On The Daughters of Tiriel
Tiriel, the first of William Blake's Prophetic Books , is a work filled with anxieties of abandonment, tyranny, and the absence of filial piety. It narrates the sad, if deserved, fate of the eponymous king, now aged and widowed, as he seeks revenge against those he feels to have wronged him (principally his own children). " The cry was great in Tiriel's palace his five daughters ran/And caught him by the garments weeping with cries of bitter woe...Hela my youngest daughter you shall lead me from this place/And let the curse fall on the rest & wrap them up together..." Hela, the youngest of the five daughters of Tiriel, is spared the dark fate that befalls her sisters and brothers. But why? Simply so she can accompany her blind father on his final exile, like some Anglo-Saxon Antigone? Or is there something deeper at work here? I dunno. But I'm bored of writing this now, so I'm posting it.