William Blake

From William Blake’s “Chimney Sweeper”:

And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark

And got with our bags and our brushes to work

Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm

So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm

In the wake of the French Revolution in the late 1700s, a political subtext can be seen in many of the literary works of that time. Such is evident in William Blake’s poem “Chimney Sweeper”, which depicts the lives of children workers. Written in 1789, Blake’s poem was in direct response of the denial to pass the previous year’s Porter’s Act regulating child labor. The poem portrays a little boy’s (Tom Dacre) grief of being covered in soot on a daily basis. However, as seen in the closing passage above, Tom is still able to start his day optimistic that hard work will be rewarded. Like many of Blake’s poems, “Chimney Sweeper” not only sheds light on a social injustice, but it also offers religious solace to children in dire situations and allows them to have inner peace.

Because of the harmful conditions the chimneysweepers endured, many of them died at a young age. The passage above is preceded by a dream that Tom has about his fate: “thousands of sweepers / …locked up in coffins of black”(11-12). This imagery not only paints a bleak picture, but it also provides some insight to the mindset of Tom and other sweepers who had to shave their heads to prevent the soot from ruining them. As the poem progresses, it seems as though death may be inevitable for Tom. However, he finds comfort in his spiritual dreams of an “Angel who had a bright key, / …and set them all free”(13-14). Blake provides a light at the end of the tunnel by having Tom see beyond his woes and towards a more heavenly solution.

Further on in the poem, the “Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy; / He’d have God for his father and never want joy”(19-20). This assurance in a higher power explains Tom’s demeanor in the closing passage. The morning may be cold and the work taxing, but Tom carries on “happy and warm”. Blake suggests that if Tom is “dutiful” (meaning obedient and submissive to God’s will), he will never have a reason to weep. Blake’s take on the abuse of chimneysweepers and other social injustices is that the suffering can be eased by their strong spiritual beliefs.

As Duncan Wu describes in his introduction, “for Blake, the plight of women and slaves was the result of the failure to comprehend fully what the eye sees” (172). In Blake’s mind, this