The Background of William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper”: A Marxist Analysis of the Impact of Industrial Revolution on Superstructure

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of the Industrial Revolution on superstructure, analyzing the background of William Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper”. During the Industrial Revolution, people of Europe started migrating to industrial cities in search of work. As a result, crowded cities had affluent foundlings living on the streets. At a growing age, these children used to be captured and taken to the mills and factories to work. They used to have a cheap commercial use for sweeping the chimneys. William Blake expresses their abused lifestyle, ill health conditions, and inhumane exploited death in the chimneys. They represent the smoke of the industrial world and the lack of emotion, which are the results of the Industrial Revolution. The study is qualitative research based on a closed-textual reading method and content analysis methods. This paper analyzes the background of “The Chimney Sweeper” and brings out the impact of the Industrial Revolution on mankind and the superstructure.