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ELH 71.1 (2004) 141-165


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William Blake's Androgynous Ego-Ideal

Tom Hayes
Baruch College and The Graduate Center
City University of New York

Humanity knows not of Sex.

—William Blake

There is no sexual relation.

—Jacques Lacan

I.

William Blake's prophetic poems were enormously popular in the 1960s. Those poems promise that, after the apocalypse, young men will regain their polymorphous perverse sexuality and live in a state of eternal bliss. But in the less euphoric 1970s feminists argued that this androgynous utopia was inherently misogynistic. As a result, in the 1980s what Linda Nochlin refers to as "Blake's development of innovatory androgynous figures" was ignored.1 However, the recent resurgence of androgynous figures in films and novels as well as in men's wear and advertising suggests that it may be time to take another look at Blake's espousal of an androgynous utopia. To expedite this goal, I first want to call attention to Blake's "Visionary Head" drawing of an androgynous figure who looks at us with a libidinous gaze found nowhere else in Blake's work (figure 1).

In her essay, devoted almost exclusively to an examination of the "Visionary Head" drawing to which I am referring, Anne K. Mellor asserts that Blake's model for this figure was his own imagination.2 More recently G. E. Bentley, Jr. has pointed out that this figure "bears a disconcerting resemblance" to the monochrome wash self-portrait of Blake that was discovered in 1974 (figure 2).3 Both figures have the same high-domed forehead, slightly bulbous nose, and large almond-shaped eyes we see in the plaster cast of Blake's head that James S. Deville made in 1823 (figure 3).4 [End Page 141]


Click for larger view		 Figure 1
William Blake, Visionary Head Drawing of the Man Who Instructed Blake in His Dreams, circa 1819-1820. Original uninscribed version. Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England.



Click for larger view		 Figure 2
William Blake, Monochrome Self-Portrait, circa 1803. Pencil and gray wash highlighted with white. Collection of Robert Essick.

[End Page 142]


Click for larger view		 Figure 3
James S. Deville, Plaster Cast of Blake, 1823. Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England.

Bentley offers no explanation as to why he finds the similarity between the figure in the "Visionary Head" drawing and the figure in the monochrome drawing "disconcerting," but the reason for his discomfort is not difficult to fathom. Since this figure's highly arched eyebrows, heavily lidded eyes, tight-lipped smile, flowing hair, and smooth cheeks give him a decidedly androgynous air, and since, as Marjorie Garber has noted, androgyny has always been associated with homosexuality and promiscuity, there is no reason to believe this figure's libidinous gaze is intended for women viewers.5 It appears then that the reason Bentley finds the similarity between the figures in these drawings disconcerting is because the libidinous gaze of the figure in the "Visionary Head" drawing makes the thwarted and disavowed homoeroticism underlying the code of heterosexual masculinity explicit.

I maintain that this figure is Blake's ego-ideal. That is, he is a representation of how Blake would like to have looked if he had been able to avoid conforming to the code of heterosexual masculinity. As [End Page 143] a metonym of so-called queer desire, this figure enables us to understand why the scene at the end of Jerusalem, where the "Double Female" is absorbed by the hermaphroditic monster known as the Covering Cherub, marks Blake's rejection of the misogynous tradition where the female will is responsible for man's fall.6

II.

In his essay "On Narcissism," Sigmund Freud distinguishes between the ideal ego, which is an internalized image of the way we want to be seen by our family, our community, and our nation, and the ego-ideal, an internalized image of the way we would look if we could avoid conforming to the code of heterosexual masculinity.7 In his first seminar, Lacan says the most important function of the ego-ideal is to...

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