Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and William Blake
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and William Blake both wrote poems concerning the suffering of children who were forced to do labor. The children were forced to work presumably to help their families survive in a time when everyone in the family who was able had to help support the family. Both Browning, and Blake obviously felt that the children were suffering from these circumstances, although they expressed their feelings from different perspectives and with different degrees of sympathy. Elizabeth Barrett Browning had an extremely dramatic view of the suffering of working children. In her poem The Cry of the Children, Browning illustrates the extreme anguish of the children, "(The children) look up with their pale and sunken faces, and their looks are sad to see..." (Abrams, 1175). Browning tells us the horridness of the problem by having the children tell us that it is, "true-it may happen that we die before our time: little Alice died last year, her grave is shapen like a snowball..."(Abrams, 1175). The tragedy is shown to us by the fact that the children, who are so young, are able to simply accept this fact. They are forced to see people their age worked to death, when perhaps they should be able to play, and fill thei
Browning shows us the children's wish for death as in the quote from The Cry of the Children, "it is good when it happens-when we die before our time," (Abrams, 1176). Blake's entire poem illustrates, as is intended, the innocence of the children. In Browning's poem The Cry of the Children, the children almost scorn God asking, "is it likely God, with angels singing around Him, hears our weeping anymore?" (Abrams, 1177). This shows us that the child feels as if he was sold, like a workhorse. It is unthinkable for most to believe that a child would want to die rather than live in their forced conditions. While Blake's Poems leave you with a sense that the children are not entirely suffering, Browning's poems leave you with an intense sense of dread and pity for the children. An adult would understand that if the child had no hair to spoil, he should not feel mollified that it will refrain from becoming dirty, as he has lost his hair already. In Blake's The Chimney Sweeper from Songs of Experience God has created a, "heaven of our misery," (Abrams, 52), meaning, I believe, that God has a special heaven for the children who are made to suffer because they are forced to work. William Blake writes about children laborers suffering as well. This line shows that the parents are blissfully unaware of the suffering, and problems they are causing their own child. The children wonder if God even cares or exists, "for God's possible is taught by his world's loving, and the children doubt of each," (Abrams, 1177). The poem goes on to chastise the parents for mistreating their child. This feeling could lead to the perspective of God that Blake inserts into his poetry even though Browning's view of how the children feel towards God may be more accurate.
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