The Cry of the Children
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a famous English poet and a social activist who stood for women’s rights, prostitution, and child labor. One of her most famous poems, The Cry of the Children, is a poem that advocates against child labor. In the poem, Browning discusses how the children feel. She mentions how tired, depressed, and abandoned they are. The poem gives off a very powerful message, in that children should not be put through that torture. The society should let children be children. While I enjoyed the Browning’s poem, there were moments were I was greatly confused and deeply moved. Elizabeth Browning was an activist in both England and the United States. In this poem, it is unclear where she is getting her inspiration to fight against child labor. In stanza one line 12, Browning …show more content…
Browning grasps the readers emotion throughout her poem. She makes the readers feel terrible for these children, and makes the readers want to put an end to child labor. She shows the reader that children cannot be children. They are stuck working from dawn to dusk. If somehow they were able to take a break or if someone offered them to go out and play and be children, the children will think it is a trap or they will take that rare opportunity to rest. They are exhausted. The children are even asking to die, so they can find peace and happiness. One example Browning brings up is when the children found a little girl, Alice, dead. They thought she was asleep at the bottom of this pit. They said that she actually looked peaceful. They heard no crying and they saw no sad look in her face just peace in this little girl who was dead. They wanted to be in Alice’s position. They wanted to be dead. Children should to look forward to growing up and not look forward to dying. Browning moves her audience through her examples and through her
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a famous English poet and a social activist who stood for women’s rights, prostitution, and child labor. One of her most famous poems, The Cry of the Children, is a poem that advocates against child labor. In the poem, Browning discusses how the children feel. She mentions how tired, depressed, and abandoned they are. The poem gives off a very powerful message, in that children should not be put through that torture. The society should let children be children. While I enjoyed the Browning’s poem, there were moments were I was greatly confused and deeply moved. Elizabeth Browning was an activist in both England and the United States. In this poem, it is unclear where she is getting her inspiration to fight against child labor. In stanza one line 12, Browning …show more content…
Browning grasps the readers emotion throughout her poem. She makes the readers feel terrible for these children, and makes the readers want to put an end to child labor. She shows the reader that children cannot be children. They are stuck working from dawn to dusk. If somehow they were able to take a break or if someone offered them to go out and play and be children, the children will think it is a trap or they will take that rare opportunity to rest. They are exhausted. The children are even asking to die, so they can find peace and happiness. One example Browning brings up is when the children found a little girl, Alice, dead. They thought she was asleep at the bottom of this pit. They said that she actually looked peaceful. They heard no crying and they saw no sad look in her face just peace in this little girl who was dead. They wanted to be in Alice’s position. They wanted to be dead. Children should to look forward to growing up and not look forward to dying. Browning moves her audience through her examples and through her