Elizabeth Barrett Browning's The Cry Of The Children

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In 1842, the “Report of the Children’s Employment Commission” was released describing the harsh conditions of child labor conditions in Britain. During the Victorian Period, the Commission led to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s literature protest as an attempt to bring about transformations in the development of the English government. Browning’s writing was published only one year later in August of 1843 in Blackwood’s Magazine. The purpose of the poem was to bring awareness to labor cruelty by appealing to the community’s civil duty to abolish these actions. In “The Cry of the Children,” Elizabeth Barrett Browning appeals to the reader’s morals through the youth’s attitude towards death, unnatural aging, and loss of faith to stress the urgency of eradicating child labor cruelty.
Within the first stanza of Browning’s “The Cry of the Children,” appeals to the reader’s emotions by the great emphasis placed on the children’s attitudes toward working in coal mines and manufactories. The …show more content…

From the beginning stages of their time in the work force, children were taught to honor God through their work because He is the reason they are working. Line 128 says, God “commands [them] to work on”. Not only were the owners forcing children to work, but by using their religion against them, they were drawing children away from their faith. The words “Grief has made us unbelieving” represent the concept that God has forgotten them in their time of need so they no longer choose to believe in a God that does not hear their cries of agony (line 131). People are shown God’s love through the way other treat them on Earth. Browning points to the factors that the children’s diminishing faith is due to the harsh labor, as well as the lack of encouragement from the

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