What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
‘Marks’ means the metaphorical scars left by the controlling, oppressive system which is making the Londoners vulnerable. The marks of weakness may also refer to the visible marks left by syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease, which seriously enfeebled the victims as the symptoms progressed. Furthermore, the poverty-stricken majority of the population would have had a skimpy, poor and monotonous diet which would have barely kept them alive, let alone healthy.
The simple repetition of ‘marks of weakness, marks of woe …’ lends a poignancy to the end of this stanza. Blake uses alliteration to link the despair (woe) to the futility (weakness), amplifying just how damaged the population of London was. The two phrases within the line have the same syntactic construction, a device known as syntactic parallelism; the repetition giving emphasis. Note also that “weakness” and “woe” create a semantic field of suffering.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
The streets were controlled by the rich, but the Thames was simply polluted and filthy. Blake originally used the word ‘dirty’ instead of ‘charter’d’.
In the 18th century, the Thames was one of the busiest waterways in the world, and thoroughly contaminated. Hardly anything could survive in its water but bacteria and eels. People (often prostitutes) frequently committed suicide in it, with their disease-ridden bodies rotting in it for days. And yet the River Thames has been an inspiration for a range of poetic visions. In his nuptial celebration poem written in 1596, ‘Prothalamion’, Edmund Spenser wrote:
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song…
William Wordsworth in 1802 wrote his poem in praise of London, entitled ‘Composed Upon Westminster Bridge’:
Earth has not anything to show more fair …
The river glideth at his own sweet will …
Blake rejects absolutely these romanticised visions.
NB. The River Thames has retained its romantic image despite our modern understanding of the dangers of pollution and our awareness that the cholera outbreaks in the mid-nineteenth century were caused by sewage-tainted drinking water. Yet, even as late as the 1930s Gracie Fields sang about Old Father Thames.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tm_MoyeDfE
Only in the last half of the twentieth century has the Thames achieved its present standard of cleanliness, to become the world’s cleanest river flowing through a city.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
The use of the word “chartered” has several historical meanings. Blake’s friend, activist Thomas Paine, criticized the granting of Royal Charters to control trade as a form of class oppression. So, the streets of London are not free – they are controlled by corporate entities which by extension control the people too.
“Chartered” could also mean “freighted”, and may refer to the busy or overburdened streets and river, or to the licensed trade carried on within them.
Blake originally used the word “dirty”:
I wander through each dirty street
Near where the dirty Thames does flow
To walk in the visions of Poesy Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Masque of Anarchy
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
The shock of the massacre, and the social and political implications it held for Shelley, inspired him to write this poem. It can be seen as an early call for non-violent resistance to oppression, and was often quoted by Gandhi during his campaigns for a free India.
Note that poesy is an archaic form of the noun poetry. Here it is capitalised to emphasise its symbolic role as a means of communication through effective use of language.
There came a voice from over the Sea Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Masque of Anarchy
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
The poem is a dream, but there is also a sense of prophecy, of the poet being awoken from the unreality of his life in Italy.
In 1819 Shelley, residing in Northern Italy, heard of the Peterloo Massacre , which had taken place in Manchester, England, that year.
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few. Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Masque of Anarchy
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
What is this?
The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.
To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.
A striking line, the most important in the poem perhaps, appearing exactly half-way through. The previously described trials of the oppressed population make Blake aware of the systems of control – religious, social, economic, political and monarchical – which keep the people in a state of sufferation. The compressed compound adjective ‘mind-forged’ is especially memorable, with ‘mind’ a noun modifier for ‘forged’. Note also the long vowels which make the line difficult to say — almost a tongue-twister — expressing the mental restrictions it describes.
The use of “mind-forged” is important in understanding this poem, as Blake uses it to emphasise the point that these manacles, while a direct result of religious, social, economic, and political forms of control, are also perpetuated by our own limitations. In other words, we create our own internal mental prisons.
The “mind-forged manacles” may also be a reference to Rousseau’s comment “Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains”. Rouseau was a near contemporary of Blake.
Mind forged manacles shows that the rampant classism in London at that time caused many working class members of society to ‘chain’ themselves to a narrative made by the upper classes. They underestimate themselves because of their class and therefore do not aspire to achieve, thus the ‘manacles’ that trap them in their misery are ‘forged’ (created) within their own ‘mind’.
It is missing how it related to the line above in the previous stanza about how weakness contributes to the crying of the sea of people.
‘mind forged’ suggests an incapability to break free from your own mind, feelings and experiences
192
The metaphor ‘mind-forged manacles’ shows that people’s mindset will not allow them to escape the poverty and restrictions that they face in life. They are prisoners of their own desolation.
I think that ‘mind-forged’ suggests that the Londoners aren’t physically chained up, the ‘manacles’ are created mentally by the Londoners as they feel like they are trapped within London with lacked freedom because of the government’s actions.
This line follows on from “in every ban”. Therefore this line is expressing how each “ban” and law that was placed on society constrained everyone. The manacles described are what slaves wore when working as a form of control. By creating this image of the mind, it shows that society created limits on themselves with their mind and perception of society. This is also an attack on the establishment- monarchy (George 111) as this is a very politically fuelled point he is making creating a clear social commentary.
103
Mind forged manacles also shows that the manacles are self imposed meaning that they could be manacle-less if they wanted to, but laws and rules from the powerful prevent this from happening. Also as Blake is kind of like pro revolution, he would approve of a revolution especially as he is very socially aware of what is happening in society. Also some versions have a colon after hear so that they next stanza is the sounds he hears
The “manacles” themselves would have been heavy and constantly weighed them down and so the fact that they’re emotionally constructed, suggests that society is constantly restraining themselves. whilst doing this they’re restraining their ideologies and stopping themselves from reaching a change that Blake was so passionate about heading towards.
Mind-forged also suggests that London people are suffering so much that even their mind were locked and hopeless.
-15
My uncle mark touched my place
112
Blake could be implying that other minds have created the manacles, or that people have internalized the oppression and are now effectively holding themselves hostage.
Mind-Forged Manacles shows that the people of 1800s London believed they were trapped, with a closed mindset
it could also be linked to a Christmas carol when Jacob Marley’s ghost says “the manacles I forged in life” it suggests that you can avoid this fate if you do something about it.
‘mind forg’d’ could also suggest the imprisonment of people’s minds and the prevention of thinking as individualists which is what Blake wanted to do as part of the Romantic movement.
151
‘Mind-forged manacles’ tells us that there was lack of freedom in both the mind and for the poor. The mind is trapped as they are always thinking about it, and never letting it go away. The poor people are trapped as they have to follow those in power, like the rich. William Blake is asking the reader to question those in power.
242
I would say that this is the most important line of the whole poem as it is the exact midpoint. The manacles show how the poor were chained to the bottom also by crippling debt which meant that the poor stayed poor and couldn’t move up the social hierarchy.
The modern equivalent is credit card debt.
“Manacles” are chains which hold slaves together so he says “Mind Forged” to say the people who live in London are chained up and enslaved both mentally and physically.