Topic > The importance of the central female character in...

In his poem "Nurse's Song", which can be found in both Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence, William Blake uses a central female character to create meaning significant political and social point. These poems are different versions of a nurse's story. In Songs of Innocence, that nurse is seen one way, and the poem continues in Songs of Experience to show a significant change in the nurse. She starts out as a wide-eyed and trusting person in the world, but by the end she has become quite jaded. In some respects, she has become world-weary and dejected. By using this character, Blake makes a statement about the difficulty of the women's rights movement. Through her changes, she argues that in the process of struggling for an independent life, women are often afflicted by the forces of the world, which are mostly against them. Readers are first introduced to the nurse in Songs of Innocence. The author writes a story where the nurse looks at the children and is completely at peace. The name of the collection of poems implies that perhaps the children are innocent, but a closer reading might also reveal that the nurse is entirely innocent in her own right. He looks at children with a kind of childlike exuberance, recognizing the world as a place full of possibility. Of this, Blake wrote, "When the voices of children are heard on the meadow, and laughter is heard on the hill, my heart rests in my chest, and all else is still" (Blake). He sees the world as a place full of laughter, smiles and innocent voices. Furthermore, the author uses her feelings to communicate something about the beginning of a revolution. Revolutions, it seems, are things that begin with a huge amount of… half the paper… from reading. He wants to demonstrate that when a person puts all of himself into a revolution, it is like passing a point of no return. Often there is no possibility of returning to the old way of thinking. William Blake's poem “The Nurse's Song” is divided into two parts, and by looking at these two parts, one can learn something significant about Blake's social and political points. Blake sees revolution as something that can change the world, but more importantly, change the person going through the revolution. The nurse in this poem is different from one side to the other, as she looks at the world with a childlike innocence in the first poem and with a grizzled hardness in the second poem. Being involved in a revolution can tire a person and push them to look at the world through a new pair of eyes. The author's poems make this very clear.