Note 8 — Chapter IV

It is observable that Job’s wife, so disadvantageously treated in Scripture, is by Blake represented as the sufferer’s loving companion throughout. This was probably out of tenderness to Mrs. Blake, from whom, indeed, upon a comparison between her portrait as a young woman and the ideal representation of the Patriarch’s spouse, his model for the latter would seem to have been derived; but if so the inference seems justified that Blake regarded the story of Job as emblematic of his own history.