SOURCE: Pagliaro, Harold. “Into the Dangerous World.” In Selfhood and Redemption in Blake's Songs, pp. 35-51. University Park, Penn.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987.

In the following excerpt, Pagliaro examines images of order and confinement in the Songs, particularly in regard to the power and control parents and other authority figures exercise over children.

If life has no ordering principle, it cannot be sustained, but if the ordering principle is made to fix things too rigidly, life may be contracted to the very limits of individual self.¹ To generalize the matter in the terms of the first two chapters, one might say that the formation of a Selfhood is the fulfillment of the ordering principle without which life cannot be sustained. The Chimney Sweeper of Innocence manages to control dangerous forces very efficiently, at least for the short term, whereas Lilly and Thel, each for different reasons and...