Earth's Answer

Question 1

Earth’s Answer Stanza 1 - 2 key techniques

Answer 1

1. ‘Her locks covered with grey despair’

• Colour imagery, grey represents lifelesness, antithesis of the image of ‘mother earth’
• Locks could mean hair, personification
• Also a pun, meaning restraints

2. ‘Earth rais’d up her head from the darkness dread and drear’

• Feminine personifcation, frailty and beauty
• Triple alliteration creates sense of power
• Semantic field of decay and lifelessness

Question 2

Earth’s Answer - 2 specific contexts

Answer 2

1. The suppression of rebellion

• After the french revolution began in 1789, rebellious spirit was restricted
• The Illegal detainment and trial of Groups such as the London corresponding society in 1793 or the suppression of writers and activists, such as Thomas paine, who was threatened in a royal statement in 1792

2. The role of women in england

• Women were suppressed by the government, such as in the 1753 marriage act or the restriction of voting rights, which would not be granted to women until 1918 over 100 years after blake wrote
• Many feminist critics have labelled Blake an ‘early feminist’, who recognised women were ‘strong and independent’
• By focussing on the feminine feature’s of the earth, Blake connects the mistreatment of the environment and women, calling for the better treatment of both

Question 3

Earth’s Answer - 2 critics

Answer 3

1. Girsang says the first stanza highlights “the absence of hope’ and ‘injustice, and incarceration,”
2. John E. Grant reads the poem as a metaphor for the oppression of women, arguing that by placing the traditonally female earth under the ‘father of all men’ is almost certainly a critique of the patriarchy.