CSULA ENGL 560: Spring 2013

Alfred C. Valrie Jr.

English 560

April 11, 2013

Professor Garrett

A Defense of Womanhood & A Rejection of Male-Centered Values

                I am first attracted to the names in Blake’s prose-poem.  Theotormon suggests to me a man tortured—“tormented”—by strong, unswaying principles which may at one time have been based on Biblical teachings, hence the “Theo.”  That is to say that in his heart there is only law and no forgiveness.  So when Oothoon, a name which conjures an ethereal, spiritual presence, is raped, Theotormon cannot look past her “fallen” state.  Instead of recognizing her as victim, Theotormon considers her “harlot” (Plate 2, line 1).  Bromion sounds like a potentially unstable chemical compound and also a lot like “bromide,” a meaningless statement meant to distract from aberrant behavior.  Accordingly, when Bromion speaks following his rape of Oothoon, he identifies black female slaves as desiring of violent domination: “Their daughters worship terrors and obey the violent” (Plate 1, line 24).  Blake ingeniously links white and chattel slavery in a fundamental way: that the privilege of both exists only in the mind of the tyrant.  It is ironic, then, that America—which gave birth to new liberty—also gave birth to a race of people, African Americans, who bear the “signet” (Plate 1, line 22) of the rape of black African women by tyrannical white men.  Bromion later indicates in a series of platitudes (Plate 4, lines 13-24) that life exists only by extremes (wars, sorrows, riches, and ease).  For Bromion, life exists only in the taking—that the strong must take, and the weak must submit.  Theotormon, on the other hand, cannot see past his own sadness.  When he binds Bromion to Oothoon, he dooms Oothoon’s womanhood.  Theotormon’s concept of purity is based not on Oothoon’s unyielding devotion but the former integrity of her undefiled physical state.

            Oothoon, consequently, bemoans the quality of man-made laws which have “bound” (Plate 5, line 20) women to men and in turn cause women to think “murderous thoughts” (22) in private and sublimate hidden “longings” (26).  The “rod over her shrinking shoulders” (24, 25) recalls also the strictures of chattel slavery.  I struggle, though, with the concept of the invisible quality of oppressed white womanhood being exactly similar to the physical torture immanent in American chattel slavery.  It is not the same.  While the two—white and chattel slavery—are linked in that they both spring from the mind of the tyrant, chattel slavery had profound psychological and economic consequences for an entire race of people.  Many white women benefited from marriages where they may not have been similarly fated as Oothoon.  One could argue that where upper-class white women are concerned, Oothoon is the exception, not the rule.  Oothoon is an extreme example held up as the epitome of white female plight.  Oothoon is first and foremost a rape victim.  In how many cases were women who were properly groomed for marriage, raped, humiliated, and then doomed to spinsterhood?  I don’t think too many.

Works Cited

Blake, William.  “Visions of the Daughters of Albion.”  The Longman Anthology of 
           British Literature Fifth Edition Volume 2A: The Romantics and 
          Their Contemporaries.  Ed. Susan Wolfson and Peter Manning.  Boston: 
          Pearson Education, Inc., 2012.  218-224.  Print.