Rosie the Riveter (« Rosie la riveteuse » en français) est une icône populaire de la culture américaine, symbolisant les six millions de femmes qui travaillèrent dans l'industrie de l'armement et qui produisirent le matériel de guerre durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, alors que les hommes étaient partis au front.

Le personnage est devenu par la suite à la fois une icône féministe et un symbole du rôle économique naissant joué par la femme aux États-Unis¹.

On appela « Rosies » celles qui allèrent travailler dans les usines. Quoi que 80 % des Rosies voulaient continuer à exercer ces métiers, elles furent encouragées, au retour des hommes, à laisser leur place aux soldats démobilisés ou furent orientées vers des travaux non spécialisés.

Les catégories de Blake représentent un mode de perception qui tend à correspondre avec une chronologie qui deviendra propre au romantisme : l'enfance est un état caractérisé par l'innocence plutôt que par le péché originel, mais guère à l'abri du monde déchu. Ce monde empiète parfois sur l'enfance elle-même ; tout événement est alors connu grâce à l'expérience, un état marqué par la perte de vitalité caractéristique de l'enfance, par la peur et l'inhibition, par la corruption politique et sociale et par l'oppression multiforme de l’Église, de l'État et du jeu des classes sociales. Des titres contradictoires marquent cette opposition dans le recueil : au sein de Songs of Innocence figure Infant Joy, tandis que figure dans Songs of Experience son contraire Infant Sorrow.

Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794) juxtapose the innocent, pastoral world of childhood against an adult world of corruption and repression; while such poems as "The Lamb" represent a meek virtue, poems like "The Tyger" exhibit opposing, darker forces. Thus the collection as a whole explores the value and limitations of two different perspectives on the world. Many of the poems fall into pairs, so that the same situation or problem is seen through the lens of innocence first and then experience. Blake does not identify himself wholly with either view; most of the poems are dramatic--that is, in the voice of a speaker other than the poet himself. Blake stands outside innocence and experience, in a distanced position from which he hopes to be able to recognize and correct the fallacies of both. In particular, he pits himself against despotic authority, restrictive morality, sexual repression, and institutionalized religion; his great insight is into the way these separate modes of control work together to squelch what is most holy in human beings.

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry ’ ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep! ‘weep!’
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.

There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved, so I said,
‘Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head’s bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.’

And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;

And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins & set them all free;
Then down a green plain, leaping, laughing they run,
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.

Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom, if he’d be a good boy,
He’d have God for his father & never want joy.

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.

Both Chimney-Sweeper poems show Blake to be a radical critic of the social injustices of his age. His indictment of desperate material conditions and those institutions which perpetuate them is passionate and powerful, but his greatest anger is reserved for the forces – the established Church, mercenary and uncaring parents – that restrict our vision and prevent us from understanding both our oppression and the infinite possibilities of true perception.