Female Image In W. Blake's Poetry

William Blake, (1757-1827) is "a famous English poet and engraver, one of the leading poets of the pre-romantic period, and also the most mysterious poet in all English literature history". (Sun Xizhen 160) Blake's poetry is full of imagination and visions. Yet the famous poet remained unknown during his life. Not until some fifty years after his death did people realize the importance and magnificence of his poetry, therefore, he was bestowed the name "as one of the greatest English poets. Blake's short poems are neat and clear in form, but profound and sharp in meaning; his long poems can be the invention of himself, in both meaning and form". (Wang Zuoliang 66)Blake lived in the tumult-changing period in England. He witnessed the rising and failure of the French Revolution, the American War of Independence against England, the beginning and developing of the Industrial Revolution, as well as the raising of the Women's Liberation Movement. The changing society brought about changing thoughts. Blake lived in self-contradiction and poverty all his life. The sharp contrast between imagination and harsh reality becomes one of the important motifs of his poetry, and women's problem, unavoidably, becomes one important part of his concern in his poetry. Blake constructed his own mythology system and philosophy system in his later poetry. The struggles among the Zoas, between the sexes and the conflict between body and spirit embody the conflicts in human world. In the description of the conflicts, Blake constructed the female image in the full form. Living in the man-dominated society, women struggle to find themselves in the shadow of men, and to get their rights. Woman changed from the "shadowy woman" to the woman in reality, from voiceless female animal to human being with their voice in the world, from mere sexual objects to women with their thoughts and rights, from the reproducer to social builder in their struggle...