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I have chosen to work on this topic because I found it extremely gripping. The subject of religion in all times arouse controversies and debates. I myself once was a member of a church choir and I’ve seen all the horrid things that happen everyday in what is called “the house of God”. One gets really disgusted with priests, churches and religion in general after witnessing the things happening behind the curtain of  “sanctity, holiness and purity”.

I found it very interesting to investigate about this in William Blake’s poetry, since he was a man with revolutionary ideas, highly spiritual (not in the traditional way) and as it said “a forerunner of the subsequent 19th century “free love” movement”. Although he was a very tolerant man, he would severely disapprove of the church’s conduct and its extreme materialism. Also, he always supported women in achieving the same rights as men. He was free from prejudice and that is a thing that permitted him to gain so much popularity nowadays.

Blake was critical of the marriage laws of his day, and generally railed against traditional Christian notions of chastity as a virtue. At a time of tremendous strain in his marriage, in part due to Catherine’s (his wife) apparent inability to bear children, he directly advocated bringing a second wife into the house. His poetry suggests that external demands for marital fidelity reduce love to mere duty rather than authentic affection, and decries jealousy and egotism as a motive for marriage laws. Poems such as Why should I be bound to thee, O my lovely Myrtle-tree? and Earth’s Answer seem to advocate multiple sexual partners. His poem London speaks of “the Marriage-Hearse”. Visions of the Daughters of Albion is widely (though not universally) read as a tribute to free love since the relationship between Bromion and Oothoon is held together only by laws and not by love. For Blake, law and love are opposed, and he castigates the “frozen marriage-bed”.