William Blake and the social construct of female metaphors

Throughout his life\u27s work, William Blake used male and female metaphors to project the problems of society and culture as well as to project his personal conflicts, attitudes, and observations of human dynamics; the resulting interaction depicted in his myth demonstrates an uncommon sensitivity to gender issues far in advance of Blake\u27s own time. Despite Blake\u27s progressive effort to rectify inadequate and dehumanizing systems that disproportionately limit the female\u27s role in the divine humanity, Blake\u27s difficulty in transcending his own gender identity to a consciousness free of sexism is evident throughout his myth, particularly in the ambivalent functions he assigns to female metaphors.Blake\u27s resemblance to the system he destroys becomes increasingly clear as readers puzzle through the shifting, sometimes conflicting, messages suggested in the poetics. Nevertheless, Blake\u27s seeming ambivalence serves his work well. The dialectic of genders in opposition inherent in Blake\u27s myth pulls and pushes at reader consciousness and the strongest bonds of self-identity emanating from gender. The result is that our personal experience as readers, like Blake\u27s personal experience as artist, becomes the political definition of the text which is irrevocably tied to gender.The provocative value of Blake\u27s work increases options for contemporary readers to understand Blake\u27s myth as personally relevant. Reader response criticism and feminist constructs of criticism ensure that Blake\u27s focus on gender will be integral to meaningful deliberation about fused art and life for reader and artist. Thus Blake\u27s myth, not always satisfyingly clear and at times contradictory, provides a catalyst to change the personal-political interpretations of critical readers and the aesthetic paradigms of the world at large. Blake\u27s exploration of gender issues, founded on his desire for corrective action, transcends his ambivalence by pointing to it. Thus he makes a striking connection with readers in his poetic successes and his holistic failures