Setting the Scene
📖 Setting the Scene
Picture Blake walking the streets of London in 1794. He is not sightseeing. In every face he passes he sees the same thing: misery. He hears it in a baby's cry, in a soldier's sigh, in a young prostitute's curse. And the streets themselves, even the River Thames, are "chartered" — bought, owned, mapped out by those in power. Blake is about to argue that this suffering is not bad luck. It is built into the system.
Blake presents London as a city where every institution of power — the monarchy, the Church, and commerce — corrupts and traps ordinary people. The poem is built as a relentless walk: a first-person speaker moves through the streets and finds the same suffering everywhere. Crucially, Blake structures the mi
Earn the mark scheme marks
🧠 Memory Aid
Remember Blake's three targets with "C-C-M": Church (black'ning, hypocrisy), Crown (soldier's blood on palace walls), Money (chartered streets and river). And the one idea that ties them: the "mind-forged manacles" — power that traps the mind, not just the body.
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 10
In Blake's poem 'London', what does the word 'chartered' most closely mean?
Tap an answer to check it