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Child Exploitation in Songs of Innocence and Experience
Child Exploitation:
Child exploitation is rife amongst songs of innocence and experience, with Blake employing the use of vulnerable, innocent children to suffer at the hands of the institutions, aligning the audience with his own personal views. Being that the institutions cause suffering, and should be abolished.
SOI: Holy Thursday
These flowers of London Town seated in companies they sit
image of pure nature surrounds the children, as well as war imagery
Seated in companies like soldiers, setting/situation is corrupt one. Church has come a place of authority making the poor orphaned d children expendable, like soldiers
SOI: The Chimney-Sweeper
And my father sold me while yet my tongue could scarcely cry, weep weep weep weep.
bird chirping
Birds tend to symbolise freedom, ironic as child was sold and has never got to be free. Corruption of innocence and child exploitation
SOE: Holy Thursday
In a rich and fruitful land: Babes reduced to misery, fed with cold and userous hand?
economic reference to Britain
Why can they afford to feed the children for this religious holiday, exploiting them for positive publicity, but they starve and are miserable every other day of the year.
SOE: The Chimney-Sweeper
A little black thing among the snow
child blackened
Normally innocent child, (white symbolises purity and innocence) is blackened through child-labour, forced on them by the exploitative institutions. Dehumanised and nothing more than a slave.
SOE: London
How the chimney-sweeper’s cry
child exploitation of chimney-sweepers
Linked to the church failing the vulnerable
