself believed that children needed to be free to enjoy childhood, and that they “should never be forced to study…they would come to all that is needful in their own time” (Taylor 427). It is significant, then, that the needy children in her poem are forced to do worse things than studying, and this makes clear her assumption that it is experience that strips people of innocence. Children are also often identified by their dependence on others, which is another possible attribute of innocence used in our texts.

In both Cry of the Children and part of Kipling’s Epitaphs of War, innocent characters exhibit dependence, especially upon their mothers. Browning frequently describes the children as “weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,” seeking comfort through relying on someone familiar (Browning). The same imagery is used in Kipling’s epitaph Shock, in which a soldier in the hospital lays his head upon his mother’s bosom. The association between innocence and childhood is made clear in the texts by the way childhood is clung to in times of despair and rare innocence. As previously mentioned, the children in Browning’s poem face incredible mistreatment in factories, and the horrors of war that Kipling draws from are equally grave circumstances. The soldier in Shock would have been joined by fellow wounded soldiers in great numbers and would have been surrounded by the dead and dying, as in the photo above. Such horrors bring forth a desire for dependence upon something strong and familiar, as illustrated by the victim’s longing to be near his mother. By reverting back to a child-like state at a mother’s breast, the soldier in Shock is attempting to free himself of his experiences, clinging to innocence that is nearly gone, as the children did. Another definition of innocence that is exhibited in texts through children’s dependence is the possession of faith in challenging circumstances.

Faith, especially faith in God, characterizes innocence in both Blake’s The Chimney Sweeper and Wordsworth’s We Are Seven. The little girl in We Are Seven confuses the experienced adult narrator with her confidence that her late siblings should still be counted among her current siblings. Her innocence is exposed by the narrator’s position that aligns with that of the adult reader. This girl’s youthful confidence is not simply due to her age, but to her faith that God has allowed her siblings to die and that it is for the best. She trusts that God “released” her sister Jane “of her pain/ and then she went away,” (Wordsworth 113). Unlike the doubting adult, she has no fear that God will take care of her, therein proving her innocence under this definition. In a similar way, the child in The Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Innocence is not terrified by death as an adult may be. When telling of a fellow sweeper named Tom and his death, the narrator does not grieve over the lost boy. He trusts that if Tom would “be a good boy/ He’d have God for his father & never want joy,” (Blake 44). The innocent joy that the narrator feels is illustrated by the warm, playful colors in Blake’s visual representation of the poem, as seen above. The chimney sweepers are free to run and play thanks to God’s angel who came to save them. It is not their youth but their trust in and reliance upon God that creates their character of innocence.

            In most of these texts, regardless of their characterization of innocence, it is agreed that innocence is a primarily positive thing. Innocence through purity is prized in Castle of Otranto and Goblin Market, it is clung to in Cry of the Children and Epitaphs of War, and it guides characters to peace in The Chimney Sweeper and We Are Seven. At the end of We Are Seven, the “little Maid” wins the argument with the narrator, acting as a victor for the side of innocence. The narrator tells the reader that in arguing with the girl—or with innocence personified—that he was “throwing words away; for still/ The little Maid would have her will,” (Wordsworth 114). Perhaps these all assert that innocence, when uncompromised, will prevail as a beacon of goodness.

Quotes from reputable scholarly articles

·        Frank, Marcie. “Horace Walpole’s Family Romances.” Modern Philology 100.3

(February 2003): 417-435. JSTOR. Web. 6 May 2013.

·        Taylor, Beverly. "Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Politics of Childhood."

            Victorian Poetry 46.4 (2008): 405,427,515. ProQuest. Web. 6 May 2013.

Reference to Class Discussion

·        Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience from February 13, 2013.

Web Based Sources and Images

·        http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/christina-rossetti

·        Art Experts—Alexei Harlamov

http://www.artexpertswebsite.com/pages/artists/harmalov.php

·        Photos of the Great War      http://www.gwpda.org/photos/coppermine/displayimage.php?pos=-2989

·        The Blake Archive

http://www.blakearchive.org/blake/search.html

Quoted Text

·        Black, Joseph Laurence. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature.

            Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2007. Print.

Forbidden Fruits: Just Say No

I must admit that it took several times to read through Rosetti's "Goblin Market" to read into the story beyond a Fairy Tale or Biblical allegory. Let's face it, by now women should learn to NOT accept fruit from strangers. It never goes well. The story draws similarities to Eve, Mary Magdalene, Hansel and Gretel, etc. We covered most of this in Monday's class.

The element of the story that I found difficult to parallel to any other text but the idea of Lizzie making Laura eat the fruit from her flesh. It has been considered feminist and even homoerotic. While Laura is the fallen woman that is easily swayed and becomes the victim of addiction, Lizzie personifies the light, or good, qualities of a person, manifesting the archetypes ranging from the Christlike martyr to the virgin that survives a slasher movie. They seem to be yin and yang, as portrayed by the way they sleep in each others' arms as if in the womb, meshed together as if one person. While I can see how it is a feminist text due to a woman saving another woman rather than a Prince Charming or Jesus Christ coming in to save them from their sins, I think it reflects the battling sides of a person such as the darkness that is susceptible to greed, temptation, and addiction. But on the flip side, that darkness is conquered by resistance and conviction and the light and dark must battle and feed off each other to be a whole person.

Deeper into the Goblin Market

I enjoyed reading Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, but I felt my first reading was too straightforward. I saw the poem as strictly allegorical with strong Christian themes, as it almost seems a reenactment of the scene with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. With its heavy description and deep narrative, I found it a strong allegory, but I wanted to learn about some other reading perspectives to delve deeper into the richness of the poem. When searching for other interpretations of Goblin Market, I came across a helpful article on Poetry Foundation that provided a few different readings, such as the psychoanalytic interpretations of the poem’s sexual elements and the Marxist criticism of separation of domestic and commercial spheres. If anyone is interested in reading these, you can find them embedded in this biography: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/christina-rossetti

Cry of the Children

Browning's Cry of the Children comes in an era where child labor is exponentially increasing alongside the Industrial Revoluation. Before, children would work on farms or in shops, but with technology growth, they started to work in factories instead as cheap labor. The urging for working children to "go out, children, from the mine and from the city" and play in the meadows presents the dichotmy of a society once agricultural, now industrial. Youth and life are associated with nature while the cold metal of machines are associated with death. The poem is not only drawing attention to the ghastly conditions of child labor, but also to the shift from nature to machine.

Cry of the Children draws attention to the conditions of child labor, forcing the audience to question society's role in taking away children's innocence. The poem blatantly describes the jaded and hopeless attitudes working children have toward death, God, and life. The ending lines say, "But a child's sob in the silence curses deeper/ Than the strong man in his wrath," indicating that though they are young and unwise, the pain a child endures can be more powerful than the petty vengences of a man. Children have raw emotion due to their inexperience, so they do not understand their pain as much as an adult does, but can feel it deeper than adults. Browning's poem calls for protection for the children and questions the morality of a society that uses children as another stepping stone toward power.

Social Awareness In The Cry Of The Children

After listening to the in class discussion and going into small groups about the poem The Cry Of The Children I wanted to go into more detail about the voices of the children act as a social commentary of the time.

                “But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free”.  The lead up to this is how everything is happy and how the young in the natural world are free and joyous yet the young children who are not in nature are not free and happy but are weeping instead. It seems to me that at the time that this poem was written the social view of children had begun to swing away from them being small adults and actual children. My reason for thinking this is that for Browning to be bemoaning the condition of these children infers that at least some segment of the population would be in agreement with her.

                There was one passage in particular that did show kind of a transition from being young adults into children. In the passage the children say their our fathers but feel do not know the rest. I am not sure which is more oddly cruel, the fact that they only know those two words for the prayer or the fact that they are aware that they do not have all the words necessary for their God to hear them. I think that Browning uses lines like that to paint a looking glass view into the confusion surrounding what society was to expect of and from the young adults.

The crying children.

The Cry of the Children provides an insight of the life of working children and the misery of life. These children were in fact the little adults of the Victorian period that we discussed in class. These children are in so much misery that they think "Death in life, as best to have". These children have obtained the belief that death would be more enjoyable than life because all they do is suffer and do labor. They then begin to question religion, God more specifically. They question his existence because he has not answered there prayers. These children did not get to experience a normal childhood; such as, innocence, joy,  and growing experiences. These children were thrown into a life they had no choice but to take and are miserable living it. In this selection were are shown sides that make us feel more sympathetic towards the children because we do not get to see their kid side. To experience what they have at such a young age makes a person grow up faster than they should and not enjoy life, as these children have.

Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children!

William Blake critiques the status of children through the symbolic use of animals in his collection. In Song of Innocence he often refers to children as lambs, and the poem itself describes a soft and gentle creature being “meek and mild.” This is a classic Christian symbol that is meant to invoke a sense of innocence and helplessness. However, Blake meant to make a more sinister connection with the addition of Songs of Experience. The lamb is also used in the Old Testament as a sacrifice; during Passover a Paschal Lamb was killed in order to atone for sins, basically washing away sin in blood. Blake saw children as being abused by religious leaders who supported an economic environment that allowed children to be the victim of cruel work conditions. This is most evident in “Holy Thursday” were he speaks about children being reduced to misery and poverty, most likely working instead of attending Thursday night services. These children sacrificed their innocence in order to serve a system that did not support them economically or spiritually. The companion piece to “The Lamb” is “The Tyger.” The tiger in Christianity represents martyrdom. There are many stories of Christian being thrown to lions and tigers in huge arenas for all to see. This is much like the children being thrown into a life of labor with “good Christians” as the spectators simply watching as the children get devoured by a life of poverty and hardship.

A portrait of Dealing with Death

I find that in his poem “We Are Seven” Wordsworth really does something unique with his writing and that is give a glimpse into how a poor young girl sees the world. In the conversation between the man and the young girl we learn that there are seven children total, it becomes very quickly understood that not all is as it seems. She says there are seven but two dead and four are gone away. This strikes me on a number of levels. The first is because it was not uncommon for non- aristocratic families to have large numbers of kids and depending on their social status or income may not have been able to care for all of them on their own and for Wordsworth to make a reference to this seems a bit odd. The second reason is even though her two siblings are gone she still counts them as among us as if nothing had happened. I cannot pretend to know what Wordsworth vision for the cultural sentiment towards the dead in this poem would be. Reading this made me more curious as to what his views on the place of the dead in his own society were and was this poem based on some of his own life experiences or was he taking in descriptions and looking at how certain groups viewed their deceased?

Peace That Transcends Understanding

 Wordsworth’s poem, “We Are Seven”, is a short and simple ballad that packs a heavier punch than it appears to have. I really enjoyed reading the dialogue between the man (the narrator) and the little cottage girl with thick curly hair. As I was reading, I found myself wondering why this name was interrogating the little girl about her siblings so much. He insisted upon bursting her innocence and having her accept the fact that she no longer had seven siblings, but five. He seems to get frustrated halfway through the poem when the little girl won’t abandon the idea that all of her siblings are still there. At the end of the poem, the narrator realizes that there is no changing her mind and he describes trying to sway her was a waste of his breath, saying “’twas throwing words away; for still the little maid would have her will.” The little girl’s persistence had me rooting for her. I wanted her to keep her innocence. I couldn't help but feel that the man was evil for even trying to shake this little girl’s innocent and pure faith. Why was he even talking to her in the first place? For this reason, I was very satisfied with the last line of the poem, “Nay, we are seven!” She got the last word. She won. This symbolizes that if there is a will to keep one’s innocence and pure mindset and there is a strong faith to back it, it is possible to fight off and defeat this world’s dark and cruel ideologies.

  I couldn't help but be captivated by this little girl. She describes her sister’s death by saying “In bed she moaning lay; Till God released her of her pain, and then she went away.” This is a very peaceful understanding of death, and it was surprising to me that it came from an 8 year old girl. It often takes adults many years to view death as a resting place for their loved ones rather than a dark gloomy end. She knew something about death that the man didn't. His words didn't matter to her. She had an understanding and peace the surpassed his understanding, and that was something that could not be shaken. 

Innocence vs. Experience

Through out William Blake's "Songs of Innocence", there is an uplifting sense of possibility and jovial spirit, where as in "Song's of Experience" there is tension, distress and struggle. This contrast is most clearly evident in the poems "Infant Joy" and "Infant Sorrow". In "Infant Joy", Blake writes "I have no name/ I am but two days old/ What shall I call thee?". These lines portray a certain confidence in the face of uncertainty. Blake is in no anxious distress to give this infant a name, he knows the possibilities are endless. Patiently, Blake names the infant "joy", and takes his time to bask in the sound of joy's name for 5 lines. By the end of the poem, Blake convey's innocence as a period of confidence and patience with no regard for time. In "Infant Sorrow" however, Blake begins with, "My mother groand! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt". Experience's environment is a midst groans and cries before the infant has even had a chance to leap into the world. Blake writes the infant is "Helpless, naked", suggesting no possibilities for the future and no chance of the world getting better. The infant ultimately ends up "Bound and weary", left to sulk upon his mother's breast. Blake's idea of experience seems to be associated with an uphill battle or sorts that makes one tired and jaded. Still, despite the differences in the portrayals of Innocence and Experience, there is an undeniable similarity in the brevity of the poems. Whether in a state of innocence or experience, each state is ultimately cut short.

Natural Communion

Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven” is a surprisingly innocent and sweet poem surrounding the idea of death. In it, Wordsworth tells of a little girl’s connection to her late siblings, and relates it to human connection with nature. The innocence of a child is often thought of as natural, and the child this speaker addresses is “a little cottage girl” with “a rustic, woodland air.” The child, in her youthful and wild state, is closer with the natural world. As the poem continues, the reader learns that she is also close with her siblings who “in the church-yard lie.” She refuses to reduce her number of siblings, insisting that they are seven even though two have passed away. As a poet who loved nature, Wordsworth may be suggesting that those connected closely with nature are also connected with the dead in a way that most do not understand. He allows the child to have the last word in the poem, as she again says, “Nay, we are seven!” This suggests the authority of the child’s statement, as if she knows a truth that the readers and speaker have forgotten.

The graves in this poem are not described as frightening or ominous. Instead, they are “green” and close to the home, as if the departed children never truly left. The little girl spends time with her siblings, communing with the graves as she sits in the grass and sings to them. From this perspective, death is as natural as the environment itself, and there is little to prevent the little girl from being with the dead. The poem is somewhat reassuring, perhaps suggesting that as long as humans, dead or alive, are all a part of nature, nothing can separate them.