William Blake's 'London' is a criticism of the society in which he lived and the institutions such as the church which he disagreed with.

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William Blake- ‘London’

William Blake’s ‘London’ is a criticism of the society in which he lived and the institutions such as the church which he disagreed with. Blake talks of London in the world of experience, where innocence has been corrupted by the richer upper class and the lower classes have been exploited.

In the first stanza Blake talks of ‘charter’d’ streets the ‘charter’d’ Thames which symbolise the control of the ruling classes over the poor as Blake walks amongst them, feeling their woe as they struggle to survive. This suggests a huge divide between the classes and the exploitation of the poor by the rich, the poor being ‘marked by weakness’ even though they are in the majority, ‘every face’. This could suggest the fear of a working class uprising in the mould of the French revolution and the oppression of the working classes by the church, the monarchy and the aristocratic government which denied them a voice.

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In the second stanza Blake talks of ‘the mind-forg’d manacles’ which suggest that everyone he sees is ‘chained’ to the rigid class system that dominated the society at the time. ‘In every ban’ suggests the greedy nature of the ruling classes who have taken measures to prevent the redistribution of wealth in order to retain their power in society. This could also be seen as a criticism of the industrial revolution as there was more money than ever, however a minority of aristocrats controlled the majority of wealth and merely exploited the lower classes to gain more money.

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