What Is The Theme Of Inhumanism In The Cry Of The Children By Barrett Browning

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The vivid picture that Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s paints in “The Cry of the Children” depicts the moan of the nineteenth century social justice issue of child labour. Because of its consequences on the well-being of children and their future selves, child brutality was way more than just a case of working too hard. Barrett Browning rawly exploits the unheard lament of the child labourers, speaking from experience because of her father’s oppression and her sickness’ enslavement. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is able to effectively combat some of the injustice and discrimination shown during the Victorian Age by creating awareness and giving us a clear perspective of the detriments of child labour: dominating strength, indifferent hearts, immature …show more content…

This line is quoted from the play “Medea”, written by Euripides, just before the mother murders her own two children. This feeling in the heart before a mother murders her own two children would’ve been similar to the feeling of a mother sending her children to the factories, but there are other parallels Barrett Browning addresses. The insensitivity of looking away from the pain of your own children in the eye conveys a society that was dehumanizing the children’s eyes from “windows to the soul”, to transparent and lifeless. A mindset of potentiality and admiration had been disregarded and replaced by a sense of depreciated value. It is also important to note that this line was originally written just before an act of taking a child’s life as a selfish act for one’s own fulfillment. Barrett Browning is equating Medea, who killed her children in revenge toward her unfaithful husband, with the nineteenth century society, which killed its children for personal gain and provision. Barrett Browning was obviously done tolerating malicious and violent actions towards children, and her parable-like connection in the epigraph sets the stage for the entire

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