Child Labour in 19th century in England - Free Essay Example

The 19th century in England is also well known as the Victorian Period because of the long reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). The characteristic of this period was the changing of the economic, political, and social views as the result of the Industrial Revolution. The poverty and exploitation increased due to drastic changes in the demographics of England. Amid the multitude of social and political forces of this age of democracy, it was an age of popular education, of religious tolerance, of growing brotherhood and of profound social unrest. The multitudes of men, women and little children in the mines and factories were victims of a more terrible industrial and social slavery. Child labour at the time was synonymous to slavery. Children were subjected to inhuman torture, exploitation and even death. These child labourers were forced to work in factories and workhouses at the insistence of their parents and workhouse guardians. The reputation of Elizabeth Barrett Browning as a poet of liberal social conscience is chiefly based on her widely known The Cry of the Children. It is less well known that after the publication of that poem in 1843 Barrett Browning continued to champion social progress in England, the liberation movement in Italy, and abolitionism in the United States. While The Cry of the Children was a kind of poetical echo of Chartism. Child labour, in Victorian England, was part of a gruesome system which snatched children of their childhood, health and even their lives, which is picturized in the lines of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which is as follows: Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And that cannot stop their tears. Elizabeth Barrett Browning uses a theme of politics along with rich imagery to draw her readers into the plight of the children forced into working in the mines and factories of industrial England. She writes to expose the horrific conditions under which these children are forced to live and die. The poem is a detailed description of the thoughts and wishes of the children paired with an outsiders pleas with the public to change the lives of the children. The poet brings out her female perspective of child abuse and child labour in the work which is published in 1843 in the Blackwoods Magazine, was written after she had visited an urban factory and was shocked at the childrens pitiful state. The poem was read in the House of Lords and influenced legislation to protect working children. It is obvious that the poem is a personal response to the exploitation of children as cheap workers, especially in factories and mines, and a call to the society for reform. Within the poem Barrett Bro wning made use of repetitions and a plea to the reader is constantly present, as in lines such as: But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free. This poem addresses and pleads with the reader directly as if begging to cease the cruel practice on the spot. This urgency, apt imagery The young lambs are bleating and emotional description of the childrens weeping is the poets strength trying to make even deaf ears hear the message. Elizabeth Barrett Browning shows the direct cause and symptoms of social distress in her best social verse in the fourth stanza, where the speaker tells us about a young girl by the name of Alice, who died last year and the children try to hear her cry from her grave, but discovered little Alice never cries, so the children reason that Alice must be happier there. The verses provide an effect of pathos, piety and passion as the sentimental artistry to the poem, Barrett Brownings disintegrating effects of social suffering is delved in the fifth stanza lines which are as follows: Alas, the wretched children! they are seeking Death in life, as best to have! They are binding up their hearts away from breaking, With a cerement from the grave. Go out, children, from the mine and from the city â€Å" Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do â€Å" Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips of the meadows, Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through But they answer, Are your cowslips of the meadows Like our weeds anear the mine? Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, From your pleasures fair and fine! Barrett Brownings penetrating insight finds the source and the only remedy for her social distress through writing this poem. It shows her deep concern about the affection caused by the Industrial Revolution happened centuries ago. Browning emphasizes a lot about the child labour victims and made even lively by using dramatic monologue. She pretends that she talks to the children in real life talking about their pains. Obviously, the subject matter of this poem is the misery lives of children back in the Victorian period who faced miserable lives as labours. Browning shows her concern to them who cannot enjoy their childhood lives due to the Industrial Revolution. Like mentioned above, the Industrial Revolution plays a very big impact on the countrys development during the period. Therefore, they are too seeking low-cost employment of under-aged children happened to be their last and cruel decision. During the period, under-aged children who are in the midst of their teens even young er were forced to work in mines with ridiculous working hours. They suffered from tiredness and depression. They couldnt play like how youngsters should be, instead, they had to work for the countrys own good. In this case, Browning clearly shows how painful it was for the children by providing a pessimistic feel towards the readers since the stanza 7 of the poem. Elizabeth Barrett Brownings poetic vocation in the stanzas 8 to 10, finalizes the poem with a bit sign of warning to the nation that as the countrys revolution is getting better, the social life in their country seems to be ignored. Browning wants to emphasize her protest to stop child labour in the stanzas 11 and 12. Browning thinks that the pains of the children seem to be deeper rather than the strong mans wrath as she uses several poetic devices to support her style of writing. ; the repetition of verses Let them weep! Let them weep! tries to emphasize that the pains can actually make the children die faster at a very young age so everything needs to be stopped which picturizes the peak of her protest. For all day, the wheels are droning, turning, â€Å" Their wind comes in our faces, â€Å" Till our hearts turn, â€Å" our heads, with pulses burning, And the walls turn in their places Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling â€Å" Turns the long light that droppeth down the wall, â€Å" Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling â€Å" All are turning, all the day, and we with all! â€Å" And all day, the iron wheels are droning; And sometimes we could pray, ?O ye wheels, (breaking out in a mad moaning) ?Stop! be silent for to-day! The political imagery employed in the above lines as a criticism of the society and the government is almost scary, in which the childrens hearts turn and their heads with pulses burn are becoming one with the droning and turning of the wheels of the machines. It creates the impression as if the children and machines are interchangeable; the children become machines and the machines are more alive than the children. This impression of the unity of children workers and the machines, with which they work, is underlined through the poets use of plosives like t and p. The staccato-like rhythm of the poem, along with the repetitions of words like turn and all and the dashes (end-stopped poem) at the end of many lines create a sensation of the noise in a factory, which indicates too that it is by this rhythm that the children live and not only work. On a broader view one can also say that the verses also voice the sentiment and anxiety of the Victorian Age, as people felt that with the mec hanization of work, people also lost their ability for kindness and emphatic feelings for others and became themselves more heartless. The poem ends with the childrens angels speaking for them since no one else seems to do it, No one is exempt in the address of O cruel nation where Barrett Browning directly put forwards her distress and poetic vocation to criticize the Parliament. The poet opens up her anger by saying that, No one can point the finger at only one person or group of people, we all are to blame if today child labour is found in our nation, which we call Mother Earth so ironically if we neglect her children. The last two lines seem to have the purpose to haunt the reader, as the lines are: How long, they say, how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a childs heart, Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart Our blood splashes upward, O our tyrants, And your purple shows your path; But the childs sob curseth deeper in the silence Than the strong in his wrath! The Cry of the Children is a revolutionary and strong poem that is against the mistreatment of children and puts in doubt the belief in society, in nation and in God where Barrett Browning with her skillful use of political imagery, sound devices, repetitions, anaphora and caesura, along with the personal, emotional, haunting and colloquial style of the poem, in which all concerned ?parties, the children, adults, preachers and angels, get their share of dialogues, she is able to reach the heart of her readers and powerfully provokes a response in them. Browning, in her own individual ways of using Child Labour as an instrument of Social Criticism, gives voice to the unheard cries of the children of her age and try to stir the readers. Will you stand, to move the world, on a childs heart?

Where are they now

   On my drive to work every day, I pass a large-scale construction project. Yesterday as I passed some of the equipment, I was struck by the similarity between building and writing. It doesn’t matter if you have all the supplies in the world—if you don’t have the correct tools, neither a building nor a paper will be created. I recently sat down with Megan House, a freelance journalist and editor of IEW’s Magnum Opus Magazine, who happens to be an IEW alum as well. Some of her comments reminded me of how IEW gives this â€Å"toolbox† to students. Tell me a little bit about yourself. My undergrad degree was in print journalism, and my MA was in theological studies. I direct a dance ministry in Lynchburg, Virginia—we have about two hundred kids involved in our program. I also work for IEW on the side and write for four different magazines. How old you were when you started IEW? I was introduced to IEW in 7th or 8th grade, starting with the Student Writing Intensive. We had tried a million different writing courses, so initially we were very hesitant to start IEW. I had always loved to write, but I often struggled with how to structure my thoughts on paper. I really feel like IEW helped me with that. It taught me how to condense and gave me a toolbox I could use to structure my papers. What IEW courses did you take? After the Student Writing Intensive, we did Bible Based-Writing Lessons and then SWI Continuation Course Level B. After I started college I watched the Advanced Communication Series, kind of for the fun of it. I think the Advanced Communication Series is great for freshmen in college or students preparing to go to college. What was your favorite part of IEW? What I love about the program in general is how entertaining and engaging Mr. Pudewa is. It was always very fun, and whenever something is fun you are going to be more interested. I learned a lot in the essay sections, and earlier on my favorite part was writing from pictures because I am a very creative person and love that type of writing. What type of writing do  you find yourself doing now? As a freelance journalist, most of my writing is articles. For example, I work for a business magazine and a few others where I write profiles on different businesses. My favorite writing is creative writing. I had a short novel published while I was in college, and I am working on a couple others right now. One of the things I have in the works is a children’s series. I’ve been teaching ballet for many years, and I’ve found that most of the children’s books about ballet have the message, â€Å"I’m the best! I’m a star!† whereas I like to instill in my dancers that it doesn’t matter if you are the best; as long as you try your hardest and are the best that you can be, you have accomplished something. For this series my grandmother is doing all the illustrations, so I’m excited to be working with her. I’m also working on another short novel. Do you see any connection between your IEW training and your ability to communicate beyond writing? Yes. During high school I really struggled with public speaking skills. You wouldn’t necessarily think that writing skills apply to speaking, but they really do. When I went to college and took public speaking classes, I found myself doing the keyword outline method and found it extremely helpful. What I had learned from IEW definitely transferred over. Really any class you take during college is going to require papers or presentations, and IEW trains you for those situations. When it comes to teaching writing, students normally fall on a spectrum between the child who simply refuses to write and the child who writes so much that they cannot seem to slow down and structure their ideas. Both of these issues can be addressed by supplying the student with effective techniques and models. As educators, it is easy to become frustrated with both a child who writes too much and a child who writes too little. But don’t worry. Once you give your students a set of tools for writing, you will be blown away by what they can accomplish, not just through composition, but also by speaking, thinking, and creating. Growing up in the Pudewa family, Christopher was exposed to the IEW method from a very young age. During high  school  he had the privilege of competing in the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association, where he was able to apply the skills he had learned through IEW. Chris is currently attending the University of Oklahoma, majoring in Criminology and Psychology. He is an intern  in IEW’s marketing division.    Log in or register to post commentsChris Pudewas blog Log in or register to post comments