Doc Yoder's Notes
Visions of the Daughters of Albion by William Blake (1793)
Direct Link to this work in Blake Archive
Sex in VDA
- Rape 1:16
- Marriage (loveless) 5:20-32
- Prostitution; Catching and branding "virgin joy" (6:10-12)
- Masturbation (Female & Male) 7:3-11
- Voyeurism (spectral) 7:21-22
- Voyeurism (positive) 8:28
- Group sex 8:23-29
There is a developing hierarchy of sexual practice:
- Group sex and (positive) voyeurism rank high because they demonstrate a lack of jealousy
- Loveless marital sex, masturbation, prostitution, and lechery (spectral voyeurism) rank near
the bottom as oppressive, repressive, and hypocritical
- Rape has an ambiguous status: in Visions it is almost meaningless; it is essentially non-sexual
-- though perhaps homosocial -- and has no necessary negative consequences; much as today,
rape is viewed in Visions as an act of violence and domination, not necessarily an act of
sex, and the act does not taint the victim, but rather marks the villainy of the rapist. Nevertheless,
the act of rape is comparable to prostitution and especially loveless marriage, and is complicit in
general with the structures of sexual oppression
Visions (structure)
Pl. iii: the argument
1:1-5: narrative
1:6-13: Oothoon's exchange w/ the Marygold
1:14-17: Narrative -- The Rape (1:16)
1:18-2:2: Bromion's speech, extending slavery to America, and claiming Oothoon's pregnancy
2:3-13: Narrative -- Bromion and Oothoon are chained back to back (2:5)
2:14-16: Oothoon calls the eagle to prey on her flesh
2:17-20: Narrative -- Theotormon smiles at this rending of her flesh
2:21-3:20: Oothoon: she compares Theotormon's lack of compassion to the
sun that rises late, leaving her
still in the dark, seeing only a "bright shadow" instead of a rising sun; the idea of being
left in the dark, of limited vision, leads into a critique of the senses -- all animals have
senses, but they are not all alike, so there must be something more; the critique of the
senses becomes a critique of the body, which may shed
3:21-4:11: Theotormon: responds w/ materialism: "Tell me what is a thought? & of what
substance is it made?"
4:12-24: Bromion: raises questions about the extent of knowledge and the
possibility of knowing the
unknown; ends w/ rhetorical questions that assert the existence of "one law," "eternal fire," and "eternal chains"
5:25-8:10: Oothoon's long oration:
- begins with address to Urizen (going over Bromion's head to his boss), then moves to refute
the "one law" doctrine by showing that different people have different "delights" ("How different
their eye and ear! how different the world to them!" 5:16);
- the extension of power over others (the parson's claiming the work of the farmer) is seen
as comparable to a loveless marriage in which the wife is a slave/prostitute forced to "turn the
wheel of false desire" (5:17-32)
- return to animal imagery to argue for the individuality of delights (5:34-6:3)
- the catching and binding of Innocence and "virgin joy" is equivalent to slavery and prostitution,
but is done in the name of "modesty" and religion; if this hypocrite modesty is
what Theortormon seeks, "Then is Oothoon a whore indeed" (6:4-20)
- Oothoon denies being the "crafty slave," and says instead she is "open to joy and delight,"
and her eyes "copulate" with the rising sun, in a "free born joy"; this "moment of desire"
will be satisfied, if not in free-born joy then in the secret chambers of masturbation, the
"rewards of continence? / The self-enjoyings of self-denial" (6:21-7:11)
- returns to her address to Urizen, "Father of Jealousy," and
questions the nature of love, claiming that
"happy happy Love" is "free as the mountain wind," not the "self-love that envies all! a creeping skeleton /
With lamplike eyes watching around the frozen marriage bed" (7:12-22)
- Oothoon offers her own alternative vision of free love in which she will without jealousy
catch girls for Theotormon and then watch them copulate -- note that her alternative makes use
of the strategies of capture and voyeurism, but now serving a positive, non-jealous
role (7:23-29)
- sort of peroration -- compares jealousy to a miser who substitutes gold for sunshine in his
limited vision on the "secret floor" where he counts his gold; the miser does not see that the sun
blots out the "king of night"; so "Arise and take your bliss, for everything that lives
is holy!"
8:11-13: Narrative: this lament and Theotormon's denial happens every morning
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