TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > English > Blake - Sexual Relationships
A Little Girl Lost
- ’love! True love! Was thoughts crime’- Blake talks to the audience as if recalling a past time when free love was not allowed, instead it was suppressed by the ‘holy book’.
- ‘free from winters cold’- Blake explains of how the couple are free from all restrictions and bounds at this moment, they are ‘Lost’ from society and allowed to express their true emotions.
- ’strangers come not near’- This could be showing the secrecy of the couples antics but also show how society disapproved of this love, they turned their back on it’.
- ‘his loving look/ Like the holy book’- In this ironic image Blake expresses how society and religion was anything but ‘loving’ towards people that expressed this ‘free love’ which Blake believed in.
- ‘her limbs with terror shook’- the girl is terrified of her father’s reaction to her sinning, he is ‘pale and weak’ and has disobeyed him, she is afraid of any punishment.
The Little Girl Lost
- ’Do mother and father weep?’- Lyca is free from the restraints of society and her family, she is ‘lost’ from it and is therefore allowed to experiment and explore with nature.
- ’tigers, lions play’- this image could be representing sexual games and joys of both Lyca and the nature as they express their own desires and joy.
- ‘naked they conveyed /To caves the sleeping maid’ This suggests a sexual act between both Lyca and nature, But could also symbolise a loving and paternal relationship between the child and nature as they sense her innocence.
‘London’
- ‘the youth harlot’s curse/ Blasts the newborn infants tear’- Here Blake takes on a more negative view of sexual desire, here he refers to a prostitute as something corrupted by society.
- ‘and blights with plague the marriage hearse’- Here the juxtaposition with the two words ‘marriage hearse’ imply that the marriage will be a disaster, the pair will both inevitably die as a result of venereal disease. *Here Blake introduces that this ‘free-love’ can become corrupt when it is exploited and used away from nature.
Comments
These notes are aimed at A Level English Literature students at A2 level.
Originally written by Ostentatious on TSR Forums.
