Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Semester of Degree Completion

1994

Thesis Director

Michael Loudon

Abstract

My thesis focuses on William Blake's challenge of the conventional Christianity of his time and his questioning of what he perceived as the hypocritical moral codes of the Church of England. Blake blames these codes for dominating and imprisoning humanity by preventing individuals from acting through their use of the imagination. For Blake, the imagination does not simply imply a creation of the imaginative faculty; instead, it refers to an imagination that is transforming and that becomes a measure of salvation and deliverance from the man-made codes that imprison humanity. These codes, while originating from and propagated by the Church of England, were also the social codes, generally accepted as the conventional morality of "common sense," the codes of "prudence."

Blake's observation that both sexes were oppressed by the strict moral codes of the Church appears evident in The Visions of the Daughters of Albion, one of his "shorter prophecies." When the virgin Oothoon chooses to enter the world of experience, she is raped by Bromion, the character who represents the enforcer of the codes. Oothoon fights the codes when she attempts to liberate herself by using the imagination and by creating a new perception of reality for herself. She also tries to liberate her lover, Theotormon, but he refuses to rebel against the Church's moral codes. His refusal to use his imagination to free himself causes Oothoon to remain an emotional slave to the codes of the Church and to remain a victim of her rapist's violence. Oothoon, however, achieves a limited liberation despite Theotormon's failure to liberate himself.

In The Book of Thel, Blake presents the virgin Thel, who, unlike Oothoon, retreats from life and experience and chooses to remain in her world of innocence. Thel initially desires to enter the world of experience and embarks on a quest for the meaning of her existence. During the quest, her brief encounter with experience and her fear of death teach her that she cannot cope with the realities and consequences of existing in the adult world. Death is Thel's ultimate source of anxiety that evokes her sexual repression. By seeing sex as the onset of death instead of the liberation of the imagination of which Blake writes, Thel fails to find freedom and to achieve unity of both mind and body. Blake's implication that Thel struggles with moral rejection and with the social and moral fear of having lost her virginity reflects his idea that the man-made moral codes inhibit humanity in the use of the imagination that, according to Blake, offers true salvation to mankind.

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