Elizabeth Barrett Browning Writes 'The Cry of the Children' on Industrial-Era Suffering
Poets involved
What happened
Elizabeth Barrett Browning published 'The Cry of the Children' in 1843, a passionate protest poem about the exploitation of child labour in British industrial mines and factories. The poem was directly inspired by the 1842 Children's Employment Commission report. The children described in the poem lived in conditions of extreme poverty where louse infestation, vermin, and insect-borne disease were ordinary facts of life — conditions Barrett Browning addressed through the lens of industrial exploitation and Christian compassion.
Literary impact
Barrett Browning's protest poetry located the suffering of the poor — including their bodily degradation from parasites, disease, and filth — within a tradition of prophetic social verse. Her work influenced subsequent generations of protest poets including Thomas Hood, and it established a tradition of using poetry to bear witness to the bodily consequences of poverty and exploitation. The insect-ridden world of the Victorian poor finds its poetic advocate in Barrett Browning, even when she addresses it indirectly through the conditions of labour and suffering.
Source: Wikipedia
