In “The Angel,” William Blake tells
of a dream in which the speaker imagines herself as a “maiden Queen” (2) who is
visited and taken care of by an angel.
The poem deals with ideas of femininity, sadness, love, youth and beauty
all within the context of a dream.
In the
speaker’s dream, she becomes a “maiden Queen,” so she is a young, unmarried
woman of high power and standing. She is
tended to by an angel, who is male. The
angel leaves and the maiden Queen is left to her own devices to take care of
herself; “I dried my tears, and armed my fears/With ten-thousand shields and
spears” (11-12). When the angel finally
comes back, the maiden Queen is old.
She asks in the beginning; “What
can it mean?” (1) implying that she has just woken up and is discovering and
writing the dream as we are reading it. This
question also seems like an open invitation for the reader to draw meaning from
the dream. I would like to look at it as
if it is an anxiety dream for the speaker. In her subconscious state, she fears
for her loss of youth and attraction to men like the angel. This is a fair representation of the role of
women during this time, who were so dependent on men and ultimately their youth
and beauty. It also fits with the idea
of the sentimental woman who is thought to be fainting and crying “night and
day” (5). Even though the speaker has
armed and protected herself, she still acknowledges that “the time of youth was
fled” (15) and that her life as a beautiful maiden queen is over, taking
certain privileges with it. The angel
has come “in vain” (13) as there is nothing he can or would like to do for an
old, grey woman. Still, it is unclear
whether the speaker is old or young, or even a woman, as nothing is told
separate from the dream. Could the last
stanza actually be the speaker waking up from a dream where she was young again,
depressed to find herself as old as when she went to sleep? Or does it matter? Either way, the dream seems to be a metaphor
for life, which Blake implies is as fleeting as the dream itself.
The angel is a metaphor for youth,
as he flees from the woman much as youth does.
This is shown in the parallels between stanzas 3 and 4. In stanza 3, the “Angel took his wings and
fled/Then the morn blushed rosy red” (9-10).
The poem is rhymed in couplets up until the last two lines of the 4th
stanza, which picks up the rhyme from the first two lines of the 3rd
stanza; “For the time of youth was fled/And grey hairs were on my head”
(15-16). Both the angel and youth have
fled her, with the next lines describing color that implies a certain age. “The morn blushed rosy red” describes the
sunrise, or beginning of life, while the grey hairs describe old age, or the
end of life. So, Blake shows the two
ends of the spectrum of life without much in between.
This poem could also be read as a
form of a “fall from Eden,” as the separation between angel and maiden Queen
allows the Queen to become independent and self-aware. In the beginning Blake presents a sort of
paradise where “Witless woe was ne’er beguiled” (4) and where only the “maiden
Queen” and “Angel mild” seem to exist.
Although she relies heavily on the angel who “wipe[s] [her] tears away”
(6) she is able to protect herself once he leaves, growing into adulthood and
finally old age. This poem is also in
the “Songs of Experience” rather than “of Innocence,” implying a certain loss
of innocence for the gain of experience in the woman’s mind.
^^Old woman or young woman?!!?!?!? what do you see^^
Comment below and say how it relates to the poem
Photo: grand-illusions.com
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