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Child labor in nineteenth-century literature
Literature in the romantic period
Literature in the romantic period
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Although Blake wrote “The Chimney Sweeper” featured in Songs of Innocence before Felicia Hemans was ever born, issues relevant to first-generation Romantic authors still pervaded the literary scene when second-generation authors like Hemans finally took the stage. “Casabianca,” published in 1826, and “The Chimney Sweeper,” published in 1789, both address a central question: What does it mean to be a child? Both poems examine the duties that children have to society as a whole. While there is an overriding sense of an allegiance to duty in both poems, the poems’ situational irony complicates the relationship between children and responsibility. The final line of “The Chimney Sweeper” best demonstrates this complicated relationship. The speaker of “The Chimney Sweeper” concludes by saying, “So if all do their duty they need not fear harm” (24). However, we as readers have reason to question the validity of the speaker’s promise since the poem seems to suggest that relief from hardship only comes through death. Through their language, choice of perspective, situational irony, and other features, “The Chimney Sweeper” and “Casabianca” grapple with the notion of childhood in order to clarify the complicated relationship between children and duty in society. The poems’ structures appeal to the youth around whom they centered. Each poem has end-rhyming quatrains, which create a nursery rhymesque feel. Both poems have a more or less regular rhythm, which adds to the happy feeling created by the rhyme. However, it is a common occurrence for the heavy content to contrast with the poems’ structure. In order to better understand both poems, it is important to examine why the authors would have chosen to use a structure that contr... ... middle of paper ... ... fair to say that both poems are proponents of both duty and childhood because of their youthful structure and irony. However, each poem is more heavily weighted towards one allegiance or another. Hemans does show remorse for Casabianca’s untimely death, but her choice to present the story from the third person perspective proves that her allegiance is more towards the fulfillment of duty to family and country than the fulfillment of childhood. On the contrary, Blake’s choice to give his child character a first person voice empowers his protagonist and supports the idea that Blake was a bigger proponent of childhood than of duty. Both poems reveal the complicated nature of this issue during the Romantic period, and each poem counters the other to give them both a more multidimensional perspective on the consequences and benefits of preserving childhood and duty.