Editing William Blake (section)

=== "Free Love" ===
[[File:William Blake Lot and His Daughters Butlin 381.jpg|thumb|Blake's ''Lot and His Daughters'', [[Huntington Library]], c. 1800]]
Since his death, Blake has been claimed by those of various movements who apply his complex and often elusive use of symbolism and allegory to the issues that concern them.<ref>Tom Hayes, "William Blake's AndrogYnous EGO-Ideal", ''ELH'', 71(1), 141–165 (2004).</ref> In particular, Blake is sometimes considered (along with [[Mary Wollstonecraft]] and her husband [[William Godwin]]) a forerunner of the 19th-century "[[free love]]" movement, a broad reform tradition starting in the 1820s that held that marriage is slavery, and advocated the removal of all state restrictions on sexual activity such as [[homosexuality]], [[prostitution]], and [[adultery]], culminating in the [[birth control]] movement of the early 20th century. Blake scholarship was more focused on this theme in the earlier 20th century, although it is still mentioned by the Blake scholar [[Magnus Ankarsjö]] who moderately challenges this interpretation. The 19th-century "free love" movement was not particularly focused on the idea of multiple partners, but did agree with Wollstonecraft that state-sanctioned marriage was "legal prostitution" and monopolistic in character. It has somewhat more in common with early feminist movements<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~women/papers/freelove.html|title=H-Women – H-Net|website=www2.h-net.msu.edu|access-date=18 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140427105337/http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~women/papers/freelove.html|archive-date=27 April 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref> (particularly with regard to the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft, whom Blake admired).

Blake was critical of the marriage laws of his day, and generally railed against traditional Christian notions of chastity as a virtue.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-blake|title=William Blake|date=17 November 2017|website=Poetry Foundation|access-date=18 November 2017}}</ref> At a time of tremendous strain in his marriage, in part due to Catherine's apparent inability to bear children, he directly advocated bringing a second wife into the house.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hamblen |first=Emily |title=On the Minor Prophecies of William Blake |year=1995 |publisher=Kessinger Publishing |page=10}}{{cite book |last=Berger |first=Pierre |title=William Blake: Poet and Mystic |year=1915|publisher=E. P. Dutton & Company |page=45}}</ref> His poetry suggests that external demands for marital fidelity reduce love to mere duty rather than authentic affection, and decries jealousy and egotism as a motive for marriage laws. Poems such as "Why should I be bound to thee, O my lovely Myrtle-tree?" and "Earth's Answer" seem to advocate multiple sexual partners. In his poem "[[London (William Blake poem)|London]]" he speaks of "the Marriage-Hearse" plagued by "the youthful Harlot's curse", the result alternately of false Prudence and/or Harlotry. ''Visions of the Daughters of Albion'' is widely (though not universally) read as a tribute to free love since the relationship between Bromion and Oothoon is held together only by laws and not by love. For Blake, law and love are opposed, and he castigates the "frozen marriage-bed". In ''Visions'', Blake writes:

<blockquote><poem>
Till she who burns with youth, and knows no fixed lot, is bound
In spells of law to one she loathes? and must she drag the chain
Of life in weary lust? (5.21-3, E49)
</poem></blockquote>

In the 19th century, poet and free love advocate [[Algernon Charles Swinburne]] wrote a book on Blake drawing attention to the above motifs in which Blake praises "sacred natural love" that is not bound by another's possessive jealousy, the latter characterised by Blake as a "creeping skeleton".<ref>Swinburne p. 260</ref> Swinburne notes how Blake's ''Marriage of Heaven and Hell'' condemns the hypocrisy of the "pale religious letchery" of advocates of traditional norms.<ref>Swinburne, p. 249.</ref> Another 19th-century free love advocate, [[Edward Carpenter]] (1844–1929), was influenced by Blake's mystical emphasis on energy free from external restrictions.<ref>Sheila Rowbotham's ''Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love'', p. 135.</ref>

In the early 20th century, Pierre Berger described how Blake's views echo Mary Wollstonecraft's celebration of joyful authentic love rather than love born of duty,<ref>Berger pp. 188–190</ref> the former being the true measure of purity.<ref>Berger sees Blake's views as most embodied in the ''Introduction'' to the collected version of ''Songs of Innocence and Experience''.</ref> Irene Langridge notes that "in Blake's mysterious and unorthodox creed the doctrine of free love was something Blake wanted for the edification of 'the soul'."<ref>''William Blake: a study of his life and art work'', by Irene Langridge, pp. 11, 131.</ref> Michael Davis' 1977 book ''William Blake a New Kind of Man'' suggests that Blake thought jealousy separates man from the divine unity, condemning him to a frozen death.<ref>Davis, p. 55.</ref>

As a theological writer, Blake has a sense of human "[[Fall of man|fallenness]]". S. Foster Damon noted that for Blake the major impediments to a free love society were corrupt human nature, not merely the intolerance of society and the jealousy of men, but the inauthentic hypocritical nature of human communication.<ref>S. Foster Damon ''William Blake: His Philosophy and Symbols'' (1924), p. 105.</ref> Thomas Wright's 1928 book ''Life of William Blake'' (entirely devoted to Blake's doctrine of free love) notes that Blake thinks marriage should ''in practice'' afford the joy of love, but notes that in reality it often does not,<ref>Wright, p. 57.</ref> as a couple's knowledge of being chained often diminishes their joy. Pierre Berger also analyses Blake's early mythological poems such as ''Ahania'' as declaring marriage laws to be a consequence of the fallenness of humanity, as these are born from pride and jealousy.<ref>Berger, p. 142.</ref>

Some scholars have noted that Blake's views on "free love" are both qualified and may have undergone shifts and modifications in his late years. Some poems from this period warn of dangers of predatory sexuality such as ''The Sick Rose''. Magnus Ankarsjö notes that while the hero of ''Visions of the Daughters of Albion'' is a strong advocate of free love, by the end of the poem she has become more circumspect as her awareness of the dark side of sexuality has grown, crying "Can this be love which drinks another as a sponge drinks water?"<ref>Quoted by Ankarsjö on p. 68 of ''Bring Me My Arrows of Desire'' and again in his ''William Blake and Gender''</ref> Ankarsjö also notes that a major inspiration to Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft, similarly developed more circumspect views of sexual freedom late in life. In light of Blake's aforementioned sense of human 'fallenness' Ankarsjö thinks Blake does ''not'' fully approve of sensual indulgence merely in defiance of law as exemplified by the female character of Leutha,<ref>''William Blake and gender'' (2006) by Magnus Ankarsjö, p. 129.</ref> since in the fallen world of experience all love is enchained.<ref>Ankarsjö, p. 64</ref> Ankarsjö records Blake as having supported a commune with some sharing of partners, though David Worrall read ''The Book of Thel'' as a rejection of the proposal to take concubines espoused by some members of the Swedenborgian church.<ref>David Worrall, "Thel in Africa: William Blake and the Post-colonial, Post-Swedenborgian Female Subject", in ''The Reception of Blake in the Orient'', eds. Steve Clark and Masashi Suzuki. London: Continuum, 2006, pp. 17–29.</ref>

Blake's later writings show a renewed interest in [[Christianity]], and although he radically reinterprets Christian morality in a way that embraces sensual pleasure, there is little of the emphasis on sexual libertarianism found in several of his early poems, and there is advocacy of "self-denial", though such abnegation must be inspired by love rather than through authoritarian compulsion.<ref>See intro to Chapter 4 of Jerusalem.</ref> Berger (more so than Swinburne) is especially sensitive to a shift in sensibility between the early Blake and the later Blake. Berger believes the young Blake placed too much emphasis on following impulses,<ref>Berger, pp. 112, 284</ref> and that the older Blake had a better formed ideal of a true love that sacrifices self. Some celebration of mystical sensuality remains in the late poems (most notably in Blake's denial of the virginity of Jesus's mother). However, the late poems also place a greater emphasis on forgiveness, redemption, and emotional authenticity as a foundation for relationships.