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Elizabeth Barrett Browning's The Cry Of The Children

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote the poem “The Cry of the Children” in 1842, after reading about the horrible conditions of children who worked in factories and mines in a commissioner’s report written by R.H. Horne. Browning used the poem to publicly condemn child labor and to help bring about child labor reforms by shedding light on the issue. The poem is written in Browning’s signature singular style, which helps Browning effectively illustrate the reoccurring theme of disappointment and to exploit the government’s abuse of child labor. Browning relies heavily on the use of imagery and irony throughout the poem to paint a vivid picture of the hellish conditions that the children are forced to work in, forcing the reader to imagine themselves …show more content…
She shows her sympathy toward the children that she believed to have been robbed of a proper childhood. She compares the young children to other young things, such as young animals and young flowers, showing all the other young living things are doing what they should be doing at their age. When it comes to the young children however, she writes, “They are weeping in the playtime of the others, in the country of the free” (Lines 11-12). The speaker invites the children to go out to the meadow and run, laugh, and even sing but the children decline. This is ironic because as children, they would be expected to want to do these things. The children say, “If we car’d for any meadows, it were merely to drop down in them and sleep” (67-68). Another very serious irony that Browning uses in the poem is when she speaks of the young girl Alice who passed away. When the children speak of Alice, and how you never hear her crying, it becomes evident that these young children, who have their whole lives ahead of them, are looking forward to dying. “’It is good when it happens’ say the children, ‘that we die before our time’” (51-52). The children have no disillusionment towards life at …show more content…
Browning describes children with “pale and sunken faces” (25) whose “looks are sad to see”. (26) She depicts these small, cheerless, exhausted kids in such a way that the reader can do nothing but feel sorry for them. She depicts scenes of tiny children looking up to the sky with tear-stained faces, searching for someone to answer their prayers. Instead of Heaven, Browning writes that the children see “Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds” and pray to a god that cannot hear them because they are stuck in a place where there are iron wheels constantly turning, while God has angels singing around him. Browning uses the contradiction of light and dark, making the mines and factories seem like dark dismal places in comparison to the flower-spotted English countryside. By contrasting the two, she effectively makes the lives of the weary children seem that much more dark and

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