B L A K E ’S C RI TI QUE O F E R A SMUS

D A R W I N’S BOTANIC GARDEN

ya-feng wu, National Taiwan University

Erasmus Darwin’s Botanic Garden (1791),1 with its two parts, The Economy
of Vegetation and The Loves of the Plants, explains the sexual life of plants
by analogy to human relations and thus envisions the world as an intricate
network between sentient life and nonliving things. Darwin explicates and
vindicates Linnaeus’s taxonomy, which is centered on the sexuality of
plants, and furthermore he gives a more active role to the female part of
the plants to characterize their specific mode of procreation. Darwin’s all-
encompassing view of the world incorporating natural science and human
civilization inspires an outlook of progress but also triggers concerns about
individual trepidations. Blake understands Darwin’s emphasis on female
sexuality as essential to the progress of both nature and society, but he is
more concerned with the possible implications of Darwin’s botanic econ-
omy on individual human beings. In The Book of Thel (1789) and the Vi-
sions of the Daughters of Albion (1793),2 Blake focuses on the “use” and
“joy” as two of the governing ideas of Darwin’s system and calls attention
to the affective consequences wrought by this cosmology especially on
women. Their shock and grief inhibit them from obtaining true self-
knowledge and freeze them either in the act of “shriek[ing]” (Thel, 6.21;
E 6), or in the stasis of “lamentation” (Visions, 3.1, E 47; 4.12, E 48; 5.1,
E 48). Thel refuses to take her fate as implicated in the natural cycle of
nourishment and degeneration by recoiling from further involvement
with the world. Oothoon, though able to raise questions about the obliter-
ation of “different joys” (5.5; E 48), insists on her purity in reflecting

The Wordsworth Circle (Winter 2019) © 2019 The University of Chicago.

0043-8006/2019/5001-0004$10.00 All rights reserved. DOI:10.1086/702583
56 the wordsworth circle | v50/n1 2019

Theotormon’s “image pure” (3.16; E 47), rather than in her own value.
Their stunted development results from self-delusion: neither Thel’s re-
treat back to her vales nor Oothoon’s collusion with men can make them
truly useful or bring real joy. Delusion also afflicts men. Theotormon con-
demns Oothoon and Bromion as the “adulterate pair” (2.4; E 46) and ties
himself with them in a deadlock. With these deluded characters, Blake dis-
rupts the analogy of nature and society that is the backbone of Darwin’s
cosmology and reveals both men and women to be victims of what Kevin
Hutchings calls the “masculinist instrumentalism” that is disguised within
the notion of “natural economy” (25). This essay brings Blake and Darwin
into a dialectical relationship and seeks to illustrate the way in which Blake
pries open Darwin’s botanic economy in order to expose the patriarchal
preoccupations that underlie its stringent requirements on women.
In Thel, Blake casts Thel as a virgin who is skeptical about her “use”
(3.22; E 5) and her “place” (2.12; E 4). Eventually, she takes flight from
the system, which is modeled on a cyclic view of nature. Moreover, in
the Visions, Blake has Oothoon grow into an adult version of Thel, carry-
ing out Thel’s desire only to be subdued by Bromion’s rape and Theo-
tormon’s scorn. Oothoon initially sets out to seek “vigorous joys of morn-
ing light” (6.6; E 49). But Theotormon’s doctrine of “hypocrite modesty”
instructs her to “capture virgin joy” “[i]n silence” (6.11, 13; E 49). In the end,
she could only “wail”: “sing your infant joy!” meanwhile, the daughters of
Albion “eccho [sic] back her sighs” (8.11, 9, 13; E 51). The various transfor-
mation of “joy” indicates stages of Oothoon’s fall. With these two women
characters, Blake exposes Darwin’s scheme of nature as being governed by
forced coherence between use and joy—your use is destined to be your joy.
In revaluating the connection between use and joy, Blake proclaims the in-
herent value of every being as their “blessing,” which ought to be indepen-
dent of their function. In other words, joy ought to be the use.
Darwin’s botanic poetry was written in the decades leading up to the
French Revolution. It reflects the Zeitgeist characterized by Martin Priest-
man as “guileless libertarianism” (74). It was first received favorably for
breaking new grounds but gradually became a target of satire for its radical
ramifications as the initial permissive atmosphere gave way to conservative
backlash in the second stage of the French Revolution (Priestman; King-
Hele; Bewell). The point of contention lies in Darwin’s emphasis on female
sexuality, especially as depicted in LP. LP provides a series of vignettes of the
sexual life of plants, which give expression to various forms of human desire
and suggest new models of sexual relations, ranging from “the virtuous
 blake’s critique of botanic garden 57

pair” (1.41), that is, the monogamous Canna, to the incestuous Ninon who
“in her wane of beauty” “won / With fatal smiles her gay unconscious son”
(1.125–26), and culminating in “the meretricious bands” of a hundred vir-
gins and swains joined by “Licentious Hymen” and led by Adonis (4.466–
84). Such a catalogue of desires and forms of association encourages the
reader to speculate beyond the existent social mores. This catalogue pro-
vides a basis of modern revaluation of Darwin’s depiction of sexuality,
which might be said to be brought about by Janet Browne’s precise his-
torical account (1989) and culminate with Tristanne J. Connolly’s almost
queer reading (2016). Browne points out that Linnaeus gives primacy
to sexuality in his taxonomy (597) and that Darwin prioritizes the behav-
ior of the plant-woman in characterizing each partnership (607). The fi-
nal vignette of Polyandria, based on reports about South Sea Island and
steeped in a tradition of seeing Tahitians as natural beings, does not aim
to “prescribe a sexual free-for-all” in England, but to explain the “mate-
rialist” view that human love and sexual relations were “ultimately rooted
in physiology” (614). Browne stresses on Darwin’s Enlightenment ethos,
which helps him create a harmonious picture of nature and society with
no violence of the kind found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (615). But I beg to
differ from this benign view of Darwin.
Connolly reads Darwin’s botanic poetry in parallel with eighteenth-
century pornography and notices an emphasis on anomaly, such as the
“illicit loves” (4.302) of cross-fertilized plants, crossbred animals, and mixed-
race humans (Connolly 604). Connolly argues that the heights of the per-
versity are not about same-sex desire, but about extremes of “alterity” (in
other words, exotic practice) as presented in the final vignette (607). For
Connolly, Darwin also entertains cross-species connections, such as in
the account of Nightingale and the Rose (4.305–16). Connolly sees it as
an example of a progressive idea of morphology, which seeks to explain
the resemblance between two species (611). Connolly maintains a cross-
boundary vitality in Darwin’s poetry, which contains potential to chal-
lenge constricting status quo. My reading of Darwin is built upon these re-
valuations featuring a liberal view of sexuality but takes into account the
questions raised by Blake about the position of women in Darwin’s holistic
albeit fluid system. Blake was fully aware of Darwin’s project in promulgat-
ing Linnaeus’s view of nature.3 Thel and the Visions are both set in a land-
scape charged with sexual excess and depletion, which evokes the keynote
of Darwin’s poetry, only to bring to a sharper relief the impasse especially
afflicting women.
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Thel and the Visions have aroused conflicting criticisms. Supporters of

patriarchal dominance felt their authority being challenged; whereas fem-
inist critics felt they could not wholeheartedly countenance Blake’s por-
trayal of these two women. Neither side can remain complacent. Criticism
of Thel mostly blames Thel’s failure to act out her desire. For example,
Robert F. Gleckner criticizes Thel’s unwillingness to accept the lessons
of love and sacrifice (574–75). On the contrary, Helen Bruder contends that
criticism of this kind takes on the quality of the “dictatorial conduct book”
whose sinister motivations Blake sets out to expose (38–40). I agree with
Bruder that blaming Thel for small-minded inaction only reveals the crit-
ics’ own male-centered prejudice as they ask women to unthinkingly sub-
mit to a cosmology that is unfair to them. Furthermore, I contend a dialec-
tical reading of Blake with Darwin will break out of this impasse.
The reviews of the Visions are even more drastically varied. Harold
Bloom, in his commentary in Erdman’s edition, characterizes the poem
as a “hymn to free love” (E 900), whereas Ann Mellor judges that Oothoon
endeavors to fulfill “a male fantasy that serves the interests only of the male
libertine” (367). Some critics wish to reinstate the agency of Oothoon. For
example, Nicholas Williams emphasizes her shift “from being the object of
desire to becoming a subject who envisions a utopian eroticism” (94). Dan-
iela Garofalo maintains that Oothoon defeats the capitalist-cum-psychotic
logic of Urizen by watching the girls in “lovely copulation” with Theotor-
mon (7.24–26; E 50), while demanding no sacrifice, deferral, or self-denial
from others (Garofalo 71–73). Tilottama Rajan is more judicious in point-
ing out the paradox in Oothoon’s offer of virgins: even if she has entered
the gift economy of feminists, she still “en-genders” it within a male dis-
course (86). Adopting Rajan’s opinion, I would stress that Oothoon is
bound to the sadistic pleasure of men, denying free will to other girls, mak-
ing “joy” out of watching their “wanton play” and convincing herself she
has created a “heaven of generous love” (7.25, 29; E 50). This sense of irony
is palpable to the reader, but not to her. In my view, she is a foiled revolu-
tionary, who is not only bound to both her violator and persecutor, but also
to male psychological dominance. Blake exposes the patriarchal ideology
behind the progressive façade of Darwin’s poetry in having Thel flinch
from fulfilling her “use,” which is prescribed in Darwin’s cosmic exposi-
tion, and having Oothoon endeavor to sanctify a doctrine of “joy” akin
to Darwin’s principle of fertility at the expense of her self-value. But Blake
still could not envisage a true emancipation for both men and women. The
“Visions” of the Daughters of Albion are still about bondage and despair.
 blake’s critique of botanic garden 59

Darwin’s cosmic view is built upon an intricate relationship between

nature and society. His ornate poetry in LP presents the realm of plants
as a rococo court of sexual intrigue and suggests nature as a potential
model for new modes of sexual relations, whereas his magisterial verse in
EV maps out the interrelated development of nature and society. Together,
BG demonstrates a microcosm of the economy of nature. Three aspects
of Darwin’s cosmology prompt Blake’s response: the specularity of female
subjectivity; the porousness between humans, animals, plants, and mate-
rials; and its socio-psycho-sexual ramifications. With these three foci in
mind, Blake weaves his questions about the role of women implied in
Darwin’s cosmology into the thematic and visual texture of Thel and the
Visions.
The tension between woman as the subject or object of gaze is high-
lighted in the framing device of BG. In the Proem to LP, Darwin invites
the reader to enter his “Inchanted Garden” (vii) to appreciate the vignettes
of plant life “as diverse little pictures suspended over the chimney of a
Lady’s dressing room” (vii). The lighthearted Proem is in keeping with
the frontispiece to the whole volume, Flora Attired by the Elements, which
features Flora being equipped by the elemental genii, with a view to enlist-
ing poetry and art under the “banner of science” (The Advertisement to
LP). The toilette of Flora emblematizes Darwin’s poetic attempt to present
the vegetable world in an extended address to Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs,
and Salamanders. The Proem and the frontispiece together put forward
botany, in Asia Haut’s words, as at once the subject for study and the stu-
dent, the text and its reader, the product and its consumer (245). Luisa Calè
further points out that this painting visualizes the dynamism of the poem,
that is, the “specularity” between Flora and the garden, which suggests an
act of autoeroticism both alluring and alarming to male readers (par. 9).
The framing device makes plain one contention: botany has enabled
women to explore the natural world and their own bodies. I argue that
Flora represents a rarefied version of Thel and Oothoon. They are subjects
with agency to explore their sexuality, only to end up in retreat and en-
slavement.
In the 1790s, botany ignited a heated debate about science and female
education. On the one hand, William Smellie strongly opposes Linnaeus’s
“disgusting strokes of obscenity” (cited in King 18). On the other hand,
Mary Wollstonecraft encourages women to take up botany as an intellec-
tual pursuit. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Wollstone-
craft resorts to Milton’s theodicy, “knowing good by knowing evil,” in
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order to argue against the “immodesty of affected modesty,” which bars

women from learning physiological and natural sciences (127n2). Botany
for her is like a portal to “the fair book of knowledge” that should not be
shut to women (123). Wollstonecraft’s campaign provokes Richard Pol-
whele in The Unsex’d Females (1800) to ascribe the following view to
her: “in order to lay the axe at the root of corruption, . . . that it would
be right to speak of the organs of generation as freely as we mention our
eyes or our hand” (11n). In Polwhele’s view, Darwin’s passage on Col-
linsonias offers perfect ammunition with which to lampoon Wollstone-
craft. Darwin describes the flower embroiled in a ménage à trois: “Two
brother swains, . . . / . . . / With rival love for fair Collinia sigh, / . . . /
With sweet concern the pitying beauty mourns, / And soothes with
smiles the jealous pair by turns” (1.51–56). In the note, Darwin provides
his observation: the female of this flower “bends herself into contact”
first with one of the two males, and “after some time leaves this, and ap-
plies herself to the other. It is probable one of the anthers may be mature
before the other?” (1.51n). In the poem, Darwin entices his readers with a
scenario of an active female “sooth[ing]” “the jealous pair by turns”
(1.56), whereas in the note he explains it as a mechanism of fertility to
enhance pollination. Polwhele reads this as a parable of Wollstonecraft’s
relationship with Henry Fuseli, Gilbert Imlay, and William Godwin (31–
34). In his own note (33n), he quotes verbatim from Darwin’s later note
on the same plant, which calls this behavior “manifest adultery” (EV
4.456n). Polwhele further sees Wollstonecraft’s death in childbirth, “a
death that strongly marked by the distinction of the sexes” (39n), as a
cautionary tale to those who indulged in the “bliss botanic” (10). As
Sam George points out, Polwhele characterizes botanic exploration as
an uneasy mix of science and voyeurism and especially problematizes
the “scrutinizing gaze” of the female botanist for polluting the female
mind and “unhing[ing]” the nation as a whole (3). Polwhele’s satire
on the “bliss botanic” encapsulates the conservative alarm about Darwin’s
endeavor. Blake is aware of this radical potential of Darwin’s poetry and
science, but what distresses him more is not the awakening of female sex-
ual consciousness that seems to be encouraged by Darwin’s poetry but
Darwin’s implicit connivance at exploitation that afflicts both women
and men.
Darwin sees the porousness between life and its environment as one
sign of the ingenious resourcefulness of life. His poetry suggests an expan-
sive cosmos interwoven down to a minute scale with plants, animals, and
 blake’s critique of botanic garden 61

minerals. The passage on Lichen in Snowden, which “climbs the topmost

stone, / And ‘mid the airy ocean dwells alone” (LP 1.349–50), provides the
story of how tiny mosses transform into larger vegetables. In the note,
Darwin calls Lichen the first plant to vegetate on naked rocks: “after it per-
ishes, earth enough is left for other mosses to root themselves; and after
some ages a soil is produced sufficient for the growth of more succulent
and large vegetables. In this manner perhaps the whole earth has been
gradually covered with vegetation, after it was raised out of the primeval
ocean by subterraneous fires” (1.349n). Lichen’s transformation into dif-
ferent forms of life and materials thus serves as a model for the formation
of forest and landmass.
The process of transformation and dissemination then expands to in-
clude nonliving matter. In his note on coal, he observes that coal has prob-
ably been “sublimed” from the clay, with which it was “at first formed in
decomposing morasses” (EV, 2.353n). He then elucidates the notion of in-
terchangeability between life and material as the cause of landscape shift:
“For the solid parts of the earth consisting chiefly of animal and vegetable
recrements must have originally been formed or produced from the water
by animal and vegetable processes; . . . At the same time we acquire the
knowledge of one of the uses or final causes of the organized world, . . . that
it converts water into earth, forming islands and continents by its recre-
ments or exuviae” (Additional Note XXIII). Darwin builds a doctrine
evocative of Pythagorean metempsychosis in order to explain “one of the
uses or the final causes of the organized world.” Darwin notices that the
process of change is reversible, for the use may become the cause of change.
Furthermore, Darwin demonstrates his insight into the interdepen-
dence between material change and social development, which is best
presented in the passage on clay. In EV, clay is mentioned prior to the
passage on coal (2.349–60), and in connection with porcelain (2.281–
90), Wedgwood’s factory Etruria (2.291–310), the abolition of the slave
trade (2.311–18), and finally the Portland vase (2.319–48). Clay, with its
elasticity and strength, is shown to be vital for civilization. This broad
historical context provides background information for the Clod of Clay
in Blake’s Thel.
The note on clay as a vital material for civilization enables Darwin to
explore the psychosexual dimensions underlying human development
through an exposition of Fuseli’s painting The Nightmare (1781). The
painting is discussed in the context of intoxication-inducing plants, such
as Circaea (Enchanter’s Nightshade) and Laura (Prunus. Lauro-cerasus)
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(LP 3.51–78). The pretext of a dream allows him to probe into the human
mind in the same way as he probes into the composition of the earth. Dar-
win identifies the “nightmare” as the horse on which the “squab Fiend”
rides to seek for some “love-wilder’d Maid with sleep oppress’d” (LP
3.53–54). The Maid experiences a “dread succession” of visions (LP 3.68),
which includes “shrieks of captured towns, and widows’ tears, / Pale lovers
stretch’d upon their blood-stain’d biers” (LP 3.63–64). No escape is possi-
ble, for there is a “headlong precipice that thwarts her flight” (LP 3.65). She
could not even move because “[t]he Will presides not in the bower of
SLEEP” (LP 3.74) and also because the Incubus sits on her breast: the
“Demon-Ape / Erect, and balances his bloated shape; / Rolls in their mar-
ble orbs his Gorgon-eyes, / And drinks with leathern ears her tender cries”
(LP 3.75–78). And as if to calm the excitement produced by the verse, Dar-
win explains in the note that our external movements are suspended in
sleep, but “many of our muscular motions, and many of our ideas, con-
tinue to be excited into action in consequence of internal irritations and
of internal sensations” (3.74n). As Patricia Fara explains, the vital force
runs in parallel in sleep as well as in awakening, for in sleep muscular mo-
tions (or contractions) and ideas are generated in response to internal ir-
ritations and sensations (26). Browne further explicates that Darwin in
Zoonomia (1794) classifies the bodily actions into four classes—the prop-
erties of irritation, sensation, volition, and association—and that these
properties are displayed in plants only to a lesser degree than in animals
or humans (602–4). Roy Porter maintains that in Zoonomia and The Tem-
ple of Nature (1803) Darwin regards “irritation” as the initial trigger of the
life forces, unlocking the potentialities of animated power (56). This model
indicates that Darwin attempts to combine the Hallerian physiology of
nervous stimulus and response with the associationism of Locke, Hartley,
and Priestley in order to formulate his model of the vital force (Porter 46).
Darwin employs Fuseli’s picture to illustrate two ideas: the affinity between
human physiology and psychology, and the human psyche as a microcosm
of the external world. However, this cool-headed observation shows that
Darwin attempts to explain away the gratuitous violence inflicted upon
the “love-wilder’d Maid,” as if all this is simply part of a natural process,
almost like a rite of initiation into the vital force of life. The contrast be-
tween the turgid verse and the calm note discloses a whiff of male insen-
sitivity to women’s suffering.
Darwin’s cosmic view, in which humans are enmeshed within the
scheme of nature, provides the platform for Blake to present the implica-
 blake’s critique of botanic garden 63

tions for women in Thel and the Visions. These two poems respond to
Darwin’s BG thematically and visually. On the one hand, Thel is set in a
pastoral landscape evocative of the teeming nature presented in LP. The
initial place from which Oothoon ventures out also suggests a garden
scene. Both Thel and Oothoon are prompted by a similar excessive self-
regard to undertake the quest, but their exploration in the world is fraught.
Their fates dramatize the plight of women in general. On the other hand,
the visual connection between The Nightmare, the frontispiece of Thel, and
the final plate of the Visions reinforces Blake’s challenge to Darwin.
Thel, the youngest daughter of Mne Seraphim (1.1–2; E 3), sets out to
experience the world in flux. In the end, she rejects the lessons of her in-
terlocutors and flees back to the vales of Har. With this foiled quest, Blake
explores the effects, at the scale of the individual female subject, wrought
by the politico-sexual cosmology expounded in Darwin’s poetry. The
name “Thel” suggests “to desire,” but also “to flourish, abound, [and]
bloom,” as in the context of what the biologist Edward O. Wilson terms
“biophilia”—“the deep-seated human desire to understand, support, and
be a part of nature’s flourishing vitality” (cited in Hutchings 109). Wilson’s
notion enlarges the interpretation of Thel’s venture as not only driven by
her sexual awakening but also prompted by a desire to find her place and
discover her use. Thel goes on a quest to know her role in this biosphere:
“O life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water? / Why fade
these children of the spring?” (1.6–7; E 3). She meets four characters on
a descending scale. First, Thel’s lament ushers in the Lily of the valley
who tries to console her: “I am a watery weed, / . . . / Yet I am visited from
heaven” (1.16–19; E 4). Thel insists on revealing the actual condition of the
Lily to her:

. . . O thou little virgin of the peaceful valley.

Giving to those that cannot crave, the voiceless of the o’ertired.
Thy breath doth nourish the innocent lamb; . . .
He crops thy flowers. while thou sittest smiling in his face
Wiping his mild and meekin mouth from all contagious taints.
(2.3–7; E 4)

Thus the relationship between Lily the producer and lamb the consumer is
presented in terms of female submission to satisfy male needs. In Thel’s
mind, the economy between the “innocent lamb” and Lily the “little virgin”
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simply produces “contagious taints” (2.3, 5, 7; E 4). She thus identifies the
relationship as sexual predation and refuses to take the fate ordained to her.
Thel then meets the Cloud, who describes his life in a cycle of conden-
sation and rarefaction (3.10–15; E 5). The Cloud sees the goal of his life as
achieving “raptures holy” (3.11; E 5). With this reward in sight, he gladly
accepts his fate of “pass[ing] away” (3.10; E 5). But the “raptures” are
achieved through a forced union with the “fair eyed dew” (3.13; E 5). This
scenario echoes back to the illustration on the title plate, which features
Thel as a shepherdess watching over a male leaping out of a flower to ravish
a horrified female. The Cloud then explains Thel’s “use” in the cycle of life:
“Then if thou art the food of worms, . . . / How great thy use. how great thy
blessing; every thing that lives, / Lives not alone, nor for itself” (3.25–27;
E 5). Thel remains skeptical of this patriarchal narrative of “use,” which
subsumes her individuality within the universal system of nature.
The third interlocutor, the Worm, comes to Thel as a voiceless weak-
ling and suggests that life is a multifaceted paradox. The Worm, though
fragile, possesses latent threat for its being associated with the phallus.
Its “infant”-like (4.3; E 5) state prods Thel to admit that her knowledge
is partial: “That God would love a Worm I knew, and punish the evil foot /
That willful, bruis’d its helpless form: but that he cherish’d it / With milk
and oil, I never knew; and therefore did I weep” (5.9–11; E 6). The desire to
know more propels her to take the invitation of the Clod of Clay to “enter”
(5.16; E 6) the latter’s house. But what she discovers there exposes the dark
dimensions of the knowledge of life that shall overwhelm her.
Under the guidance of the Clod of Clay, Thel comes to her own grave
and hears “this voice of sorrow” (6.10; E 6):

Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?

Or the glistning Eye to the poison of a smile!
......
Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy!
Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?
The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek.
Fled back unhindered till she came into the vales of Har.
(6.11–22; E 6)

Thel realizes that even if she decides to endure the trials of life, she would
still be plagued by incessant questions concerning truth and falsehood,
 blake’s critique of botanic garden 65

attraction and destruction, desire and restraint. Frightened, she flees back
to where she comes from.
Thel’s visit to her grave evokes Fuseli’s The Nightmare as it is presented
in LP. Thel is like the “love-wilder’d Maid” (LP 3.53), tortured by visions
beyond her understanding. Thel’s questions provide comments on Dar-
win’s rendition of Fuseli’s painting. Darwin identifies the agent of torture
as the Incubus. But for Blake there is a deeper cause of torment, that is, the
restraint that the society imposes on both man and woman, implied in the
image of the “curb” and the “curtain.” Thel’s visit to the underworld pre-
sents Blake’s macabre mirror image to Darwin’s LP, which offers a glimpse
of some lady’s dressing room. Blake has Thel peep at her grave, fulfilling a
darkest version of voyeurism. Thel’s flight eventually breaks out of the im-
passe of Fuseli’s nightmare into a larger unknown.
The questions from her grave present an echo to the Motto:

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?

Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
Or Love in a golden bowl?
(i.1–4; E 3)

The first two lines suggest competition between the two modes of knowl-
edge formation: sight versus touch; the human poetic insight versus the an-
imal blindness (Hutchings 76). I agree with Rajan that the Motto encapsu-
lates the “perspectivism” of the poem (77). Neither perspective is privileged.
The last two lines draw on the “silver cord” and the “golden bowl” in Eccle-
siastes (12.1; 6–8), which admonishes humans to fear God when young. The
two objects serve as metaphors for our physical condition, representing
male and female sexual organs. Blake replaces the “cord” with the “rod”
to make explicit the suggestion of patriarchal authority, evoking Moses’s
or Aaron’s rod. On the whole, the Motto crystallizes the two issues—epis-
temology and naturalized dichotomy of a gendered economy—as the dyna-
mism of the poem. These two issues are enshrined as it were in a question
mode, with no answer forthcoming. The Motto foretells and also confirms
Thel’s refusal to adopt stance from any perspective.
The different sequencings of the poem, six plates preceding or follow-
ing the Motto, frame the poem into an ouroboric shape, with the Motto
serving as the point of departure or the journey’s end. But the questions
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on both ends of the poem dismantle the ouroboric shape and place high-
light on Thel’s frightful flight from the patriarchal paradigm, which claims
to be holistic and “natural.” Hutchings thus points out that by making the
Lily, the Cloud, and the Clay the “mouthpieces of an asymmetrical inter-
locking model of human gender relations,” Blake exposes the ways in
which a systematic view of nature can serve to “naturalize” the ideological
interests of the status quo (99). For Hutchings, Blake endeavors to advo-
cate vigilance regarding the ways “nature” is constructed in, and produced
by, social discourse (101). I further argue that the best vigilance is done by
raising questions that thrust open the analogy between nature and society.
There is a connection between Thel’s Motto and Darwin’s poetry. In
EV, Darwin uses Aaron’s “mystic rod,” which is like the “living wand” in
a “holy triumph” (4.485–90), to explain the work of “ingrafting” (4.483n).
Darwin might regard the biblical anecdote as an allegory of the modern
innovation. In the Exodus, God commands Aaron to cast down his rod
in front of the pharaoh, and the rod turns into a serpent, a transformation
showing that true authority lies with God (7.10). The rod-serpent asso-
ciation is appropriated by Blake in the Motto and the tailpiece of Thel.
The latter depicts a young girl riding a serpent with two cherubim playing
around it. Rather than upholding the rod as a symbol of male authority,
Blake develops Darwin’s irony on Aaron’s rod into the prospect of sexu-
ality as something people learn to manage and enjoy. The gleeful scenario
of the girl riding the serpent contrasts with Thel’s flight in dread, a discrep-
ancy that spells out the tension between reality and ideal. The mutual im-
plication between the serpent and the rod signals Blake’s challenge to Dar-
win, which will be continued in the Visions.
The Visions of the Daughters of Albion announces its parallel with The
Book of Thel in the duo-syntax of the title, which hinges on the grammat-
ical designation of “of”: the daughters’ visions and Thel’s book, and the vi-
sions demonstrating the daughters and the book showing the development
of Thel. The tight connection between the two poems is also spelled out in
the quest of Thel and Oothoon, and in Thel’s “shriek” (6.21; E 6) and the
daughters’ “eccho[ing] back [Oothoon’s] sighs” (8.13; E 51). From the be-
ginning, Blake announces his challenge to Darwin in having the flower
Marygold entreat Oothoon, “pluck thou my flower Oothoon the mild /
Another flower shall spring, because the soul of sweet delight / Can never
pass away” (1.8–10; E 46). Marygold seems to echo the teaching of the
Cloud from Thel. This innocent belief in the cycle of life shall soon prove
 blake’s critique of botanic garden 67

to be of no avail to actual human suffering. In the end, Oothoon forgoes

her outcry for “different joys” and captures girls for Theotormon like a
nurturing mother. In other words, Oothoon takes the advice of the Cloud,
which Thel flinches from, only to be bound with her persecutors.
First of all, the sexual violence suggested in the title plate of Thel is en-
acted in Oothoon’s rape and then in her scheme to trap and net virgins for
the “dear delight” of Theotormon (7.28; E 50). With Oothoon complicit
in the system that tortures her in the first place, Blake demonstrates that
it is the patriarchal ideology that binds women and men to the slavery
of hypocrisy. Oothoon’s initial venture from a pastoral scenario similar
to that of Thel suggests her sexual awakening. But after plucking the
Marygold, she is rent by Bromion with “thunders” (1.16; E 46). Her lover
Theotormon condemns “the adulterate pair” (2.4; E 46) and locks himself
with them in a triangle of love and jealousy. Oothoon resorts to masochism
with the view to winning back Theotormon’s love as she calls “Theotor-
mons Eagles to prey upon her flesh” (2.13; E 46) but in vain. Oothoon be-
gins to reflect upon her development as self-erasure:

They told me that the night & day were all that I could see;
They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up.
And they inclos’d my infinite brain into a narrow circle.
And sunk my heart into the Abyss, a red round globe hot burning
Till all from life I was obliterated and erased.
(2.30–34; E 47)

Oothoon realizes the source of all these wrongs lies in the lessons she was
supposed to regurgitate, “They told me.” By contrast, the male characters
do not gain any insight. Theotormon answers Oothoon’s protest by asking
“Tell me what is a joy? & in what gardens do joys grow?” (3.24; E 47). For
him, “joy” is like a plant that bears fruits naturally. In addition, Bromion is
trapped in his slave-owner’s megalomania: “Thy soft American plains are
mine, and mine thy north & south” (1.20; E 46). All three are bound to-
gether by their deluded sense of themselves and of the world. The typog-
raphy of Oothoon also visualizes the mirroring structure as “oo” echoes
another set of “oo,” and both are joined by “th.”
Although Bromion comes across like an explorer who is ready to ac-
knowledge new possibilities: “But knowest thou that trees and fruits flour-
ish upon the earth / To gratify senses unknown? . . . / Unknown, not un-
68 the wordsworth circle | v50/n1 2019

perceived, spread in the infinite microscope, / In places yet unvisited by the

voyager” (4.14–17; E 48), he is still an oppressor, for he expects the preva-
lence of one law: “And is there not one law for both the lion and the ox?” (4
22; E 48). The “one law” is understood as exactly what oppresses Oothoon
as she challenges Urizen:

. . . Creator of men! mistaken Demon of heaven:

Thy joys are tears! thy labour vain, to form men to thine image.
How can one joy absorb another? are not different joys
Holy, eternal, infinite! and each joy is a Love.
(5.3–6; E 48)

Her notion of “different joys” is forbidden under Urizen’s law, which de-
mands conformity, sacrifice, and self-denial.
The key word, “joy,” indexes Oothoon’s struggle and submission. Ini-
tially, she sets out to seek for the “vigorous joys of morning light; open
to virgin bliss” (6.6; E 49). She then realizes that it is soon corrupted by
Theotormon’s “hypocrite modesty” (6.16; E 49), which teaches men
“[w]ith nets found under thy night pillow, to catch virgin joy, / And
brand it with the name of whore; & sell it in the night” (6.11–12; E 49). Un-
der this doctrine, “[t]hen is Oothoon a whore indeed! and all the virgin
joys / Of life are harlots: and Theotormon is a sick mans dream / And
Oothoon is the crafty slave of selfish holiness” (6.18–20; E 50). She strives
to articulate her idyll:

. . . a virgin fill’d with virgin fancies

Open to joy and to delight where ever beauty appears
If in the morning sun I find it; there my eyes are fix’d
In happy copulation; if in evening mild. wearied with work;
Sit on a bank and draw the pleasures of this free born joy.
(6.21–23, 7.1–2; E 50)

This idyll is doomed to fail despite her attempt to exhort her sisters, “sing
your infant joy! / Arise and drink your bliss, for every thing that lives is
holy!” (8.9–10; E 51). The ending couplet “joy-holy” in quasi sight rhyme
is what she “wails” every morning and what the daughters of Albion
“eccho [sic] back” (8.11, 13; E 51). Oothoon’s wailing exhortation in fact ech-
oes the Cloud’s lesson for Thel. Both are disclosed to be platitude.
 blake’s critique of botanic garden 69

Oothoon enlarges Thel’s questions of individual value to their social di-

mensions by including the economic exploitation and religious domina-
tion of the poor and the young (5.7–20; E 48–49). She learns to see the fe-
male experience as a synecdoche of social injustice:

With what sense does the parson claim the labour of the farmer?
......
Till she who burns with youth, and knows no fixed lot; is bound
In spells of law to one she loaths; . . .
. . . bound to hold a rod
Over her shrinking shoulders all the day; & all the night
To turn the wheel of false desire: and longings that wake her womb
(5.17–27; E 49)

Her sexual awakening is wedged between this passage of social condition

and psychological domination and the following one about the animal
realm (5.33–40; E 49). As David Aers points out, the word “till” (5.21;
E 49) highlights sexual experience as a hinge of cultural principles of divi-
sion and domination (29). Her self-realization prompts the investigation
into the economy of sexual energy under which she is required to become
“a modest virgin knowing to dissemble” (6.10; E 49). The doctrine of chas-
tity only leads to self-serving hypocrisy.
Despite her diagnosis of the “subtil modesty” (6.7; E 49) as the origin of
all evils, Oothoon vows to imitate the trembling hypocrite to “catch virgin
joy” (6.11; E 49):

But silken nets and traps of adamant will Oothoon spread,

And catch for thee girls of mild silver, or of furious gold;
I’ll lie beside thee on a bank & view their wanton play
In lovely copulation bliss on bliss with Theotormon:
(7.23–26; E 50)

In such a voyeuristic show of “lovely copulation,” which literally replicates

her erstwhile idyll, her “view” shall replace the Urizenic “lamplike eyes”
(7.22; E 50). Indeed, her hovering posture on plate 8 echoes that of Urizen
in the title plate, suggesting she becomes a substitute of the old oppressor.
But in using “nets and traps,” Oothoon has turned herself into the parson
who “claim[s] the labour of the farmer” and colludes with kings and priests
(5.17–20; E 49). The victim of oppression become its agent. Furthermore,
70 the wordsworth circle | v50/n1 2019

plate 8 depicts a group of women huddling together, with no sign of relief.

The image of despair undercuts any triumphalist reading of the text.
The final plate shows all three characters firmly enslaved by and to
their delusion. This plate suggests a parallel with Fuseli’s The Nightmare.
Theotormon sits “weeping upon the threshold” of the cave (2.21; E 47),
whose squatting posture resembles that of Fuseli’s Incubus. Bromion is
chained up with Oothoon: the former might suggest the “nightmare,” sym-
bolizing sheer sexual drive, whereas Oothoon suffers the consequences
of acting out what Fuseli’s maid desires in her dream. The visual con-
nection between Fuseli’s painting and Blake’s plate strongly suggests that
Blake appropriates the psychological dynamism from Fuseli to expose the
punitive exploitation of women and blinding delusion of all implicated in
Darwin’s system.
The sighing of the daughters of Albion brings us back to the frightened
flight of Thel. With these two poems, Blake probes into the affective con-
sequences of the material and spiritual transformation that is illustrated in
Darwin’s poetry as the primary dynamics of nature and society. Around
the same period when he wrote these two poems, Blake also started to work
on a much longer poem, The Four Zoas. The torments of Love & Jealousy in
The Death and Judgment of Albion the Ancient Man (1797), which inves-
tigates issues similar to those examined in Thel and the Visions. In this
work, Blake presents an exposition of the world, glimpsed in Urizen’s “hid-
eous pilgrimage” (Night 6, 74.10; E 351) to survey the fall of the Eternal Man
from Unity to Division. Here readers have a picture of progressive inter-
penetration between living creatures and materials:

Thus Urizen in sorrows wanderd many a dreary way

Warring with monsters of the Deeps in his most hideous pilgrimage
Till his bright hair scatterd in snows his skin bark oer with wrinkles
Four Caverns rooting downwards their foundations thrusting forth
The metal rock & stone in ever painful throes of vegetation
(Night 6, 74.9–13; E 351)

This picture of the fallen world collapses all boundaries between man,
plant, animals, and materials. As Andrew Lincoln explains, the narrative
of The Four Zoas brings biblical history and the Enlightenment view of
progress to a head-on conflict in order to show that both religious and po-
litical systems are “rooted in particular historical conditions that deter-
 blake’s critique of botanic garden 71

mine their structure” (13). Lincoln argues optimistically that Blake’s vision-
ary poetry exposes not an “objectively fixed” natural world, but a “limiting
vision of nature” that is, as what Blake describes in “A Vision of the Last
Judgment,” “fixed by the Corporeal Vegetative Eye” (E 563). Lincoln main-
tains that Blake insists on the spiritual causes of history, and therefore, the
possibility of escape from the fallen existence is through a “clarification of
vision” (13). Lincoln’s study of the poem does not delve into the connection
between Blake’s poetry and Darwin’s cosmic view. But his emphasis on the
spiritual clarification supports my interpretative framework of Darwin
and Blake. I would argue that Urizen’s vision gained through his “hideous
pilgrimage” is not one of the fallen world per se, but one containing the
potentials of both decomposition and gestation. The cause of this transfor-
mation actually lies within each individual, since “[Urizen] could not take
their fetters off for they grew from the soul” (Night 6, 70.48; E 348). Here
the “porousness” between life and its environment is seen as a result of
“ever painful” (Night 6, 74.13; E 351) torments of love and jealousy or nat-
ural transmutation perceived at the scale of the individual psyche. The pro-
cess of transformation is painful, and gaining the knowledge of trans-
formation is no less tasking. Blake asks us to take leave from Darwin’s
transcendental vantage point and get muddled in the dissolving and grow-
ing throes of Thel and Oothoon in order to obtain the insight that seems
unavailable to them so far: if “joy” is to become the true dynamism of life,
it has to coincide with “use” as the inherent “blessing” of each individual.

notes

1. This work is hereafter referred to as BG, with its two parts referred to as EV and LP.
2. These two works are referred to hereafter as Thel and the Visions. Quotations from
Blake’s poetry are noted with plate and line number, followed by page number from
Erdman’s edition, abbreviated as E.
3. Joseph Johnson enlisted Blake to produce engravings for EV, during the time when
Blake was writing much of Songs of Experience (Priestman 74).

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