The Importance of the Central Female Charater in William Blake's Nurse's Song

In his poem “Nurse’s Song,” which can be found both in Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence, William Blake uses a central female character to make a significant political and social point. These poems are different versions of the story of a nurse. In Songs of Innocence, that nurse is seen in one way, and the poem continues in Songs of Experience to show a significant change in the nurse. She begins as one who is wide-eyed and trusting of the world, but by the end, she has come to be quite jaded. In some respects, she has become tired and beaten down by the world. By using this character, Blake makes a statement about the difficulty of the movement for female rights. He argues through her changes that in the process of fighting for an independent life, women are often afflicted by the forces of the world, which is mostly against them.

Readers are first introduced to the nurse in Songs of Innocence. The author writes a story in which the nurse looks out at children, and she is completely at peace. The name of the poetry collection implies that perhaps the children are innocent, but a closer reading might also reveal that the nurse is quite innocent in her own right. She looks out on the children with a sort 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 green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still” (Blake). She sees the world as a place full of laughing, smiles, and innocent voices. More than that, the author uses her feelings to communicate something about the beginning of a revolution. Revolutions, it seems, are things that start out with a tremendous amount of e...

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...om the reading. It is meant to show that when a person puts his or her all into a revolution, it is like passing a point of no return. There is often no opportunity to go back to the old way of thinking.

William Blake’s poem “Nurse’s Song” is broken into two parts, and by looking at those two parts, one can learn something significant about Blake’s social and political points. Blake views revolution as something that can change the world, but more than that, change the person who is going through the revolution. The nurse in this poem is different from one part to the next, as she looks at the world with a child-like innocence in the first poem and a grizzled hardness in the second poem. Being involved in a revolution can make a person tired and cause a person to look at the world through a new pair of eyes. The author’s poems make that very clear.