Column: ​Experiences when young can dictate how we function as adults

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​In my last column, I celebrated A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which I saw as particularly powerful in its condemnation of a society which showed little concern and compassion for children, says writer Laurence Coupe.

​Behind the work of Dickens was the view of the child introduced by the poetic movement known as ‘Romanticism’. It was put most succinctly by William Wordsworth: ‘The child is father of the man.’

The experiences we have when young dictate how we will function as adults.

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A Romantic poet to whom Dickens has been compared is William Blake. Like Dickens, Blake used his literary skills to condemn the inhumane treatment of children in his day.

Guest columnist Laurence Coupe is a writer.Guest columnist Laurence Coupe is a writer.
Guest columnist Laurence Coupe is a writer.

Throughout the 18th and most of the 19th centuries in England, chimneys were swept by small children, known as ‘climbing boys’. The smaller the child, the better.

No protective clothing was supplied. Their heads were shaved.

Many of them died in the course of their work, or else were abandoned in the street and left to starve.

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For Blake’s perspective, we might consider the second of two poems he wrote on the subject, both entitled ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ – this one being published in 1794.

"​”William Wordsworth said: ‘The child is father of the man.’ The experiences we have when young dictate how we will function as adults”, writes guest columnist Laurence Coupe."​”William Wordsworth said: ‘The child is father of the man.’ The experiences we have when young dictate how we will function as adults”, writes guest columnist Laurence Coupe.
"​”William Wordsworth said: ‘The child is father of the man.’ The experiences we have when young dictate how we will function as adults”, writes guest columnist Laurence Coupe.

The young sweep presented here has no illusions about his dreadful life. He protests that it was his own mother and father who sold him into a life of misery: ‘They clothed me in the clothes of death / And taught me to sing the notes of woe.’

When asked where they are, he bitterly reports that they are now attending church. They have ‘gone to praise God and his Priest and King,/Who make up a heaven of our misery.’

Blake was a spiritual revolutionary. He rejected the conventional God, whom he renamed as ‘Nobodaddy’. The only spiritual being whom he put his faith in was Jesus, who embodied liberation from all oppression, whether sacred or secular.

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Blake castigated the religious authorities of his day, condemning them for their indifference to the suffering of the poor – particularly children such as the one featured in the poem above.

Given Blake’s perspective, we might wonder, in the light of the appalling cases of child abuse which the contemporary church has allowed to continue over the decades, what kind of God do those clergy who are guilty either of abuse or of concealing abuse actually believe in?

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