The Cry Of The Children Analysis

During the midst of the 19th century, a rapid uprising of unprecedented change brought England to the end of the Romantic Period and into “its highest point of development as a world power,” The Victorian Era (GreenBlat ). As once predominantly rural, “enormous investments of people, money, and manufactured goods” spawned the rise of of an all-powerful British empire (GreenBlat). Consequently, England experienced “an enormous increase in wealth,”on behalf of the initial success of the Industrial Revolution; however, “rapid and unregulated industrialization” soon brought an abundance of social and economic distress to the nation (GreenBlat). By the 1830’s, the brutal realities associated with the newly mechanized world “were so severe” that

Enslaved within the factory walls, children, starting at the age of six, were stripped of their childhood as they worked under gruesome working conditions, unfair wages, and harsh punishment. (quote of child here )Unfortunately, capitalists were deemed innocent of such casualties under the theory of laissez-faire, claiming it would benefit the majority. What happened to these children would be not left in vain however as Barrett Browning would demonstrate the irreversible consequences of a power-hungry

In lines 125 and 126, the author illustrates this image onto the reader when the children cry, “ We look up for God, but tears have made us blind/ He is as speechless as stone Therefore, convinced their pleas are only in vain, “grief has made [the children] unbelieving” (131) as the only divine and almighty figure in their life is their master who condemns the children to an eternal slavery. Hence, Barrett Browning captures the tainted and broken essence of the children in order to make the established religion and her “brothers” (1) liable for the lack of religious faith in the