The representation of the female in William BlakeIf William Blake was, as Northrop Frye described him in his famous book Fearful Symmetry, "a mystic enraptured by incommunicable visions, apart, a solitary and isolated figure, out of touch with his own age and without influence on the next" (3), time proved to be the visionary's most celebrated ally, making him one of the most frequently written poets of the English language. William Blake has become, in a sense, an institution. "Without opposites there is no progress. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate are necessary to human existence," Blake wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Perhaps his most famous phrase, these words are the common thread throughout Blake's work, from The Songs of Innocence and Experience to Jerusalem. But the meaning of those words has been the subject of controversy over the years. What does this mean for the Male and Female who are at the center of your work? If they are Contraries, then what does the Female represent in Blake's work? What did Blake mean? And where did your ideas and perceptions come from? In 1977 Susan Fox addressed these questions in her famous essay "The Female as Metaphor in William Blake's Poetry." As the first literary critic to comment on Blake's inconsistencies in his treatment of the Female, Fox explores the progression of the extended metaphor throughout his career. He explains that Blake's vision of the Contraries became clearer to him as time passed; therefore, the contradiction lies in his previous vision of the Female, identified with weakness and failure, and in his subsequent attempt to save...... half of the document ...... cism 34 (1995): 255-270. Ostriker, Alicia. “Gratified and Ungratified Desire: William Blake and Sexuality.” Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 16 (1983): 156-165.Paglia, Camille. Sexual personae: art and decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990: 270-299. Pavy, Jeanne Adele. “A Blakean Model of Reading: Gender and Genre in the Poetry of WilliamBlake.” DAI 53 (1993):Emory University.Storch, Margeret. Sons and Adversaries: Women in William Blake and DHLawrence. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990.Webster, Brenda. "Blake, women and sexuality". Critical Paths: Blake and the Method Argument. Eds. Donald Ault, Mark Bracher and Dan Miller. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1987: 204-224. Wilkie, Brian. Thel and Oothoon by Blake. BC Canada: University of VictoriaPress, 1990.