Infant Sorrow Flashcards
“My mother groaned, my father wept”
The mother groans from the pains of childbirth and the father weeps at the thought of the hardship the child will endure. Those living in poverty at the time would have dreaded yet another child to feed. This baby may not have been welcome. Moreover, the parents were probably aware of how little they could do for it to better its life.
The point of view is, unusually, that of the baby, a preternaturally aware creature. This gives the poem more power, in that it suggests that there is not even a period in early childhood when the baby will be unaware of its surroundings and protected from sorrow.
During the Industrial Revolution at a time when poverty was rampant, having another mouth to feed would have certainly been a hardship for two parents. In addition, I can only suspect that the infant mortality rate was quite high, which would add another level of sorrow for a child.
The man and the woman are Adam and Eve, and the infant is their first-born son, Cain. Being the first human born into the world according to Judeo-Christian belief, he would have been born into a world infinitely more dangerous than Eden. Cain would ultimately murder his brother, Abel, and spend the rest of his days in sorrow. It is also worth noting that Adam and Eve are depicted as weeping and mourning the death of Abel, so the imagery of the groaning mother and weeping father can be tied into this interpretation.
“Into the dangerous world I leapt”
There is no compromising; disease, starvation and squalor were what made up the lives of the majority of the population.
Note that the child ‘leapt’, though not for joy. It suggests awareness and agency from the moment of birth.
“Struggling in my father’s hand/Striving against my swaddling bands”
‘Struggling’ and ‘striving’ are consonantly rhymed and placed at the beginning of the lines to give emphasis. The infant seems to be resisting care. Perhaps these parents were inexperienced or uncaring.
Note that the alliterative ’s’s may suggest the baby’s hissing anger.
NB Swaddling bands were bands of linen used to wrap babies. This gives them a sense of security and prevents crying. In many parts of the world babies are swaddled today
“Bound and weary”
The infant is ‘bound’ by the swaddling bands, but this is negative, and suggests imprisonment — probably by poverty from which he or she can never escape.
The adjective ‘weary’ is usually applied to adults weighed down by unhappiness or responsibility. This baby is old before its time
By including “Infant Sorrow” in Songs of Experience, I think that Blake is making a very poignant statement. The infant itself has no worldly experience; therefore this poem can hardly be considered a song of “experience.” What does this say about human nature? Can it be assumed that infants are truly the only joyous humans because of their lack of knowledge and corruption, as Songs of Innocence would have you believe? “Infant Sorrow” paints a much darker picture of humanity, beginning as early as birth. The baby’s unhappiness seems to imply that sorrow is an inherent human trait, and that it is not experience that corrupts human nature, but the very natures that we are born with. This problematises our reading of “Infant Joy”—is the baby actually happy, or is it a fleeting joy that will soon be lost to a life of sorrow? And is there anything that can preserve that joy, or is humanity destined for sorrow, regardless of experience?
Here Blake uses it as an image of parental oppression, against which any self-respecting individual would struggle. However, the child remains bound, as well as metaphorically confined by the strictures of its parents and society’s expectations.
Link to Infant Joy
Whilst the poems ‘Infant Joy’ and ‘Infant Sorrow’ are companionable, both poems, although they share the same context, are surprisingly contrasting. The title of the poems for example, immediately highlights the differing contexts; the word ‘Joy’ is juxtaposing to the word ‘Sorrow’ thus portraying Blake’s conflicting ideas to the reader. ‘Infant Joy’ as the title suggests, focuses on the joyous gift of a new born baby; Blake expresses his belief on how the strongest feelings, of ‘Joy’ in this case, are often the least complicated and most precious emotions. Blake explores the relationship between mother and baby, the mother pretends to have an imaginary conversation with her new-born child. ‘I happy am,/Joy is my name’. Through this powerful conversation between two connected minds, the mother names her baby Joy. The physical and emotional bond between a mother and her child is one so powerful and Blake studies this joining of life. ‘Sweet joy befall thee!’ The repetition of this phrase emphasises the love and care a mother has for her child – even whilst in the womb, the gift of life is joyful. Blake very much believed in the idea of loving God, hence why the poem concentrates on the happiness, love and magic of new life entering the world. These religious connotations are skilfully embedded and weaved between the lines of all of his poems – religion had a great influence over his writing.
In comparison to the blissful imagery created in the poem ‘Infant Joy’, ‘Infant Sorrow’ views the same situation from the perspective of a baby rather than the mother of a child and therefore, the poem bares a more sorrowful tone. William Blake captures the pain of childbirth, however this time, from the infant’s viewpoint. In contrast to the joy experienced by a mother in ‘Infant Joy’, the child in this poem finds itself ‘Helpless, naked’. The adjective ‘helpless’ reveals how the baby feels scared as it is no longer protected by the womb of its mother – this safety and security has ironically disappeared through the ‘joy’ of being born into the world. ‘Sorrow’ is not an emotion commonly associated with an infant; it is a very complex emotion, a mature emotion, contrasting to the simplicity of the emotion ‘joy’ portrayed in its partner poem. Once more, Blake questions life and the power that we have over it; he implies that, from birth, we do not have power over everything – we are unable to control everything we do. God does. Furthermore, both of these brief poems reveal William Blake’s inner thoughts regarding life and creation; by investigating birth from two different viewpoints Blake cleverly exposes the powerful differences between the emotions experienced by the two human beings that are, ironically, so closely related.
“fiend hid in a cloud”
In the first stanza, the baby is described as “a fiend hid in a cloud.” And in the second stanza, we have images of bondage and struggling against the father. This leads me to wonder if the infant in this poem is a symbol for Lucifer, an angel who struggled against god, was cast down into this “dangerous world,” and is ultimately bound here. If one considers Lucifer to be another manifestation of the Prometheus myth, then the images of bondage definitely work to support this idea.
Symbol of a child
Infant Sorrow depends upon the reader’s ideas about children. In Blake’s time, new-born children could be seen as images of innocence, as in Infant Joy and in Cradle song. In the New Testament, Jesus says that the kingdom of God belongs to those who become like little children in their innocence and humility. Some Christians believed that children arrived fresh from God and thus retain their memory of him, an idea popular with the Romantics. Children, therefore, reflect the creativity and goodness of God. Followers of Rousseau would see a baby as naturally good and with an innate capacity to learn and grow, which society’s demands crush and distort. (See Social / political background > The spirit of rebellion – politics.)
Other Christians in Blake’s day believed that children came into the world as inheritors of original sin, so were ‘bad’ until they had accepted personal salvation.
In this poem, the baby is seen as being filled with energy and instinctual life which can appear negative and destructive. However, according to Blake, these are positive attributes, so when he uses the term ‘fiend’, it is not with its usual negative connotations.
Structure
- mostly iambic
- rhyming couplets ‘wept/ leapt’ ‘hands/bands’ give liveliness to the actual content
- enjambment in the final two lines could imitate the ongoingness of struggle which the baby will experience
