Life & Wisdom Quote by William Blake

Blake’s line lands like a moral slap because it refuses the comforting fiction that “fallen” women are a separate species. “Every harlot was a virgin once” compresses an entire social history into a single before-and-after: innocence is not a permanent trait but a status society confers, monitors, then withdraws. The brutality is in the grammar. “Every” doesn’t leave room for exceptions, and “was” turns virginity into something you can lose not just physically but politically, the moment the world decides you no longer qualify.

The subtext is less about sex than about power. “Harlot” is a label with teeth, a public word used to outsource blame. It lets respectable society enjoy desire while punishing the person who makes that desire visible. By reminding readers that the “harlot” had a beginning, Blake shifts attention from individual sin to the machinery that produces “ruin”: poverty, coercion, hypocrisy, and the gendered economy of reputation.

Context matters. Blake wrote in a London where prostitution was widespread and moral reform rhetoric was loud; his work repeatedly attacks institutions that sanctify cruelty (church, law, polite virtue). The line rhymes with his larger obsession: innocence and experience aren’t opposites so much as stages in a rigged system. It works because it’s accusatory without preaching. You can’t read it without picturing time passing, a life narrowed, choices foreclosed. The real target isn’t the “harlot.” It’s the audience that needs her as a cautionary tale.